What Does it Mean to Set Yourself Up for Success?

by John Allen Mollenhauer, Lifestyle Coach
​Note: This is more than an article. It's a mini-guide, and it can change the course of your year and life for the better forever if you go through it and its links.  

What Does it Mean to Set Yourself Up for Success? 
It was a great honor to be a recipient of the chambers' Leader in Business Award at the Annual Luncheon for 2020, along with three leading pros. Thank you to all who were involved in that decision.  I humbly bring that up for one reason, and that is, I had decided that this was going to be a breakthrough year, well in advance. The power of choosing to set yourself up for success, for what's next, new, or desired, is nothing short of remarkable. It's simple when you decide what you are all-in on, you act accordingly, and beautiful things can happen. 

But what does "set yourself up for success" mean? 
 
We hear this phrase a lot and usually following a tactical point that takes you in the direction you want, not what you don't want.  But here is the actual definition: 
 
To alter the conditions of someone's or one's situation, so a particular outcome is all but guaranteed.
 
This mini guide is all about that. If you are short on time, you can learn more about this mindset and skill set here.
 
Quick backstory:
 
2020, which brought with it, personal sickness (COVID), business shutdown, a family death, and a significant living transition among all kinds of other challenges in my own life; in a twist of fate, was also one of my best and most productive years ever at the same time. It was such a stark contrast year that at one point, I asked myself shouldn't I be depressed? 
 
No doubt, I experienced deep sadness, uncertainty, and a range of other emotions at specific points of the past year, as I faced everything and avoided nothing. Still, the overall arc of the year focused on what was important now. 

1. Understanding my present situation and circumstances—where I was and where I wanted to be,  
2. Moving on from the weight of the past—relatively fast—to get free again to focus on what was next.  
3. Living from the absolute best part of myself, before thought, feelings, and emotions—not divorced or separated from any of them, just not immersed in them either. 

 
And all of that enabled me to live well and perform even better than usual, experiencing positive and empowered emotions as well, at a time when it was beyond easy to get lost in circumstances that could have just as easily distracted and held me back.  I was set up for success in going into 2020, and that "set up" was strong enough to withstand everything that I, my family, and my company faced throughout the year...

The Setup

I am an entrepreneur, business owner, and service professional like most of you. I've been through early-stage tech ventures and lifestyle entrepreneurship for 40 years. That has spanned ventures such as co-creating a chain of easy-access gyms that fully supported people on-the-go, an early social training platform geared towards fitness, and the pioneering launch of a high nutrient density eating style with consumer products. 
 
Recently, along with my wife and chamber member Mariahna Suzan, we developed a new recovery center concept to help successful professionals suffering from constant tiredness, and chronic fatigue accelerate their energy recovery and overcome the inevitable inflammation, aches, and pains that usually follow. For people who are also high-performance entrepreneurs who are into biohacking and wanting the edge. 
 
As an entrepreneur, I've always created solutions that solved a need that I too needed or was experiencing. That primarily focused on helping people optimize how they lived to achieve better results in their lives, careers, or business and fulfill their potential.  I also developed a philosophy throughout all that experience as an entrepreneur. Not one that I originated, at least in name, and in 2021 during the pandemic shutdown, I launched Lifestyle Coach to share it.  It's not what many of you might think off-the-bat when you hear "lifestyle coach,' where my team and I might focus on helping you lose weight, detox, get your diet right, exercise, and get more sleep. 
 
As a health and wellness committee member, I am there because Lifestyle Coaching disciplines will touch on all of those points when needed. But none of those essential functions define what I do and what my company provides with its greatest passion. 
 
I run Performance Lifestyle Inc, and as such, I am a Performance Lifestyle® Coach. 
 
Performance lifestyle was a little-known idea that initially emerged in the world of elite athletics. It began as a personalized support service designed to help athletes sustain their training, win in their sport, and sync up their non-sporting and sporting lives. By aligning both aspects, athletes saw a dramatic improvement in their health, athletic performance, and wellbeing. 

Its claim to fame was when Performance Lifestyle support helped the UK cycling Team Sky go from worst to first and yield Tour De France winners in just 36 months employing the principle of marginal gains that compound to produce extraordinary results.  Unlike pro athletes, though, most of us entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals don't have the performance lifestyle training and coaching that athletes have— the inspiration, education, and support— to optimize the way we live and perform better in our own lives. 
 
We typically turn to ongoing personal development, professional and or business development help, all of which first depends on YOU functioning at full capacity. When you're not, all fall way short of expectations. 
 
So, it became clear to me early that there was a missing gap in the market. It's called lifestyle optimization. Everything else you do to succeed depends on it, and this was a big part of my "setup."
 
Performance Lifestyle, Inc. was founded to make lifestyle training and coaching available to high achievers in life and business who want to learn how to live with optimal energy levels, health, and optimal human performance to win at a higher level in their own lives.
 
You can learn more about Performance Lifestyle and why it's relevant, meaningful, and actionable to you here. It doesn't matter if you are into sports or even a fitness enthusiast. 
 
Still, suppose you want to achieve your ambitious goals while living in balance with vibrant health and peace of mind. 
 
In that case, you want to get free of the typical lifestyle and move beyond fitness and traditional healthy lifestyles alone. They don't go far enough, and that's why the emerging trend in the fitness and wellness industry is learning how to live a balanced and healthy, high-performance lifestyle. 
 
But to live a performance lifestyle gracefully, you've got to set yourself up for success first. And that means altering your situation's conditions, so a particular outcome is all but guaranteed for you. 

1. You must understand your present situation and circumstances—where you are and where you want to be so well that "clarity" alone can become the antidote to going off course in any significant way. 
   
   
2.  You've got to have a posture to life and the skills to move on from, the weight of the past—which can cause resistance to change, and you to approach extraordinary opportunity ordinarily, all of which works against you and sets you up for failure.  
   
   
3. You also want to live from the absolute best part of yourself—Grounded in that spiritual intelligence and energy that ultimately drives you to overcome any challenge.  
   
   
4. And when you do, with the proper guidance, you can develop a balanced and healthy, Performance Lifestyle—that fully supports you and what you are up to in the world with the skills, habits, and routines that can make the kind of success you want possible. 
   
   
5.  An unsurpassed alignment that works for you and sets you up for the success you want. 

 
That is what I can help you do. As a lifestyle entrepreneur, in the process of those many ventures I mentioned earlier, I've learned what enables a person to function and perform at levels they may have previously never imagined possible, even amidst challenging circumstances. And not in that performance-addicted, unhealthy, unbalanced sort of way that we see modeled so often. 
 
For one, I used to be an exemplar in that way of life, which never worked out very well. I changed my tracks when I realized that optimal human performance IS a lifestyle, not a mere state change, or based on motivational thinking. It's not based on healthy eating or fitness training alone either. And it's certainly not the result of drinking caffeinated beverages or taking expensive "brain state" supplements, none of which will ever really deliver what you want. 
 
Heck, even biohacking, the rage today, on its own, won't solve the problem of constant tiredness or fatigue, let alone give you the edge if you don't have a performance lifestyle backing it all up. 
 
Today, I help impact-driven entrepreneurs, business owners, and professional service providers (typically, in the second half of their work/life or life itself). Those who are faced with relentless demand on their time and energy, potentially amidst challenging circumstances, learn how to set themselves up for the next/new kind or quality of success they want. That includes developing a high-performance lifestyle they can call their own. 
 
All so they can fulfill their inspired, ambitious goals, with their health and wellbeing intact and not waste time being distracted or held back in any way. Few things affect people more than the fear of not achieving their full potential, which drives me.  
 
So if you want to have a breakthrough year, a year where you go to a whole new level of insight, follow-through, and achievement; it's time to change the story, get free of "the curse" of the capable person, and start living your full potential via the concrete steps that make it possible. 
 
I want to share how we can do that. It's not personal development, professional, or business development alone that helps fulfill one's God-inspired dreams. It's an optimal lifestyle that is mostly free of the hidden lifestyle challenges that distract and hold you back, on which all the other stuff can help you flourish. 
 
I didn't discover all of that in the past year; I was prepared for a breakthrough year well in advance because I had "set up for success," and I continue to operationalize these lifestyle strategies in my own life and business. 
 
I'm not unique in the sense of hey, "you can be like me." No, you can do you, and I can do me, at a whole new level, when we realize that what we are is far greater than any of our circumstances 'in the world.' 
 
When we understand the "Core Essentials of Human Performance," which include living a lifestyle that fully supports you and what you are up to in the world, things can and will get even better as sure as the sun will come up the morning. 
 
There are 5 Core Essentials of Human Performance, and I've referred to all of them in this article. Implement them all in the right way, and for you, there is no situation or set of circumstances that can't or won't change for the better and yield a breakthrough year. 
 
So, I am going to suggest you download an eBook I wrote that took me hours to write but decades to formulate called:
 
"Set Yourself Up for Success—The 5 Lifestyle Strategies Healthy, High Achieving People Know and Live by to Fulfill Their Ambitious Goals and Thrive.
 
It will begin the process of dialing you into the 5 Core Essentials and the fundamentals of successful living that underlie them. It will also enable you to make the most of the personal, professional, and business development we traditionally rely on but get distracted and held back from fully implementing because of hidden lifestyle changes. 
 
I will be doing some upcoming webinars on this as well. 
 
Set yourself up for the success you want in 2021 and beyond. The sooner, the better. Read that eBook. I am grateful to able to share it with you and hope you make this of it. 
 
JAM (John Allen Mollenhauer) is a leading Lifestyle Coach and authority on living a High–Performance Lifestyle® with an online training academy and community that teaches people how to manage their energy like the pros. He helps you get free of the hidden lifestyle distractions that distract and hold you back from living your full potential. He'll help you optimize the way you live for the energy, health, and high-performance you need to flourish. Performance Lifestyle Inc is in Florham Park, NJ; he and his team run an Accelerated Recovery and Performance Lifestyle Center.  For a complimentary strategy session with JAM or a Member of the Lifestyle Coach team, click here.