When Do You Perform & Live at Your Best? — Beneath The Surface
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Welcome to Beneath the Surface. I'm Sean Delaney. Now this series is a space where I bring you the ideas I'm sitting with most. The ones I can't let go of. The ones I return to again and again in my own life. And the ones that show up constantly in the conversations behind closed doors with high performers, creatives, leaders, and people who are on the path like you. Not just to do more, but to feel more alive while doing it.

Now, these episodes aren't about giving you another strategy or chasing another version of success. They're about going a level deeper, getting quiet enough to hear what's underneath the noise, and remembering what actually matters, and then how to feel more alive while doing it. So if you're looking for a place to slow down, think deeply, and reconnect to the part of you that most of the world forgets to speak to, you're in the right place. Let's begin. Let's go beneath the surface. Hey guys, welcome back.

So there's this question that I've been obsessed with, and you can say exploring for years. I think it's one of those questions that every high performer, creator, and leader eventually asks. And that's, when do I perform at my best? Just pause for a moment and bring some awareness and think about that. When, why, and how do you perform at your best? Now, over the years, that question has evolved into something more important for me. Not just when am I performing at my best, but when am I performing at my best?

But when am I actually living at my best? Because let's be honest, what is the point of performing at the highest level if we're miserable and anxious and numb while doing it? So the interesting thing is how we're usually taught to perform at our best. And we're usually taught to push, to grind, to sacrifice joy now in hopes of earning it later, right? So you're going to spend the entire season grinding and hating it to hopefully win the championship.

And this is the truth most of us never hear. You don't train joy by practicing stress. You don't arrive at peace by living in tension continually. And so today's episode is an invitation to see performance and life through a new lens, one that's more truthful, sustainable, more freeing, and a way for more aliveness. Now we're going to explore moments when you're not gripped by outcome, not bound by identity, not chasing someone else's idea of success.

But when you're fully here, fully immersed, fully you, this is about reclaiming the version of you that performs at the highest level because they're free, not because they're forcing it. So if you've ever felt like the way you've been taught to succeed is costing you the experience of being fully alive, then this episode is definitely one for you. So let's dive right into this. If you strip everything back for a moment, the mindset tools, the high performance routines, the strategies for confidence and control,

There's a truth I keep returning to. You perform and live at your best when you are free. You perform and live at your best when you are free. All of us, we perform at our best when we're loose, we're light, we're fluid, we're dynamic, we're free. We're not restricted by fear or doubts or expectations. Not when you know every step, you know the outcome. Not when you've convinced yourself that you believe in yourself, but when you are free from the identity that needs to be validated.

Free from the internal scorecard, free from the fear that this moment, this game, this presentation is going to define you. Because anytime you're trying to prove you're someone, guess what? You've already left the present moment. So let's begin here. We're going to start with identity. So as soon as we create an identity for ourselves, whether it's a label, a role, it even can be a goal, we unconsciously start protecting it.

Let that settle in for a second. As soon as we create an identity for ourselves, whether it's a label, a role, or even a goal, we unconsciously start protecting it. I'm the leader. I'm the athlete. I'm the podcast host. I'm going to run this marathon. I won this award. And so we've created this identity. And with that, we create a boundary, a mental box, a frame. And with that, unintentionally, what do we do? We build this kind of black and white prison around our lives.

Why? Because we don't want to lose what that identity gives us, right? The admiration, the validation, that sense of certainty, of safety. That identity comes with the rules, with expectations. There's a right way and a wrong way to be. And the moment you feel like you have something to protect, what do you do? You stop naturally expressing yourself and you start managing it, right? You begin filtering your words. You're controlling your image. You're avoiding the risks. And immediately, what does this create? It creates tension, right?

And in order to feel fulfilled, we have to live in alignment with that identity. And as soon as we don't, discontent, anger, frustration, sadness,

And so if we don't live in alignment with this identity, we fall short of the version of ourselves that we've imagined. We feel unfulfilled. It's like we've failed, like we are not enough. I want you to let that sink in. When we don't live up to the expectation we've had in our head about this identity, this made-up identity, we feel like we failed, like we are not enough. And when I say that, that is at a primal level. You really feel that.

And because of this, it creates this invisible tightness, right? It's like when your body is there, but you're actually not present. This is what Carl Jungman, when he said, the more compulsively a person tries to be good, the more shadow they generate. In other words, the harder they try to maintain a version of yourself, the more fear that lives underneath it. The Zen teacher Suzuki, he said, in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few.

When you're too locked into being, you know, the expert, you're no longer curious because you're trying to prove everything you talk about. When you're too attached to being the leader, what do you stop doing? You stop learning because that requires vulnerability and openness. When you're too invested in being the performer, what do you stop doing? You stop playing. So when those roles grip you, all flow disappears.

Because spontaneity dies when identity takes over and flow. Your highest and peak lives live in spontaneity. Think about it. Flow doesn't come when you know all the steps or you control everything. It comes when you let go and you live in the unknown.

Now, I want to be clear about this. I'm not saying to abandon everything you've worked for. I am not telling you to walk away from your career, your discipline, your ambition. I'm not suggesting that you let go of the pursuit of excellence or stop caring about impact or growth or even mastery. These are things I love and I pursue as well. What I am saying, though, is we do not have to build a prison out of our progress. I don't want you confusing what you've achieved with who you are.

I don't want you confusing who you are with what you've achieved. Don't get so attached to the role that you forget the human behind it. Don't turn your identity into something that has to be protected at all costs because that's when you stop evolving. That's when you stop breathing. That's when you start living for the image instead of actually living the life underneath your life.

This is a real danger because if you start needing your identity to prove your worth, you know, the title, the reputation, the persona, the thing you serve, then all of a sudden, if that is lost, if you lose the job, if you lose the game, your whole world starts collapsing. And at small levels, like you stop risking, you no longer have the courage, you stop exploring because exploring might mean failing and failing means you broke the image.

So letting go also does not mean skipping the hard work. I don't want you to think you just show up and you are. Okay, it's not about skipping the hard work. This isn't about bypassing the hours, the practice, the pursuit.

of sharpening those skills that are required, right? Like if you're an athlete, a musician, a creator, a founder, you need the time in the trenches. You need to build the system, study the patterns, develop the reflexes and reps that allow you to operate at a high level. These are cable stakes. They build the foundation. They wire muscle memory. They give you the fluency, the range, the craft. But at a certain point, and the ones listening most likely are at this point, you've trained. You're no longer limited by not knowing enough.

You're limited by trying too hard to prove that you know. You're not stuck because of lack of skill. You're stuck because of too much tension. That's the shift this episode is all about. So your identity, the thing you built to help you, now becomes the very thing that limits you. That's the prison I'm talking about. You don't need to abandon what you've built. You just need to stop being owned by it, right? You keep the skills, you keep the wisdom, the strength, the experience, the path, all of that, but you just don't let it calcify.

Don't let it become the walls around your expression, right? We've seen this happen so many times with athletes or performers. It's like they had this natural child-like expression, right? This love of the game or the craft. There was a relentless wonder in their eyes. And then they make it. And all of a sudden, oh, I've got to protect that identity, right? I'm holding on to that because all of a sudden, if I let go of that, who am I? But guess what?

Your next level, the next truer version of you, requires you to let go. That's what takes you to the next level. So if you want to live free and perform fully, yes, honor everything you've done. But don't mistake the tools for the truth. Don't build a prison out of your progress because your real power doesn't come from being somebody. It comes from being nobody, from being fluid, open. This is what Ram Dass meant when he said, the game is not about becoming somebody.

It's about becoming nobody. I know this sounds paradoxical and stay with me here. But the moment you stop trying to become someone, you become more of yourself than ever before. You are fully in the moment. You're not gripping. You're not trying to be something. You are just flowing. You're alive. You're connected. You're truthful. You're not chasing anything. It's not a role. You have let go of all that and you become the ultimate version of you. So let's flow into the next idea for this episode.

And this is one of the deepest paradoxes in high performance, in creativity, in fulfillment. You perform at your highest level, not when you grip tighter, but when you release the fear of the outcome. It's not about giving up goals here when I say this. It's about giving up your attachment to how they unfold. This is nuance and this might be a new idea for you. You can want something deeply. You can move toward it with full effort, full presence, full devotion.

and still not need it to go a certain way in order to feel whole. That is the shift. I want this episode to turn out well. I'm going to do everything in this moment to have it turn out well. But if I need it to,

All of a sudden, fear, tension, restriction. Because the moment your peace, your identity, or your sense of success depends on a specific outcome, you are no longer playing free. You're playing scared. And fear, fear constricts everything. Fear narrows your awareness. It kills spontaneity. It turns your creativity into calculation. You're no longer acting from truth or intuition. You are performing. All of you know what I'm talking about.

When fear creeps in, it could be in the office. What happens? Are you more alive? Are you more creative? Are you tapped into your imagination? Or does your vision truly feel like it constricts? Fear is a constrictor. And the cost of this is presence. Not because you're not in the moment anymore, but because you are in your head. You are preoccupied with trying to control what you can't control.

Every move you take now is laced with tension. I was talking about, I want this episode to go well. You can hear tension. When I reach those mental obstacles, my voice sounds a little different, right? Tension kicks in. You can feel the shift. And so often in our lives, it sounds like this. It's when you're saying, if this doesn't go well, dot, dot, dot. Like if they don't like it, if I fail, if I fall short, insert all of the negative down spiral thoughts after that.

That's when you start shrinking. You start second guessing. You're overthinking. But the truth is, you can't control the outcome. You never could. You can influence it. You can move toward it with everything you got. But the final result, there's no guarantees there. I can't control it. So the real power, the real freedom is this.

To give everything you absolutely have and grip nothing. To play full out and accept whatever comes. To be so rooted in your presence that no result can shake you. Let me say that again. To be so rooted in your presence that no result can shake you.

I'm in the championship game and man, I'm excited to be here. I freaking love this. I worked so hard for this. I am going to play all out. I'm going to be in joy. I'm going to be deeply present. I'm going to be like a child at play, just remembering the love of the game, what it feels like to smell the grass or what it feels like to touch my stick. But guess what? I'm going to do all that. And if I lose, that's all right. It's another learning opportunity. I'm going to accept whatever comes.

This is what it means to live and perform with no fear of the outcome. Did you even hear that in my voice? Just the spaciousness, just the lightness, just the fluidity that can come from that. And I want you to know that this is not passive. This is not indifferent. It's not letting life happen to you. It's giving your full self to something that matters, but without needing it to go exactly as planned.

That's where freedom lives. That's where flow lives. That's where your highest self shows up. You do your best work, your clearest thinking, and your deepest creativity emerge there. I want to be clear. This episode is not about abandoning greatness or producing incredible things. What I am saying is this unlocks the highest potentialities you have.

Think about some of the all-time greats, right? When I think about all-time greats, someone who pops in mind is Rick Rubin, the legendary producer. For anyone who's unfamiliar with him, he's behind people like Johnny Cash all the way to Jay-Z. And he is a master, a zen master of letting go of control, especially when it comes to the outcome. He doesn't chase hits. What he does is he creates the conditions for inspiration to arrive. He trusts the process more than the plan.

He's got this line in his book, The Creative Act. He says, in play, there are no stakes, no boundaries, no right or wrong, no quotas for productivity. It's an uninhibited state where your spirit can run free. The best ideas arise most often and easily through this relaxed state. This is the paradoxical nature of it. When we open up, when we release, we

That's when we can flow free with creativity, with performance. Let's think about someone else like Roger Federer, one of my favorite athletes of all time. And if you've watched him at his peak, does Federer look like he's grinding? Does he look like he's tense, like he's efforting, like he's forcing? No, man, that guy was freaking gliding.

There's this line from a fan who was talking about Federer and what it's like to watch him. He said, Federer, at his best, was like a fusion of a ballet dancer and a matador with a streak of a ninja assassin thrown in. Classical grace, nerveless poise, and ruthless killer instinct. What I take away from that is Federer had that drive, right? He wanted to win. He had that type of ruthless killer instinct, but he didn't let that control him.

He was graceful. He was total poise. He was complete control of himself in the moment. And he was in rhythm, no tension, no attachment, complete lack of control. He was just in flow. And because of that, his best performance could come through.

It makes me think of this great story I heard from one of his coaches, Paul Anikon. This was a few years ago. And Anikon was describing Federer after, I forget if it was 2012 maybe, the second year that Federer ends up losing at the U.S. Open in the semifinals to Djokovic after holding match points. So you've got to think about this is the highest stage with absolute peak on the line, and you lose two years in a row. And Anikon shows up to Federer's house

A couple hours after, and he wants to talk to him, and he looks over, and Federer, after losing one of the most important matches of his entire life, is just on the floor playing with his kids. And Anaconda can't really comprehend it. He's like, I can barely walk. How are you just free, flowing, playing? And Federer goes on to describe it. He's just like, well, you know, there was plenty of matches I ended up winning. I probably should have lost.

So, when's the next match? He had wanted to win. He put everything he had into winning the US Open, but he didn't. He released it. This makes me think of the Rudyard Kipling poem, If, and part of it is actually above when the players walk out at Wimbledon. And I'll read part of the poem here.

And Kipling says, if you can dream and not make dreams your master, if you can think and not make thoughts your aim, if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, that's what Federer does. He meets triumph and disaster the same. You do everything you can to make the outcome you want happen, but you are okay if it doesn't.

So here's the invitation inside of this. Put in the work to earn the ability that from a place of joy that child likes pursuit. Let the outcome matter. Let it guide your focus, direct your energy, inspire the effort. But don't let it define you. Do not let it define you. All right, let's flow into the next idea. No past or future ownership.

Think about this. Memory and imagination should serve presence, not override it. So I want to get into something that most of us don't realize we're doing. We are constantly carrying things mentally, emotionally, energetically. We carry the memory of who we were. We carry the pressure of who we think we need to become. And in that constant carrying, we just forget to be here.

This is subtle, but this runs so much of the show. We rehearse those past failures, those past identities, those past moments we wish we could change. Or we fast forward to the future, forecasting the worst case scenarios, rehearsing outcomes. We're imagining all of these things that may never take place. And all of that, what does all of that do? It pulls us out of the only place we can actually create from.

There's this line by this guy, Corey Mascara. Someone shared this quote and I really like the belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we're in right now is why we miss our lives. The belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we're in right now is why we miss our lives. This conversation has much more to do than just performance on a court or a field, right? This is about our lives.

It makes me think of one of my past guests, Tom Morris, a great line he has. He says, there's no need to worry about your entire life. Just take care of your life as well as you can in the moment you're living and the rest of your life will take care of itself. We assume that if we just think about it enough, analyze, prepare, then we'll somehow protect ourselves.

That we'll perform better, we're going to be more ready, we'll feel more secure. But that's not what happens. The more we cling to the past or try to control the future, the more tense we become in the present. This is one of those paradoxes. That tension, that inner grip, it cuts us off from the very state that we are trying to reach. Where you're free, you're flowing.

But what happens is we're trying to perform from memory. You're recycling past ideas or you're trying to recreate something that hasn't happened yet. And when you do that, you're bracing for life. You're bracing for impact. You're trying to predict. You're responding from fear. Neither one of these is fully alive because they both pull your attention out of now. And now that is where your genius lives. Now is where your genius lives, where your freedom, your flow, all of those take place. Think about the times that you were in some type of flow.

where you lose track of time. Were you thinking about the past or the future? No. Those ideas of who you are, about the past, about the future, you had dropped them. It had cultivated the conditions to allow flow to take place. So it is not about shutting off memory or imagination. Those are part of the process, but they're meant to serve your presence, not override it. So the practice comes when the idea about the future or the past or the fear comes up.

Don't fight it. Don't follow it either. Don't chase it. Allow it to come and let it go. And come back to now, to this breath, to this moment, to this body. The author of the great book, The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Galloway, he's got this line in there. He says, Concentration is the act of focusing one's attention. As the mind is allowed to focus on a single object, it stills. As the mind is kept in the present, it becomes calm.

Concentration means keeping the mind now and here. Concentration is the supreme art because no art can be achieved without it. While with it, anything can be achieved. Concentration, focusing on one's attention, not on the past, not on the future, not on the fear, not on the doubts, just allowing right now.

not trying to fix, but just to be. And that is where the magic lives. That's what we care about. This entire episode is all about those fears, those identities, all of those things we cling to. What do they do? They pull us out of and they prevent us from flow, from everything we want, from living our best life to performing our best. So when you don't own the past or the future, you stop trying to fix what already happened. You stop fearing what hasn't happened. And in that space,

The incredible opens up where you meet life, not the story of your life, not the projection, not the performance, but the living, the breathing, the pulsing reality of right now. That's where your magic lives. Not in what you've done, not in what you might do, but in what you're doing. When you're not trying to be anyone else because the present doesn't need any identity. It just needs you here fully now.

So try this. The next time you walk into a room, drop the thought of who you're supposed to be. Just be there. No label, no mask, just presence. Okay? I'm coming full circle here. This is what I've come to believe deeply in my bones. You perform your best when you are free.

Not when you're gripping, not when you're micromanaging the moment, but when you're fully here, free from proving, free from identity, free from needing to be anything other than what's true because your greatest power doesn't live in pressure. It lives in presence. So if any part of this conversation resonated with you, here's my invitation. Don't try to protect it. Just try it. Try to live one moment from presence, not pressure. One rep, one meeting, one conversation where you let go of proving and just show up fully engaged.

I'll see you on the next episode. If this episode resonated with you, if it stirred something, opened something up, or even challenged something, I'd love to hear about it. You can connect with me directly at whatgotyouthere.com. That's where you'll find everything I do, my writing, my books, more about my executive coaching work I do with the people who want to live and lead from a deeper place. And if this episode made you think of someone, a friend, a teammate, a partner, someone who's been in the grind and might need to hear this, send it to them.

Because sometimes all it takes is a single conversation to shift the direction we're heading in. Again, it's whatgotyouthere.com. You can reach out, learn more, or just say hi. I always love hearing from people walking this path. Thanks for listening, and until next time.