Shaun Thompson - Peak Performance Coach

I worked out why I lost my train of thought on stage 💡

And it’s actually quite funny

I was telling a story about…

How you do something is how you do everything

When I was younger I’d take clothes upstairs in stages

Throw them halfway up

Next time I went upstairs…

Take them the rest of the way and put them in the wash basket

My point was supposed to be…

Why not just finish the job? 😂

Except about 5 minutes earlier I’d been talking about the compound effect

Small actions

Repeated consistently

Eventually creating a bigger result

And while I was telling the story my brain suddenly went…

Hang on

Maybe younger me wasn’t lazy

Maybe he was an efficiency genius 😂

And that was it

Train of thought…

Gone

Because I’d managed to disagree with my own presentation halfway through giving it

But I’ve actually thought about it since

Maybe both things can be true

Sometimes you need to finish the bloody job

And sometimes getting something 20% closer every time you pass it is exactly how progress happens

Probably not the lesson I planned on teaching

But maybe a better one

Not everything you believe has to survive new evidence

It’s been a while since I pictured you naked…

Have you been working out? 😏

I was back on stage on Tuesday

Just a short stint talking mindset for a staff training day

Nothing too dramatic

No headset mic
No smoke machine
No motivational walk-on song

(Although I did manage to get them to do the Macerena)

Just me talking about something I genuinely care about

And I only lost my train of thought once

They probably noticed

I definitely did 😅

Funny thing is…

I used to think speaking meant having every word nailed

Now I think it’s more about knowing your subject well enough to talk like yourself

A little rough around the edges

A few tangents

Maybe one moment where your brain leaves the building 😬

Yet if one thing lands with one then that’s enough

*big fish little fish cardboard box*

School is no longer out for Summer…

Back to school day one

I’ve loved the summer

I prefer it to the term time routine if I’m honest

Less rushing
More random days
More time with the boys

I’m going to miss it

I’m also absolutely going to enjoy the silence for a bit 😂

Funny thing is…

Give it a few days and I’ll probably miss the chaos

Call me weird

I’m already counting down to half term 😅

September is basically January for people who couldn’t be bothered in January

I said what I said 😂

Kids go back
Holidays finish
Routines return

Everyone suddenly starts talking about getting “back on it”

And I actually quite like it

There’s something about September that feels like another starting line

But here’s the bit I’ve been thinking about…

If you’ve spent most of this year saying

“I need to sort that”

And September has arrived with the same thing still following you around…

Maybe it isn’t a timing problem

Maybe you’ve just become very good at tolerating it

Your energy

Your sleep

Your head being at work when your body is at home

That feeling that you’re doing well…

But nowhere near as well as you know you can

You don’t need to reinvent yourself because the calendar changed

But you probably do need to stop carrying the same problem into another season

There’s still plenty of year left

If you know something needs to change…

September feels like a pretty decent time to stop talking yourself out of it

Last Friday before the kids go back to school

Which means we’re entering that strange bit of summer where you’re somehow…

Ready for routine

Not ready for summer to end

Fed up with hearing “I’m bored”

And already know you’ll miss the chaos once the house goes quiet 😂

Parents are weird

We spend six weeks wanting five minutes to ourselves

Then school starts and we immediately say…

“It’s too quiet in here”

Anyway

If you’ve got kids heading back next week…

Enjoy the last bit of madness

You’ll probably miss it more than you think

Being the person everyone relies on is a dangerous place to get comfortable

At first it feels good

You’re trusted
You get the call
You have the answers

People know you’ll sort it

Nice little ego stroke if we’re being honest 😂

But there’s a catch

The more capable you become
The more people hand you

And the more you quietly start believing…

“It’s just easier if I do it”

That’s where it gets expensive

Because now you’re not just doing your job

You’re carrying everyone else’s too

Making decisions they could make

Solving problems they could solve

Being available when you don’t need to be

Then wondering why your own thinking feels slower

Why you’re always “on”

Why you can never quite get ahead

The problem isn’t always that you have too much responsibility

Sometimes it’s that you’ve become too good at accepting it

And I think a lot of high performers need to hear that

You don’t prove your value by being needed for everything

At some point…

Your next level might depend on becoming needed for less

You can be very good at what you do and still know something is off…

That’s the uncomfortable bit

Because nothing is obviously broken

The business is moving

People still come to you for answers

You still get results

From the outside...

It probably looks pretty good

But you know when you’re not quite operating at your level

You’re slower to make decisions
More reactive than you’d like

Still thinking about work when you’re meant to be somewhere else

Saying “I’m just busy” for the 400th time
And because you’re still functioning...

You tolerate it

That’s where high performers can get caught out

They don’t always fall apart

They adapt

They get very good at carrying things they probably shouldn’t be carrying

Until “not quite myself” becomes normal
That’s the bit I care about

Not squeezing more out of already driven people

Not turning your morning into a military operation

Not giving you another bloody habit tracker

Finding out what’s actually getting in the way

Then removing it

Because if you’re already this capable while operating below your best...

That’s probably worth looking at

“If only I could go back 10 years”

An old fella said this to me in the shop yesterday as he struggled to carry a pack of full fat Coke

Yes…

Full fat Coke

I’ve said it like that specifically to trigger someone 😂

But his comment stuck with me

Would I go back 10 years if I could?

And if I did…

Would I change anything?

Probably some things

Definitely some haircuts

But then I thought about it the other way around

What if I jumped forward 10 years instead?

What would 49 year old me be annoyed that I didn’t do now?

Make the move
Take the trip
Have the conversation
Start the thing
Spend time with the people that matter
Look after myself properly

That’s the bit that got me

We spend a lot of time looking backwards thinking about what we’d change

Maybe the better question is…

What will future you wish you’d done today?

Nobody ever says “I had a really average weekend”

It was either

“Really good”
“Too short”
“Absolutely manic”

Or

“I need another weekend to recover from the weekend” 😂

Funny how bad we are at just letting things be normal

Not amazing
Not terrible

Just...

Fine (yuk)

And maybe that’s where a lot of pressure comes from

We keep expecting every weekend to recharge us

Every week to be productive
Every day to feel like progress

Some of them are just going to be a bit beige

And that’s probably alright

Anyway

Here’s to an aggressively average Monday

I think adulthood is basically just saying…

“after this week things should calm down” until you die

Every week 😂

“This week is mental”
“Next week is better”
“Once I get through August…”

Then September arrives with a chair and joins the meeting

I’ve said it myself more times than I can count

And I think that’s the trap

We keep waiting for life to become less busy before we look after ourselves properly

Before we train

Before we switch off

Before we deal with the thing that’s been quietly annoying us for six months

But maybe the quieter week isn’t coming

Maybe this is just life

Which is slightly inconvenient

But also useful

Because once you stop waiting for everything to calm down…

You can start building a life that actually works while it’s busy

Anyway

Enjoy your Friday

Next week should be calmer 😅