Get Free of the SAD - Standard American Dream - Driven Lifestyle and Get Into a Healthy, High-Performance Lifestyle.

by John Allen Mollenhauer, Lifestyle Coach JAM
Not many of us native-born Americans (those of us who are not immigrants) consciously think about the "American Dream" since we were born into a country where creating a version of success that is ours is possible. In many other places in the world, it's not. 
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Whether we think about it or not, the whole idea is firmly embedded in our DNA, and most of us will do whatever it takes to achieve it and maintain it. 

What Is the American Dream?
The American Dream believes that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into, can attain their version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone.  The American dream is believed to be achieved through sacrifice, risk-taking, and hard work rather than by chance, which translates to doing whatever it takes. 

But what does "whatever it takes" mean? 
For most of us, we do whatever it takes on the achievement side of things, but we sacrifice when it comes to taking care of ourselves, our bodies, and our lives.

That is the "Standard" approach--Instead of seeing acts of Self/self, body, and life care, woven into the flux of your day as what enables you to take effective action throughout the day in your familial, career, sporting, creative, performing art, or ministerial activities, they get put on the backburner after all other actions have been taken, and by then you're too wiped out to get your needs met. 

And that is what this article is about; you don't have to take the standard approach anymore to achieving the American Dream. It's not intelligent or even that noble anymore; it's destructive to you and those around you. Unlike years ago when it was a badge of honor, today it simply showcases that you either don't know better or are not practicing what you know. 

If you read my prior articles, you would piece together over time, that I was one of those people who knew a lot about certain aspects of lifestyle (nutrition and fitness) but because I didn't have a broader lifestyle skillset, my human performance suffered, resulting in constant tiredness and fatigue. In retrospect, I thought I had bought lock, stock, and barrel into the American Dream, but in reality, I bought into the cultural performance addiction, which becomes the curse of the capable person. 

While attempting to crush my goals, I got crushed by excess stress and fatigue, despite eating healthy and exercising, and it took a toll on my health, performance, and wellbeing.  
That's the "standard" way to achieve the American Dream, do whatever it takes in the world, overspend your energy, tire, burn, and wear yourself out even if you are eating healthy and exercising... and just cope with it. 

It's what happens you're overstimulated by chronic work and output, yet under recuperated, overeating likely eating under nourishing food on the go (even healthy food), super busy, but physically inactive, and then keep telling yourself stories that keep driving you forward. And as a result, constant tiredness, some fatigue, weight, and mental and physical health conditions distract you from living your full potential. 

But is that the real problem? 
Is your, overwhelm, exhaustion, and overweight condition, resulting in back pain, etc. the problem, or is your approach to achieving the American Dream causing these predictable outcomes

When you consider lifestyle-induced disease statistics, the fact that burnout is now being categorized as a "syndrome" that results from "chronic stress that has not been successfully managed," according to the World Health Organization's International Disease Classification (ICD-11); and the fact that only 3% of the population is said to be living a "healthy lifestyle," you realize that 97-99% of the population is living the standard American Dream driven way of life. 

Most of us have heard of the SAD—Standard American Diet; now, the SAD stands for the "Standard American Dream-" driven lifestyle where you are so caught up in achieving your full potential that you're not living it.  You have so much going-on, that YOU are barely hanging on, and it doesn't need to be that way even though it will be like that at times. Let's be real. Life can be hard; it's naturally challenging, especially if you are a small business owner who is likely understaffed and under-resourced. The same can be true for professional service providers and executives, even though they typically have more support. The drive to stay on top of everything is always there.  What I'm about to tell you can be done nonetheless, and it's the genuinely smarter, not harder approach.  It's also vital for everyone. 

There is a way out of the Standard American Dream Driven way of life. It's four lifestyle upgrades that you make towards developing a healthy, high-performance lifestyle that will ensure you achieve the American Dream and the quality-of-life, the dream promises.  I love the American Dream, and I'm a very driven person, so let's get this out of the way upfront as you might think that I'm suggesting you live in some nirvana that doesn't exist. I'm not. 

I'm talking about the rise of a new lifestyle where instead of focusing only on achieving your full potential, you focus on living it, and that's what's new. 

You can't search Google on how to do it because the standard way is all focused on how to achieve it, and I'm suggesting that you learn how to live your full potential to achieve it.  People who succeed at higher levels with their health and wellbeing intact are already doing that to some degree right now, but we all have gaps and struggles; some of us more than others.  

Living your full potential ensures you get your needs met because the ever-developing lifestyle it leads to will give rise to a level of energy and health, performance, and productivity most people trying to achieve their full potential, only dream of. 

Living your full potential requires understanding The 5 Core Essentials of Human Performance© and mastering them all as part and parcel of a lifestyle that is not ironically still focused on achieving the goals that ultimately fulfill your dream. The better you get at them, the more you will be able to act essentially free of the distractions most people are caught up with that hold them back.

Such as:
Tiredness and fatigue, weight, brain fog and confusion, aches, and pains, living from the past, or overachieving (yes, I consider that a distraction). Any number of sleep, nutrition or endurance and stamina issues, unsupportive or negative thinking, overwhelm, over engagement, lack or unclear motivations, financial and team support issues, lack of clarity etc.  

For example, if you are not managing your energy, fueling your body right, and maintaining your fitness, the state that will leave your body in will likely cause you to respond to stress in ways that create more stress, not more energy, better health, and performance. It will also make you more reactive as feeling depleted of power leads to poor mental health, and the struggle to function will leave you lost in your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. And that will set you up to cope with poor lifestyle habits that are out of alignment with the very fundamentals of a healthy, high-performance lifestyle (aka successful living); the way of life you always needed but were never taught.

In other words, as you develop a healthy high-performance lifestyle, you are no longer achieving your goals to live a better lifestyle in terms of what you can afford alone. That's an outcome goal. You start living a better lifestyle to achieve your goals, which is a process. And that approach is what makes achieving the American Dream, the way most would probably want to envision it, possible. It happens once you realize your lifestyle's central role in achieving your goals; your whole mindset changes. 

To say that you have a sleep problem, eating problem, or inactivity problem is just not doing you complete justice. To resolve any of those issues, you must also make other changes, in aspects of your lifestyle you may not have connected the dots on yet, eventually life structure too.  It may also include using technology these days to enhance your ability to get great sleep, eat healthily, and have the space-time and energy for activity, among other aspects of what creates well-being regularly. 

And it's all of that which is giving rise to the new healthy, high-performance lifestyle. It's not a mere weight loss or musclebuilding program or limited to just your diet, exercise, or sleep. It's taking an approach that addresses all aspects of your lifestyle, so you can fulfill your version of success and quality of life.

You see, today, the guesswork is gone about what are the fundamentals of successful living, but the challenge is not only to learn them but to string them together into a whole (balanced) lifestyle that supports you (health) and what you are up to in the world (high performance). 

• Health means complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. 
• High performance means operating to a high standard," which results in progress and lots of it towards a meaningful future, with a whole lifestyle that supports you.  

Do that, and you can continue to make progress towards fulfilling your version of the American Dream.  Again, I'm not talking about just eating a little healthier. sleeping a little better or exercising more as if you need to be convinced. I'm a Performance Lifestyle® Coach, who helps you bridge the gaps between your health and success; I am not a health or life coach alone. I help you identify and maintain higher standards across the broader complete range of lifestyle skills that assure those lifestyle process objectives, enroute to achieving your life—individual, family, career, business, sporting, adventure, creative, or ministry goals. 

After all, people don't just wake up to be healthy (that's a given); they wake up to be successful because that's where the goals are! 

So, what do you do about changing the way you achieve the American Dream?
Upgrade Your Lifestyle.

Lifestyle Coach JAM takes you through five lifestyle upgrades that enable you to leave the Standard American Dream-driven way of life, and step up and into a Healthy, High-Performance Lifestyle that enables you fulfill your version of success.   It's not a good idea to skip any of the five upgrades because this is not just the "next level" sort of stuff (that could mean anything); this is living at the second tier, which is about developing a whole, fluid, not fragmented approach to fulfilling your dreams. 

If you want to move from living the SAD whatever-whenever-if-ever approach to achieving your full potential, with lifestyle skill gaps distracting and holding you back, keep the piecemeal Standard American Dream approach you've currently got. But if you want to live your full potential to achieve your version of success more predictably, step up and into a healthy, high-performance lifestyle. 

You start with the Performance Lifestyle® Blueprint and in a time frame that works for your pace and life, you make five lifestyle upgrades.

• Upgrade #1. Start to Manage Your Energy Like a Pro. This upgrade is the initial lifestyle transformation because once you know what energy is and how to manage it, it will naturally begin transforming your life and style of living it. Part of this process is utilizing proactive recovery technologies to recharge and restore your body, and correcting your bioenergetics to recapture the zest and zeal you used to feel.
  
  
• Upgrade #2. Be Free to Live so that you no longer suffer from "the curse of the capable" that will prevent you from living a balanced and healthy high, achieving life. You start living as what you are, no longer stuck in who you think you are and how you are in the world.
  
  
• Upgrade #3. Live Healthy, Successfully by understanding the four core lifestyle skills you need to know to live your life like a pro, with the most successful strategies for sleeping, eating, movement and exercise, and thinking along with breathing, hydration, and sun exposure.
  
  
• Upgrade #4. Step up and into a Healthy, Performance Lifestyle. Now that you are managing your energy, no longer living from your past, and are living healthy successfully, you'll want to learn how to do all of that while achieving even your most ambitious life, family career, or business goals. This upgrade takes you beyond the most common but still misunderstood aspects of lifestyle into the rest of the performance lifestyle skills all healthy, high-achieving people know to live by.
  
  Here you are all in and develop pertinacity as you love to live what's best for you because you love to live your full potential.
  
  
• Upgrade #5. Own Your Alignment for a Healthy, High-Performance Lifestyle so that you become a healthy high achiever who thrives with an extraordinary quality of life. You've been through the theory. You've got a healthy performance lifestyle in practice. Now you're ready for mastery with complete alignment between the structure of your life, your lifestyle, and your goals; this is where your version of the American Dream is realized.

​The American Dream is alive and well, but don't take the standard approach.
Walk the defined path outlined above and become a person who thrives in your family, career, business, etc. All healthy, high, achieving people who succeed have a healthy, high-performance lifestyle they call their own. They know The Core Essentials of Human Performance, and their lifestyle reflects them. 

Everyone is in training, including me. ~ JAM 
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As "client zero," entrepreneur John Allen Mollenhauer, known as John Allen or Lifestyle Coach "JAM," was desperate to figure out how to achieve his ambitious goals without burning out, wearing out, and trading his health for success despite being proficient in nutrition and fitness. As a result, over 20 years, he learned how to manage his energy and made the most significant lifestyle change one can make. Step by step, JAM produced the never-before-assembled formulas for living a balanced and healthy high-performance lifestyle. Today, he's still an in-the-game lifestyle entrepreneur and a pioneering Performance Lifestyle® Coach.