Verde Valley News – How come the best team on paper doesn’t always win the game? What makes the longshot ‘come out of nowhere’ to victory? Success is more than talent. It’s talent plus a vigilant will to work at the cutting edge of your abilities. Best-selling author Bobby Kipper leads a voyage of discovery that brings our personal best front-and-center at work, home and in relationships. Join us as Yavapai College’s Justice Institute presents a free workshop: Performance-Driven Thinking, Friday, Oct. 11, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. in Bldg. 3 of Yavapai College’s Prescott Campus.
As a coach, educator, best-selling author and non-violence activist, Bobby Kipper has encountered every level of human ‘performance.’ “People tend to think about performance in terms of athletes or singers, but don’t judge their own,” he says. “Everywhere you go, every personal or professional activity you’re engaged in is performance. You must be on your game.”
“The first part of performance is the ‘want to,’” he says. “But your desire has to turn into action. Everyone wants to achieve. Ever been to a workout facility in January? Those places are packed with New Year’s resolutions.” But desire, by itself, doesn’t manifest success. “You have to have the will to make it happen.” Will – that persistent focus on daily goals, and the stamina to keep after them – is what turns desire into results. “The problem isn’t desire. It’s false promises.” He says. “Society gives us unrealistic expectations: ‘Lose 30 pounds in 30 days,’ ‘Be a millionaire overnight.’ They create a noise that makes us believe wanting is achieving. It is not. Will is the action. Desire without will is a wish.”
In Performance Driven Thinking, its companion journal and the October 11 workshop, Kipper articulates the mindset necessary to harness your will to your aspirations; and to internalize goal-setting – which we too often outsource. “In workplaces, and in government, the system often rewards mediocrity,” he says. “In the police department, some detectives would clear four-to-five cases a month. Some wouldn’t clear any. We’d all get evaluated the same.” A standardized concept of success, he says, “is a silent destruction of performance.”
Setting personal standards, and willfully pursuing them, raises the bar, invites success – and works across all aspects of life. “Once you develop the mindset, it becomes second nature. You’re going to want to be out there. You’re going to want to produce and achieve in your profession, your home life and your relationships. Most people tell me how [the book] challenged them. It doesn’t give answers. But it gets you started from where you are and helps take you to where you want to be.”
Sponsored by Yavapai College’s Justice Institute and the National Bank of Arizona, Bobby Kipper’s Performance Driven Thinking workshop runs Friday, Oct. 11, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., in Building 3, Room 119 of Yavapai College’s Prescott Campus. Admission is free. The National Bank of Arizona is providing a copy of Performance Driven Thinking and its companion workbook to the first 98 people who register. But seating is limited, and advanced registration is required at www.yc.edu/JI.
