The High Performance Journal - January 31st 2023

The other day I was watching a show on Netflix called “Break Point”.

It’s about the world’s best tennis players and their journey to winning the 4 major grand slams.

Tennis an interesting game because it’s solitary. It’s only you versus the person in front of you and because of that it gets emotional because you don’t have teammates around you as an outlet for how you feel.

I saw a glimpse of this when I was playing competitive tennis as a teenager. I did tennis camps with my brother every summer and it was jarring to see how unhinged I could get playing a simple game. I didn't break any rackets because we were poor but I was damn close to it a couple times.

In the show, there’s a guy named Nick Kyrgios. He’s known as the bad boy of tennis. Every person who talks about him calls him one of the most talented tennis players on the planet.


But there’s just one thing…

He can’t control his emotions.

When one bad thing happens it leads to a string of mistakes and, well, his emotions take over. He gets mad, complains and this throws off his game.

His peers say that if he got a handle on managing his emotions he’d be one of the top tennis players on the planet instead of the 20th.

I don’t blame him either. Managing your emotions is one of the hardest most important things anyone can do. But we must do this especially if we want to get in shape.

Think about it…

You have a great day of eating and something happens during the day. It could be receiving bad news about the deal you’re putting together. Or maybe your partner is giving you a bit of stress. Some live high-stress lives that they feel like they're in a pressure cooker all day.

Many people push the feelings down and continue to perform but when they go home and all hell breaks loose.

For some, it could be having a couple drinks at the end of the day to calm the nerves.

For others, it could be coming home, seeing a bag of trail mix that’s lying around, and eating the entire thing.

Regardless, our emotions dictate the decisions we make with our bodies to a large degree. We're always taught about what to eat, how much to eat & the best workouts to do but we're rarely taught about how to react to our feelings.

While you may not be a highly ranked tennis player you are a human and you deal with emotions on a regular basis.

That’s why we must train our minds (and emotions) as much as we train our bodies.

Being able to manage your emotions is the hidden mental secret to getting your body lean.

Doing this is the path to self mastery. When you get this part down you’re able to reach your full potential.

There are 3 steps to doing this:

1) Awareness
2) Logging triggers
3) Emotional mastery

This is the exact process we're using to train our private coaching clients because we realize that it's not all about strategy and accountability. A big part of getting in shape is fixing how we react to emotions.

So how do we do it? Let me show you…

Step 1 - Awareness

The first step is being aware of what’s happening in your body and brain when it happens.

The best way to do this is by exhausting the body first through exercise or getting mindful through meditation.

If you can’t do these then use your breath when hit with a hard emotion.

What you want to do is slow down so you can achieve the next step…

Step 2 - Logging Triggers

When you feel a strong emotion take the time to process it using a method called logging triggers.

It’s a system I’ve borrowed from a mental health startup called Liber8. Here’s of the founder explaining why he invented the app. 

Emotions can have a short and long term effects. For some it causes them to reach for things to numb them right away. For others, it gets pushed down until they’re outside of the stressful situation. Then they reach for things to numb the ways they feel.

The best way to deal with emotions is to log them when they happen so they don't kick your butt later on.

The next time an emotion triggers you, answer these in sequence:

1. What would you label the trigger?
2. On a scale of 1-10 how intense was the emotion?
3. What happened to cause the trigger?
4. What occurred in your body when it was happening?
5. What emotions came up?
6. Which of these did you feel? (Rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, injustice)
7. What did those feelings manifest into? (Depression, anxiety, lack of control, conflict, chronic pain)
8. Were you pushed into the emotion or pulled into it?
9. What response did you have (fight, flight, freeze, fawn)?
10. What actions did you take (or not take) in this occurrence including the actions to handle the emotions and responses you experienced?
11. When you sit with this feeling, can you think of other times in your life you’ve experienced these exact same feelings and responses?
12. Why did this event happen FOR you?
13. Anything else you’d like to note down?
14. What is the intensity of your trigger after entering this log?

This is about creating pause between stimulus and response.

We want to create enough space between the event and your reaction to the event so you can choose how you respond to it.

Doing is critical to step 3...

Step 3 - Emotional Mastery

The final step would be doing this process to the point where it becomes automatic like brushing your teeth. You can only achieve mastery through practice.

Think of emotional mastery in 4 stages:

Stage 1 Unconscious Incompetence - You don’t know what you don’t know. This is the level of ignorance.

Stage 2 Conscious Incompetence - You know you have a problem. You just don’t know how to solve it.

Stage 3 Conscious Competence (where you currently are) - You are doing the work to solve the problem.

Stage 4 Unconscious Competence - You have done the work so much that it’s automatic.

The cool part about doing this system is that it helps you downgrade the emotional impact over time. The same situations that "triggered" you to act in certain ways don't have the same power over you.

This is the work that needs to be done if we are to gain control of this part of our lives once and for all.

What now?

Now it's time to put this into practice.

Next time you feel an emotion take yourself through this system and see what happens.

Get excited about the fact that you now have a way to master yourself and become a better version of yourself.

The moment you master your emotions you open up a new level of high performance you could only dream about.

- Dan

PLUS whenever you’re ready, here is 1 way I can help you:

Are you an entrepreneur who wants to get lean, boost energy, and get in your best shape in 2023? Apply for one-on-one coaching here.