The Challenge with Being a High Performer

Earlier this week I was speaking with my new self-proclaimed #1 fan.

This guy’s awesome. He did his honors and articles at the same time, meaning he became the youngest Chartered Accountant in the country at the time.

He spends his days focusing on his job, side business, health, and personal development.

He takes fast action.

He helps others by using his skills and knowledge (aside from his day job).

He helped make a stranger’s dream come true of becoming the first person in his family to start his own business.

And in less than 80 days, he listened to all 101 of my podcast episodes!

Basically, a total badass.

But what was amazing to hear was how this newfound approach to how he shows up, how he interacts with others, and how he’s become absorbed in personal growth came from certain things he learned on my podcast.

What I realized from the call is that our impact stretches far wider than just the first-degree audience we think we’re reaching with our work.

And therein lies the challenge of being a high performer and living a life of exponential impact.

While we’re plugging away, providing value for those in our audience, we forget to realize that by impacting those people, it also creates an impact on the people with whom they engage.

By me encouraging my listeners to find a way to help others with their skills & passions and to just get started, this guy helped someone else, someone I’ve never met, create a new reality for his family.

That’s exponential impact.

When you decide to dedicate your life to a cause bigger than yourself, it becomes easy to overlook just how much value you’re providing.

As high performers, we think that what we do and how we show up is normal, when in reality, those around us see a far different picture.

For me personally, I wake up at 5am, spend the first hour of my day growing myself (through meditation, reading, and journaling), before jumping on my laptop where I spend most of my day alone in my home office.

It can be a lonely road sometimes, but it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that other people’s lives are changing because of the impact of your work.

And, because of this loneliness and the fact that we aren’t typically surrounded by people doing the same big things, we face the additional risk of plateauing, where the thing that got us to where we are is the same thing that keeps us from reaching the next level.

The next time you’re feeling like your work doesn’t matter, or like you are just another average small fish in a big pond, remember that for someone else, you might be exactly who they’ve been looking for.

And, by the impact your work has on that person, they might become the exact person someone else is looking for.

Go exponential and never look back. The world needs you.