Performance enhancing Drugs

Have you noticed that you are a member of an epidemic? You have fallen victim to performance enhancing drugs.

You are the Barry Bonds of your world!

You look for every tip and trick to make your "performance" the best of the best! Shoot, many of us even read blogs such as this one, looking for that one tip that is going to push us over the edge.

Here is the problem. The more you look for performance enhancers, the more you stop being you.

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with doing things right! There is nothing wrong with wanting to do things "right"! The problem comes when we sacrifice what is really going on in our life and who we really are to get things "right".

To be sure that semantics don't get in the way, lets consider performance as "seeking to always get things exactly "right" so that I win".

We have turned every area of our life into a competition against everyone else. This competitive performance turns everything we do into a battle to "perform" the best. This is why failure is so difficult for us, why we cannot learn from it, why we don't want to even consider the possibility of it. It is why we walk through life never saying what we really think, scared that other people might judge us as "losing the race" or as a bad person because we actually are real and we have real problems and have to deal with real issues. God forbid we fall short of a goal, or that we fail to "be the best".

Performance is useful when it is done because it is who you are... and not just to "get it right".

Think about the most successful people in history! Ronald Reagan never was able to "perform" right... he had some of the lowest approval ratings according to the general public... yet he ended the cold war.

Do you look for the little things everyday that make people think you are bigger and badder than you were designed to be? Does it devastate you when you fail? Are you constantly in search of the next big fad? Do you change the way you talk and dress just so that people will think you are something else?

Remember, most of these actions are ok when they have the right purpose. There is nothing wrong with dressing nice, and nothing wrong with being good at something. It's when you have to drastically change your personal design to be something that it becomes dangerous.

What is so scary is the legacy it leaves. Maybe you can handle the "steroids" of performance. Maybe you can get by with merely calling them "performance enhancers". But look at the wake of people following you who can't. I don't really care what the real steroids have done to Barry Bonds... he is rather insignificant in my life. But when I see all the kids destroying their bodies on drugs to try to be like their hero "BARRY!!!" then it is suddenly a different story.

It's not different in other areas of our lives. How often are you doing the little things that you think you can handle, and maybe they even work for you, but are destroying those that follow you? How often do you leave a wake of dead leaders behind you because you are scared to be real?!!!

Fail TODAY! Unless of course you do it just to make me happy! DO SOMETHING THAT IS REAL! ADMIT YOU ARE SCARED, ADMIT YOU HAVE PAIN, ADMIT YOU ARE HAPPY!!! Whatever it takes to be real with yourself and those around you. That is the only way that we will reclaim ourselves and our leadership from the performance enhancers that strip us of our real strength.

PS. More to come on this... It's the performance mentality that has destroyed what we see as leadership and made us into a bunch of wimpy followers!