In 2017 I was at the peak of my athletic ability… and everything else was falling apart around me.
I was training for the race of my life. Ironman Santa Rosa, a full distance triathlon covering 140.6 miles through the Vineyards of Northern California.
I had raced Ironman triathlons before, but the stakes here were much higher. I was making a run to qualify for the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. At the time, only 1% of triathletes in the world qualified for that race. On top of that, my story and race were being filmed for an NBC Sports television show called Ironman: Quest for Kona.
The pressure was on… But the real pressure was happening outside of Ironman training.
The family business I grew up in, and devoted my whole adult life to, shifted direction and I was pushed out in a very personally painful transition. My career, my family relationships, my identity were disintegrating.
Still - despite the pressure - I executed a nearly flawless race, finishing 3rd in my age group out of 300 men, securing a slot in the Ironman World Championship.
And I did it on national television.
Months later, I crossed the finish line of the Ironman World Championship finish line, a pipe dream just a few years earlier in the mind of the unhealthy non-athlete that I was.
That wasn't the last time I'd have to perform against impossible odds.
Shortly after my World Championship victory lap, the same family business that called me back to run a business turnaround as CEO. The pain was still fresh, but the company was on the brink of insolvency and bankruptcy.
Over the course of the next few years, we turned the business around, building a culture of performance and accountability. In two years we grew our revenues by 50% to nine figures, built a foundation of sustainable profitability, and aligned around a powerful vision for the next generation.
As we celebrated our 100 year anniversary as a family owned business, we crossed the $100M annual revenue mark.
And while we were navigating a significant business turnaround, more pressure was coming from the outside…
Our 13 year old daughter developed a life threatening eating disorder that many doctors told us was the worst they had ever seen. And at the same time, the world fell into a global pandemic. We had to navigate a severe medical issue, and a business turnaround, in the midst of a shutdown.
And in the season that should have broken us, the relationship that could have ended was strengthened.
Through intention, my wife Marie and I rebuilt our marriage from the brink into an honest, connected partnership that fueled everything else in our lives - business, family, and adventure.
The races, the business turnaround, the relationship, the chaos, the heartbreak, and the victories… each season of simultaneous triumph and disaster had every right to break me.
But they didn’t.
Because I learned a valuable lesson through all of it. With the right systems and focus, you can perform under impossible pressure.
And the more important lesson related to achievement in general was this:
You can perform and transform under pressure. But you can't out-perform a misaligned life.
Achieving impossible goals through impossible circumstances is by it’s very nature hard, and very few people can do it. But it isn’t rocket science. But the key to truly persisting under that immense pressure is the accountability associated with being identity-aligned. Pursing something so aligned to who we are at our core that we can weather any storm. That’s what most achievers get wrong…
They focus on chasing dreams and goals that aren’t really theirs. What’s expected. What we’re told.
It takes a lot of deep work to get to the root of the real YOU. But when you do, the strategy to achieve takes care of itself.
The identity that I thought was disintegrating back in 2017? What I discovered about myself became the foundation for the identity aligned work I do now.
For the business, for the marriage, and most importantly for my SELF. Three different arenas - self, business, and relationship - all running on the right operating system.
That's the work I do now. I help driven entrepreneurs and leaders build that same foundation. Identity-aligned and pressure-tested. So they can perform when it matters most, reach the success they're really after, and finally live the bigger life that's been waiting underneath the one they've been grinding through.
I’m Adam Hill
A REAL and TESTED Performance Coach.
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