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High performance feels like BS to most of us.

It seems like an impossible dream. It may even look and feel like privilege, elitism, or undisclosed wealth from daddy’s trust fund.

But I want to share with you a different form of high performance. One that is obtainable. One that is simple. One that anyone (even you) can make work.

I’ve spent 12 years through my academy working with Olympic Athletes, top 1% entrepreneurs, viral writers, big-name Youtubers, and skilled professionals at the top of their field.

I was lucky in my banking career to work with the tycoons of Silicon Valley too. At this stage of my life the patterns of attainable high performance are undeniable.

Study these patterns if you want to get ahead and live the good life.

1. No one understands what the hell they do for a living.

True high performers are weirdos.

Their lives are hard to explain. What they do every day is a mystery. When I became a high performer in my field about 5 years ago, something odd happened.

People started to think I was a drug dealer.

I couldn’t really explain what I do. I preferred to keep quiet in the real world about any success I’d had online. I lived a double life the way Batman does.

This week in Australia is father’s day. I went to my kid’s daycare for a father’s day celebration at 2PM. Out of the 100s of kids at the center, 7 dads showed up wearing their work clothes. I rolled up with bright yellow crocs, Ray Ban sunnies, and a pair of grey shorts. It was winter in Australia. It was raining.

One of the dads told me the teachers think I’m a drug dealer. Or that I might be high on coke sometimes because of how I laugh and joke with the other parents.

They don’t understand how I can pick my kid up some Mondays at 2PM to go play.

When one of the dads asked me what I did for a living, I froze. It’s hard to explain. So I didn’t. I just said “I do consulting” which means nothing. He looked confused.

It feels risky to live a life like this. One where you can’t explain what you do and people won’t understand. There’s no college degree or cookie-cutter plan to follow. It’s full of randomness. It makes you feel like a psycho.

If people understand you, you’re playing it too safe.

2. They obsess for f*ck's sake.

High performers don’t have lukewarm passion. They don’t have a part-time mindset and they don’t have side hustle businesses that spent 10 years making $0.

High performers are driven by pure obsession. They spend a stupid number of hours doing one thing. They have painstaking attention to detail. To the untrained mind, it looks like perfectionism. To a high performer, it’s the one-percenters that lead to outperformance no one understands.

They have a level of motivation that doesn’t come from shallow goals or trophy prizes, but from deriving a deeper sense of meaning from what they do. The normie might see a business or a type of sport. They see a movement.

Doing the work they do is the privilege. They’re not trying to avoid work or make passive income so they don’t have to work. They’re trying to work as much as possible because they don’t see it as work. Work doesn’t feel like work. It feels like service. It feels like they’re changing the world in some small way and that’s worth fighting for.

Murder your passion. Replace it with obsession.

3. They go all in and act like a psycho

They absolutely hate the hobbyist mindset.

In life, there are tourists and citizens. The tourists pop in and pop out of doing the work that gets them to their goal when they feel like it or when it looks cool to do so. The citizens live in their work. They live there when it’s snowing, there’s a tornado at the door, or when nobody is watching or giving a f*ck.

A high performer’s level of execution will rip most people’s faces off. They do a massive number of reps. But what’s unknown is they do a massive number of iterations too. If someone posts on Instagram once a day, they post 300 times a day.

Their mindset is they’ll either win or die trying. There’s no maybe. Only “when I win.”

4. They let people call them insane

The rewards for being average are poverty and modern slavery.

So to be anything but a high performer in your field guarantees sadness. The insane way of life is to eat junk food, overdose on sugar, become overweight, take meds, scroll platforms mindlessly, look at a phone all day, get told what to do, and start living life at 65 when you retire from a boring job and your best years/energy are gone.

When you understand how toxic the traditional path is, and if you decide to escape it like I have, you’re gonna piss a few people off. The anger is directed at you but deep down comes from the fact you refuse to settle for second best like they do.

Act insane. Piss a few people off. You’re supposed to.

5. They've studied neuroplasticity

I recently had an essay about neuroplasticity go viral.

A few trolls got angry. They said I was riding a trend. They’re full of sh*t. I’ve been obsessed with neuroplasticity since 2013 when Tony Robbins mentioned it at one of his live seminars I was at.

As soon as Tony described neuroplasticity, it felt like a come-to-jesus moment. I could not get the idea out of my mind. I realized everything in my head was a bullsh*t story I told myself. And I could just write a new story and override the old one.

Prior to this moment, I thought the brain was fixed and I obsessed over genetics and how I couldn’t escape my natural born personality traits.

Tony put a pipe bomb in my mind and lit the fuse until my brain blew up and splattered all over the wall and I had to grow a new one.

Once you understand how the human brain works you can rewire it. Then you can program your brain to work for you instead of against you. 99% of success is psychological.

Master your psychology, master your life.