Nick DiMaggio > Recent Status Updates

When you deal with stress all the time, it becomes second nature. It’s still not easy or effortless, but you handle things without panicking because you have experience in accepting the rigors of complex challenges.

How else are you going to test what you’re capable of if you don’t truly challenge your ability under every possible circumstance?

Don’t study the competition, make the competition study you.

No emotion, because in the zone the only sensation is anger, a quiet, icy anger simmering under your skin… never rage, never out of control. Silent, like a storm that moves in slow and dark, its violence unseen until it hits, and can’t be measured until it moves on.

You must be addicted to the exquisite rush of success. Your lust for it must be so powerful, the craving must be so intense, that you will alter your entire life to get it. And it’s still never enough. As soon as you feel it, taste it, hold it.. the moment is over and you crave more.

Everyone has a different definition of personal success: some people allow life’s circumstances to decide for them, others decide what they want and say “good enough” when they get it, and then there are a select few who can’t even define success because they keep raising the bar on what that means.

Autonomy is a flow trigger because autonomy and attention are coupled systems. When we’re in charge of both our mind (freedom of thought) and our destiny (freedom of choice), our whole being gets involved.

Autotelic Experience: The experience is intensely and intrinsically rewarding or, in technical parlance, “autotelic” — meaning the activity is its own reward. The thing we’re doing is so pleasurable and meaningful that we will go to great lengths to do it again, even at enormous personal risk and expense.

“Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way to come back a short distance correctly”.

“Millions of items are presented to my senses which never properly enter my experience. Why? Because they have no interest to me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind — without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.” - WJ

What should we learn? Learn to sharpen your sword. Learn to use your strengths to advance your cause. If what we’re learning completely aligns with who we are, we speed the plow. The work gets done faster, and you’ll reap a more bountiful harvest in the end.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

If passion and purpose become a prison, petty frustration morphs into a blind rage.

Recovery is critical to sustained peak performance, but peak performers can become a little obsessive, getting into workaholic mode and never getting out. So knowing how to stop working without feeling bad about stopping is key for long-term success. It’s not just that you need to recover, it’s that feeling bad about taking time to recover, even if you are taking the time, actually hampers recovery.

Yes, it may be considered unfortunate to learn that peak performance is an infinite game. But it’s also why a specific quartet of skills (motivation, learning, creativity, and flow) matters so much. Motivation is what gets you into the game; learning is what helps you continue to play; creativity is how you steer; and flow is how you turbo-boost the results beyond all rational standards and reasonable expectations

“When you’re young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything, really. You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age when what you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren’t Einstein. You weren’t anything. That’s a bad moment.”