Why High Performers Wish They'd Enjoyed It More

Jake Humphrey (0:03)

Hi there, welcome back to the show. You're listening to High Performance with myself, Jake Humphrey.

Damian Hughes (0:07)

And me, Damian Hughes.

Jake Humphrey (0:09)

Mate, we've been doing this for well over seven years. You know, I keep seeing photos pop up. And I'm like, in fact, the other day, my kids looked at one, and Seb went, who's that with Damian? I'm like, that's your dad, a lot younger. How dare you? Obviously, you look the same.

Damian Hughes (0:25)

No, I wish, yeah. I was actually doing something last night. I was looking at photos of the kids when they were babies, and I was like, my son's just turned 17

Jake Humphrey (0:36)

But you would have started this when he was nine or 10

Damian Hughes (0:38)

Yeah, yeah.

Jake Humphrey (0:39)

It's weird, isn't it? Because I was thinking, we've done this nearly eight years.

We started when I was 40, I'm now 48 I've hosted High Performance for 20% of my life.

Ridiculous. Anyway, we're loving it. We continue to love it. We love your support. Please, if you can like, share, subscribe to the episodes, almost everyone that enjoys our shows isn't a subscriber. It would make such a massive difference to us if the hundreds or thousands of people every week that enjoy High Performance just hit the subscribe button. It means we can continue to grow the show, we can attract even more incredible guests, and we can continue to bring you episodes like this, which we know are really valuable. Today, we're talking about enjoyment. The question we're asking is, why do high performers almost always wish they'd enjoyed it a little bit more? We want to start today with a question. The question is, and this is really for you at home, for you as well, Damian, what do you actually feel when you win? If I ask you the question, what do you feel when you win? And you were to give me a very brief answer, what would it be?

Damian Hughes (1:35)

Often relief.

Jake Humphrey (1:36)

Really?

Damian Hughes (1:37)

Yeah, because it's often that sense that you've sort of allowed yourself to go to the place of victory in your mind, and then you imagine what it would be like if that wasn't there. So to reach it, then doesn't necessarily bring happiness. It's more as a relief, I got what I wanted. What about you, what do you think?

Jake Humphrey (1:54)

I think I just wonder whether I should have set the benchmark a bit higher, the benchmark for victory. Because we don't operate in the world of sport, for example. So a win for us is an audience number or a partnership fee, or getting asked to stand up on a stage and do a talk. And every time one of those things happens, of course they're all individually wins, but I then, if I must have thinking, well, maybe we should have been on a bigger stage. Maybe we should have had a different partner. Maybe we should have had higher numbers.

It's the age old thing, right? For those of you that don't know the story, Sredman Hillary, the great explorer was reported to have come back to the UK after conquering the world's highest mountain at the time. No one had ever been higher. And the reporter said to him, what did you think when you got to the top? And he apparently said, well, I looked to my left and I saw a higher mountain.

And this is so relevant for you, for our audience, for the people that we have on the show. And that question, what do you actually feel when you win, is a vital question when it comes to high performance. Because we all know that we're living in an era where there's a lot of grind slop, right? This constant conversation about optimizing yourself. We live in a culture that is impressing on us all the time that we have to optimize our lives in every single way. However, what we like to ask on this show is, well, what are we optimizing our lives for? You know, what is the point in reaching the top of our own proverbial mountain if reaching it actually changes nothing? So that question that we're asking today, how can you get the balance right? How can we still be high performers? How can we still find an edge? How can we still achieve our dreams? Because those things still do matter, yet still balance that with a life that offers you contentment, flow, clarity and joy. And why are we asking this question? Well, as we just said at the start of the show, we've been doing this for seven years. We've interviewed well over 400 incredible people on this program.