The Secret Driver of the World’s Happiest and Highest-Performing People
And how they unlock peaceful high-performance.
“If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will be unhappy all the days of your life.” Abraham Maslow
Highly-ambitious people want the best in life.
Many aim for nothing less than the top of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—which places ‘self-actualization’ at its apex.
To many, this is success.
But before his death, Maslow revised his popular model to show that self-actualization is not the highest expression of one’s potential.
Instead, self-transcendence is.
The ability for someone to go beyond themselves and their limits and impact others.
But that’s not what this letter is about.
This article is about the trade-off many people make to perform at their ‘highest level.’
And how:
Being Successful Isn’t The Same As Being Happy
Achieving ambitious goals is not easy and they will make you grow a lot in the process.
They are the best incubating environment for the beliefs, behaviors, and all the things dreams are made of.
But something happens after you finally do achieve an ambitious goal.
For one, you find out if you’re the kind of person who celebrates achievements, or not.
And two, you find out how you handle ‘the drop.’
All entrepreneurs, creatives, writers, you name it, know about ‘the drop.’
It’s the moment we imagine, consciously or not, what it will be like after we achieve our goal. The scene we will see when we know if we’ve 'made it’ or not.
(In hindsight, that’s red flag #1 right there.)
And because that moment in the future exists in our minds, that far-out point, we can make anything a part of the journey to get there.
What that journey looks like for you depends on your beliefs.
How easy it is, how long it takes, and what that final result looks like.
But many, many, many people believe that they’ll be happy after they achieve their big goal.
That it will be worth it, then…
But this isn’t how it works.
And more importantly, success is not happiness and you can be one without the other.
What is ‘The Drop?’
For many high-performing people, the moment just after they achieve their ambitious dream is the moment they reconnect with themselves and realize…
They still feel the same.
Despite the journey, and the ways they’ve changed… not all of their problems are solved.
They thought the issue was the money, or not being where they think they should be, but even with those problems gone—another, more fundamental problem still remains.
And now there is less to distract from it.
The drop is just part of the balance that all driven people have to strike between their level of performance and their happiness.
To understand this phenomenon, and other forces in the lives of modern, working humans and the trade-offs we all make, Abraham Maslow studied the world’s happiest and highest-performing people in various fields when researching what he called ‘the furthest reaches of human nature.’
And one of the most interesting things he found about these people immediately is that they did not become happy after success.
They were happy and fulfilled before they focused on becoming productive and successful.
And that actually helped them, achieve their success, and stay happy after.
This is One Thing That the World’s Happiest and Highest-Performing People Have in Common
They were happy before they were successful.
And their success didn’t come at the cost of their happiness, well-being, or fulfillment.
Anyone who has succeeded knows you don’t have to be happy to be successful, you can be quite miserable and successful if you don’t know what you’re doing.
But these people Maslow studied bypassed all of that and many of the challenges that keep many lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs—or other types of high-performers more depressed and anxious than those in other professions.
Despite being high-performing, they remained happy.
As they grow wealthy, they also grow peace of mind.
As they do more, they become more stable not less.
What’s interesting though is that Maslow said these people weren’t enlightened, saints, or monks.
What he discovered is that each of these people was very different, but they each shared some things in common, and most notably among them:
They were all what he called a ‘Synergistic blend of contradictions.’
It’s not just that they were notably peaceful while being high-performing…
And didn’t deal with the up-and-down journey many others face.
It was that they were able to reconcile opposites in several areas of their life and that is something that made them as individuals very unique. Characteristic of their consciousness, state of being, and generally how they engaged with life.
Where others saw contractions, trade-offs, or binary paradigms, these exceptional individuals saw ways to create something new—Synergy.
This is something new to Maslow, but he knew of one person who had talked about this before.
So, to better understand these incredible individuals’ ability to transcend limits and create Synergy he sought out a series of lectures from the women who came up with the term, Ruth Benedict.
Introducing Ruth Benedict — The Mother of Synergy
Ruth Benedict was an American Folklorist and Anthropologist, famous for her theory that culture is “personality writ at large.”
She wasn’t well-known for her theories of Synergy, but Maslow had heard of the idea she invented and developed in a series of lectures she gave at Bryn Mawr College in 1941. This series is not well-known, because the manuscript of it has been lost, and coincidentally the only one in existence is the one Maslow was given by Ruth’s executrix after her death.
Ruth had spent most of her at the end of her career trying to transcend the doctrine of cultural relativity that her name had become forever associated with—a fact she disdained.
And so, her latest theories were starved of attention, until Maslow resurrected them later in his life, to help him understand the world’s happiest and highest-performing people.
Which is when the theory of Synergy finally reached popularity, if you can say that.
But most interestingly, with Ruth’s work, and the research he did after he found that these individuals were able to create Synergy in many different areas of their lives that most others experience as contradictions.
They were able to:
- Be at peace and remain high-performing…
- Have a vision for the future and live in the present…
- Want what’s best for others and themselves (and achieve both)…
And most importantly:
They were “selfishly unselfish.”
And Maslow believed this was the key characteristic that allowed them to live such creative, fulfilling lives without the trade-offs many others make.
What it Means to Be “Selfishly Unselfish”
Everyone can perform at a high level.
But for how long is determined by what your source of motivation is to perform at that level.
People in Synergy aren’t doing it for themselves.
This is important because this shift in intention raises their consciousness and gives them more options for every situation in life, and makes them the exception to the rules, so they can be ‘selfishly unselfish’ and be rewarded for it.
And they are rewarded for it with less stress, more success, and the joy of helping others—which is intrinsically motivating and keeps them going.
Most high-performers are not this way.
Instead, they are thinking about themselves, what they have to prove, and the ways their output represents them. Whether they are conscious of it, or not, they focus on themselves.
This is normal for most people and we consider it to be normal.
But the world’s happiest and highest-performing people don’t do that because:
It doesn’t work.
It brings results at the cost of peace
They aren’t necessarily thinking of others and what’s good for them because they are saints—they do it because they’re pragmatists.
They think of other’s interests first, because that is best for them.
It makes them feel better, raises their consciousness, and helps them actually achieve results—and enjoy them when they do.
It’s easier to get help when you help others. And it’s easier to help others when you think about them.
And when you’re focused on others, it’s a lot harder to focus on yourself and the things in the past or future that worry you.
Instead, you’re just there, with them, focusing where it matters and your effort has the most positive impact.
How Maslow Defines “Love”
While we’re here, I’m going to take you on a weird tangent, that you might find interesting, which is that Maslow also proposed Synergy as a replacement to the more famous security and insecurity paradigm.
This is a part of psychology that has become mainstream and many people say someone is acting insecure, or secure. And the attachment styles which are also popular and interwoven with this model.
What Maslow is saying is that we should replace this spectrum of insecure to secure with ‘low Synergy’ and ‘high Synergy.’
Why?
Because it’s “less normative, more objective, and less open to suspicion of one’s ideals or tastes.”
Which I feel like is even more needed in today’s day and age when the average person is far more aware of ‘the work.’
Synergy is more descriptive and less judgemental than security/insecurity.
Think about what you’re saying when you say someone is ‘insecure’ or ‘secure.’
There are so many assumptions built into those words and labels that don’t actually account for how life is a moving, breathing process. And the fact that you may be insecure one day, and secure the next.
That doesn’t mean your attachment style is ‘broken’ or not.
It may just mean you’re in a time in your life when Synergy is low, and it feels like hell.
And another day you may be doing something different, recovering deeper, doing more of what you love, helping others more, and realize you’re showing up better, too.
With secure and insecure come a lot of assumptions and ways we expect to see others behave.
And because of that, when someone is insecure they want to appear secure and spend their time trying to seem that way.
Which in society, is just as good as actually being secure for everyone but them.
But instead, if they knew that they were just low-synergy, they could focus on creating more Synergy.
Which looks like aligning, helping others, and doing more of what’s good for you.
Of course, that’s going to help you.
But not if you believe you’re insecure and that’s the end of that story.
When you realize that difference is Synergy and recognize the ways it shows up, or that you feel the lack of it, this is the first step to getting back to it.
And the path of getting back to Synergy starts with others and being “selfishly unselfish.”
Maslow Didn’t Stop with Scrapping the Attachment Spectrum
He also proposed that Synergy is a decent definition of Love because relationships in Synergy are mutually self-reinforcing.
Meaning, the two are stronger for their connections and one is better because of the other.
Most of the time people hear the word Synergy, it’s used to talk about two animals collaborating like clown fish living off the algae and shelter of a sea anemone, or bees and flowers.
But the simplest way to think of Synergy in relationships is that ‘your advantage is my advantage'.’
If that’s not love, what is?
They say love conquers all, and it seems that when powered by Synergy (what is good for yourself and others) individuals conquer the dichotomies that keep others stuck and playing a smaller game than they are capable of.
To truly live that way you have to be selfless—and think of others.
And selfish—enough to know yourself, what’s good for you, and how you can.
That’s what many call their purpose and whether they feel like they are following it or not. And whether you think you are, or not, and what that is for you is highly personal.
But learning how to create Synergy is how you can achieve it.
Within and without.
And at the same time, unhook yourself from the hidden, yet unsustainable sources of motivation many have direct lines to and are even driven by unconsciously.
The Dark Side of Productivity
If there’s a secret to the world’s happiest and highest-performing people…
Then there is also an opposite, darker secret behind most high performers and productivity itself.
Except, it’s not much of a secret to anyone who is actually high-performing, or works with people who are.
That is: many high-performing individuals are driven by trauma.
They have a lot of big emotions and this is a way they can channel them.
But as you can imagine, this is like fossil fuel for the soul and there tiny explosions are going off in your chest all the time when you operate this way.
You get further ahead but at the cost of your clarity, and peace, and eventually, you lose touch with yourself.
Peace is on the other side of knowing themselves again.
But that’s too tall an order and… they can create so much with this fuel source.
It may cause them to overheat, but they can cover a lot of miles burning the midnight oil.
Until one day, the engine doesn’t start up.
The fuel’s run out, or just doesn’t work like it did yesterday.
And they have to find another fuel: Synergy.
This is when high-performers face another problem you don’t often hear about, which is that when someone does the inner work and actually achieves inner peace, it often comes at the cost of their motivation and career growth.
Because it’s hard to want to continue to work if you’re really at peace.
If you don’t have to prove anything, then a lot less gets done.
That is until you learn to create from Synergy and you end up doing far more than before, but not as a result of psyching yourself up, but instead effortlessly happening through you, as you.
And not everyone can make the switch to Synergy without help.
Especially because society rewards you based on performance, what you get done, and how much you show up—so many people turn this unsustainable source of motivation into a lifestyle before ever discovering there is a second option.
The difference between a need to prove oneself and working to help others is the difference between running on fossil fuels and the zero-G stuff that the UAPs all over CNN right now run on.
Most people’s goals can be achieved on both, in the short-term, but how happy and well you will be while and after you achieve it comes down to which one you use.
Confessions of a Recovering High-Performer
Calling yourself a high performer feels pretty chauvinistic, but I don’t do it as a sign of pride.
For me it’s a way of understanding the person I was, and ways I can show up for life that are better for me and others.
You see, many high-performers don’t realize that they are highly productive for a reason, and they weren’t born that way.
A lot comes with the dark side of high performance:
- Judging others, and yourself
- Putting your needs after the needs of the goal
- Confusing your goals with other’s and society’s
- Guilt at how you’ve acted and short-sightedness
But those things only affect you if you slow down enough to feel them.
High performers are always seeking, always looking for the next thing.
But in the recovery process myself, I can tell you that you’re not alone and in fact, I think we’ll find out in the next 10 years that this is the case for most people.
And if we want the robots to start replacing our jobs, we first have to start by seeing ourselves as a society as more than our jobs, what we do, or even what we create.
4 Tips to Create More Synergy
If any of this resonates with you let me reassure you that you’re not alone.
And this is already the situation for most people.
Running on the old source of motivation was never sustainable, and no matter what you do you won’t be able to make it so.
So, spare yourself the dark night of the soul and focus on creating Synergy.
Be “selfishly unselfish” so that you can achieve your full potential, help others and unlock peaceful high-performance.
Which makes the whole process easier, more enjoyable, and reflective of what you’re actually capable of.
Here are 4 tactical ways you can start creating Synergy now:
1) Don’t Work More Than 30 Hours a Week.
People in flow states get more done and do better work than people who aren’t in flow states, but if you work more than 30 hours you probably aren’t recovering enough to get into flow each day multiple times a day.
Flow is also a self-transcendent state, so easier to tap into when you’re in Synergy. But you may not be getting it because your focus is off, and it may just be because you’re overworking.
If flow feels far away, dial back your time ‘on duty’ and increase the quality of your focus and time working when you do. Align within, and only then act.
2) Raise Your Level of Self-Awareness.
People in Synergy tap into intrinsic motivation, they perform at a high level because they start by choosing something they desire and want to do—and then they narrow that list down into the things that also benefit others.
Most high-performers aren’t actually chasing their goals—they chase society’s goals and the symbols of self-actualization, which are rarely the same things.
If creating Synergy feels hard and you know you’re not happy or high-performing, you must start by knowing yourself at a level deeper than personality quizzes can provide.
3) Do Things That Are Good for Others Every Day.
It’s easy when you start reflecting to forget to focus on others again. You can’t do both at the same time. And you’re not meant to stay reflective you’re meant to act, and realign, and act, and realign. Until they become two parts of the same process and your last reflection benefits your next action.
For most people, they work, and then they spend their time not working trying to ‘live it up’ or ‘live for the weekend.’ But it can be a far leap to go from that to performing at your highest level and waking up to what you want to do with your life.
Instead, start doing small things for others each day. Initially those around you, your colleagues, friends, and family. Then, eventually, those who you are most capable of helping who need your help now. This creates Synergy, and things get easier.
4) Increase Frequency and Impact While Decreasing Reliance On You.
When what you spend your time doing aligns with what you want to do and you are becoming more of the person you want to become, you unlock a level of sustainability and Synergy that few do.
You get really good at what you do and, cresting on a level of mastery, and while you may have lost your high-performance edge in reflection, it comes back now. And because you’re not motivated by having the outcome reflect you or even come from you, you can reach a new level of excellence in what you do. Reducing friction, creating simplicity and elegance by focusing on what matters.
This is the level of artists, masters, and the people who are the best at what they do in the world—who know how to use less as more, even of themselves.
Make Your Advantage Theirs
High performers are always looking for the next thing that’s going to give them a competitive edge, and that’s even how they view the things they do to recover.
Which makes it hard for them to rewire their motivation and create Synergy.
Especially when those things work in the short term and delay necessary reflection and realignment.
But it’s more than worth the inner work involved to do that.
And it doesn’t have to take a lifetime to start benefitting you now.
Because that competitive edge you find is an advantage that belongs to you and others and benefits both.
Many people only find peace when they are alone and isolated, but miss it when they need it the most like in the office, or around the family dinner table at the holidays.
The benefit of creating Synergy is that the peace you find that way doesn’t crumble in the wake of criticism, doubt, or confusion from others.
It, and you, get stronger the more connections to others and the life you create.
And I think that’s the difference.
Because then, not only are we able to feel better while doing the work we choose to do while running a more sustainable source of motivation.
But you’re able to be happy and peaceful, before succeeding and even bring that higher state of consciousness with you to people and places that need it.
Want to Create More Synergy?
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