Mackney's Master Class: How To Maximise Your Potential

Challenge Negativity

Recognise your helplessness, your lack of motivation and listlessness. Recognise that you are often unable to control consequences or outcomes. Recognise your negative emotions: boredom, anxiety, frustration, anger, hopelessness, and depression. Acknowledge them to yourself, by saying, “I am helpless, hopeless, and depressed.” Repeat this over and over again. Now step down from the podium knowing that is a company presentation they will never forget. 

Standing Tall

A height advantage brings with it subconscious internal superiority. Modern exercise regimes and fitness classes focus on body strength and bulk. But think tall instead of wide. Stand absolutely vertical and stretch your head upwards towards the ceiling. Using the frame of a child’s swing, hang bat-like with a bag of pebbles Sellotaped to your head. Fashion a home-made rack from an old sofa, coat hangers and springs and invite a loved one to stretch you each day until you bleed. Three months later, re-evaluate. Your colleagues may earn more than you, have bigger houses and new cars but only you can pluck fruit off trees without using your arms. 

Dietary Supplements

Maximise your brain’s efficiency using fish oils, checking the precise quantities of omega-3 EPA and DHA fatty acids. But bear in mind other sources of nutrition. Debate rages about the intellectual benefits of fish oils with dieticians and scientists unable to resolve why mackerel score so poorly at algebra and why, in six out of ten cases, yellow-fin tuna leave basic Sudoku puzzles only half-finished. 

Make An Appointment With Yourself

Every day we begin with the best of intentions and yet often discover we’ve only accomplished a fraction of what we wanted to do. Give yourself uninterrupted blocks of time: 90 minutes or more to re-focus. Find a quiet part of the office. Close and lock the door. Sit and list your failings out loud. Take a counterpoint and disagree with them. Continue this process at heated, audible levels until it’s dark. Now get up off the toilet and go home. 

Change Your Appearance

Try and see how others view you. Everything you wear is a reflection of your true self. If your clothing is inappropriate, colleagues are likely to question your judgment and your abilities. What does that waistcoat say about you? Or that floral shirt, the braces and the sideburns? It might be what you and your colleagues have suspected for some time: (a) you are overtly ‘showy’ in your tastes, or (b) you’re an arsehole.

Avoid Impromptu Meetings

These are interruptions that waste time and productivity. They break your concentration and disturb your train of thought. The next time someone sits by your desk and starts to make themselves comfortable, say you’re in the middle of a tricky task or an important project, then be sick on their legs. They’ll think twice before doing that again. 

Exercise

People who exercise have more brain power. They think faster, more efficiently and have increased intelligence. Intensive exercise causes older nerve cells to form dense, interconnected webs. Researchers have found that every time a muscle is put into motion it sends out a protein called IGF-1, the fuel of all activities in the brain that lead to higher thought. Don’t feel guilty next time your colleague or partner finds you unzipped near the internet. It still counts as a muscle. 

Read About Successful People

Read the life stories and experiences of truly great men and women. Entrepreneurs, athletes, people who challenge the very parameters of existence. You will read their experiences and think they are better than you, more motivated, goal-orientated, stronger and more resilient. And you’d be right. They are.