The 6 Habits Of High Performance With Jenn Cassetta

It is certainly a draining endeavor to chase your dreams and achieve your set goals. If you are not careful, you could get off the rails because of burnout and overwhelm. Jennifer Cassetta is here to share six effective habits of high performance that allow you to feel a badass all day long. Tune in as she talks about how these simple yet impactful activities can easily be incorporated into your life, even in bite-size increments, to help increase your productivity without running out of steam.

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The 6 Habits Of High Performance With Jenn Cassetta

We’re doing a shorty solo episode about the six habits of high performers. The six habits that I think every high performer should have and probably already does have because that’s why they are high performers in the first place. I’m going to talk about these six habits, why you should care and how they can turn you into a high-performing badass, ready to kick ass and take names figuratively, of course, and not run out of steam.

That’s the goal, not running out of steam in this so-called life as you keep chasing your dreams, not giving up on them because we get too tired or too distracted, and going full speed ahead. Whether you consider yourself a high performer already, if you want to be a higher performer than you already are, or you’re looking for ways to increase your efficiency, productivity and, of course, your badassery without burning out, this episode is for you.

Looking Back

Before I dive into these six habits, I want to give you a bit of context of why they are so important to me, why I speak on them and how this is the next iteration of my career. If you have known me for a long time, you’ll recognize this story that I’m about to lay out for you, which is my story essentially, but also how it’s now become this culmination. I got certified as a high-performance coach because I felt like it brought all the things that I’ve studied, all of the things that I’ve been trained in and all of the things that are near and dear to me under one umbrella.

That’s why I’m using the words high performance a lot lately. I love it and I think it sums up so many awesome things that we’re going to dive into. Let me rewind and I’m going to do this quick, how I got started in this career in the wellness and well-being industry. I guess you can put that as the overarching thing, but it started with a martial arts class. I walked into this dojo in the year 2000 and fell madly in love with this martial art called Hapkido. Fast forward a year, you all know the 9/11 story already. If you don’t, it’s in my TEDx Talk. I tell it in my keynotes. Essentially, it’s that defining moment or period of time in my life where everything shifted for me.

I worked three blocks South of the towers. I was doing event planning, but I haven’t even gotten to plan my first event yet. Their first event in this loft space actually happened on the night of September 10th and I wasn’t involved in that event. I didn’t even get to plan any events and then that happened. A lot of you, like I said, know the story, so I will condense it. Essentially, I was there three blocks South when the first tower fell, thrown into a closet, scared, paralyzed from fear.

Finally, hours later, I made it to the dojo where I was training. That became this metaphor for me, where, all of a sudden, I felt safe that day. In the weeks and months afterwards, I was out of a job. That’s the part of the story I don’t talk about much. I didn’t have a job because that building was closed, and no one could even go there. All of lower Manhattan was blocked off unless you live there.

I was out of a job and needed to figure out how I was going to pay my rent because I was literally paycheck to paycheck. In the meantime, all I was doing, though, I was loving going to this dojo where I was feeling stronger. I was learning these cool, lifesaving skills and at night, I was bartending. My brother owned a nightclub on upper Manhattan at the time, so I was bartending at night to pay the bills. I’d be like up until 4:00 in the morning, at least because the clubs closed at 4:00, smoking cigarettes, doing shots with customers and would sleep until, I don’t know, 10:00 or 11:00, get my coffee and then go to the dojo.

I trained pretty much for hours a day because I absolutely loved it. That’s, all of a sudden, like I said, when life started to change for the better, I would say. It took a whole year for me to actually do it fully because I wound up getting another job as a nightclub manager at this little nightclub called West Eighth, and it was on West 8th Street. I did that for a year.

I was the daytime manager. I was ordering the liquor and doing all those things, booking the parties and I worked in a basement, essentially. It was underground. I barely saw the light of day. It was not for me. Finally, I was doing that and then going to the dojo right after work for hours and taking classes and soaking it in this new way of being, this new way of life, which is what it was becoming.

Fast forward, I get referred to become a personal trainer at this little boutique gym called The Printing House in the West Village. That’s when this new idea of fitness came into my mind. I love martial arts, so how can I make a living? Let me get into fitness. I did that for a year in the gym, got certified all the things and then started my own business, essentially. I became a full-time personal trainer and again, all in my free time, I go to the dojo.

A couple of years into that, I got a health coaching certification at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition because I knew that fitness wasn’t the only means of being well and well-being. Nutrition was a major part of that as well. I got that certification, added that into my practice and kept going to the dojo every day that I could.

Fitness does not only mean being well. Nutrition is also a major part of it as well.

That was 2005. At the time, health coaching was a very new thing. A lot of people didn’t even know what that meant. I always felt like I needed to get more credentials. I went back to school to get a Clinical Nutrition Master’s degree and that was in 2009. I left New York with my third-degree black belt and came to Los Angeles for a sunnier lifestyle. There’s a whole other personal story that I can tell in another episode, but essentially, I landed here with big dreams. Even though people were like, “There’s going to be so much competition. There’s a million personal trainers out in LA,” I came anyway and, again, had to start with what I knew. I knew how to train people. That’s what I started doing.

A few years into it, I got some random consulting gigs with Beachbody, running some programs for them, training trainers in P90X for Tony Horton, ghostwriting a nutrition book for Dancing With The Stars. Very random things, even more random when traveling around the world with some VIP clients, which was incredible. I’ll do another episode on that, too, because it’s so fabulous.

Here’s the thing. In that first decade in New York where I was doing all this physicality, leaning into the physical part of fitness and well-being and then the inner part with the nutrition, I was also on my own, not doing it for work, but I was doing self-development work. I was going to all the seminars, reading all these books and I enjoyed it. This was a seed that was planted in me from my dad’s passion for personal development and self-improvement. Him and I would always like talk about it incessantly and share about the different books we were reading, etc.

Now, in this second decade back in Los Angeles, after I did the training, I knew that fitness wasn’t it for me. I knew there was more and I always wanted to become a public speaker. I knew that because sitting in Tony Robbins events when I was younger and looking around and seeing how people were so mesmerized by his presence, words and message, I remember thinking, “If I could do something like that to improve people’s lives, that would make me so fulfilled.” At some point in this LA journey now, I felt like I had to go for it. I had to start getting on stages. I started with self-defense on college campuses and then later, I kept building out my corporate speaking career by adding new things created the Art of Badassery, etc.

Why did I start this episode with this whole long story about my career is twofold. I want to remind you that I’ve been chasing my dreams, I feel, for over two decades now. There have been so many times that I’ve wanted to give up, so many times that I’ve failed and wanted to throw in the towel or take a long winter’s nap, but I knew that I couldn’t because I burned the boats long ago.

There’s no corporate career to jump back on or to fall back on. There’s no real job out there that I could apply for and easily get at this point in my career. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m not putting myself down at all. I mean, I’ve crafted a unique spot for myself where the boats are burned. If you don’t know the expression, I love it. It’s like I can’t leave the island. The boats are burned. I’m here for the long run.

I know that I wouldn’t be here and I would not be able to continue if it weren’t for these high-performance habits that are now such a big part of who I am, that I now can train on it, coach on it, teach on them, because of all of the work I’ve done, all the credentials I have and all of the training that I’ve put in, but more so because I use them in my own life. That’s what I want to share with you. I know if I didn’t have these habits to fall back on, everything I’ve built to this day would feel like a house of cards. The next big storm that swoops into this house of cards that I’ve built could topple at any second. However, because I have these habits in place, it’s like a very strong foundation that I’ve built this house upon.

That’s what I want for you. I want you to have such a strong foundation that when the storms come, because you know they will, you will be unshakeable, sturdy, grounded and steady and you will still be able to take one step in front of the other and continue and continue to build and grow and create the life of your dreams. How does that sound?

Here we go. These are the six habits. Ready? They are mindset, mindfulness, meditation, movement, nutrition and sleep. Now I’m going to go into all of them and I want to tell you how they fit into my life, how I’ve made them work for me over time, why they should be important to you as well and how you can incorporate them into your life starting slowly in bite-size increments. If you don’t already have them, you may have a lot of these checked off already.

I created this new program, an online group coaching course called Burnout to Badass, which I’m currently in right now with my first group at the time of recording this. We are more than halfway through right now. We’re at week 5 out of 8 weeks, and it is lighting me up to see how people have started to latch onto some of these habits, incorporate them into their lives, and see how it’s changing them for the good.

Also, starting out how some people already had a lot of these checked boxes, already had a lot of these routines in their lives, but now rounding them out with the new ones for them or strengthening some of them has been a game changer for a lot of folks. If you want more information on the Burnout to Badass program, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter. That link is in my Linktree. It’s in all my bios.

1. Mindset

Let’s start with mindset. For me, mindset is the most important thing that I work on, that I want my clients to work on, that I think makes the biggest difference in life. That’s at the top. Everything else trickles down from there. Building a strong, positive, resilient, joyful, peaceful, any kind of mindset that you want that leads to all those feelings, that’s the work. That’s the work we do every day in this proverbial dojo. The place that we show up to the mat every day and do the work stems from our mindset and then everything else can flow from there.

If you think about it, think about either yourself or people that you know who don’t have a growth mindset, who think things are the way they are and they’ll never improve or who say things like, “This is how I am,” you know that those are different people. They’re not reading shows like this. It’s not a bad thing and then they’re not bad people. I’m not saying anything like that, but you know there’s a difference between wanting to grow and work on your mindset and being in a place where you don’t.

There’s a difference between wanting to grow your mindset and being in a place where you just don’t.

The daily work that I do to work on my mindset is through observing my thoughts and getting to a place where I can recognize the negative thoughts. I can do a pattern interrupt, which is essentially anything to interrupt that pattern, because, again, we have these grooves in our brain that go round and round when we’re in that downward spiral. When one negative thought leads to another and another, we need something to interrupt that pattern.

It could be an affirmation. I use affirmations every single day. I speak to myself in a supportive way every day. When I don’t, I can tell right away. What I also do is start the morning with meditation, which is 1 of the 6 habits. I’m not going to get into it here. I’ll talk about it separately. Just so you know, a lot of these six habits will have some crossover, especially with mindset because mindset affects everything.

I meditate, then I go right into journaling. In that journaling process, I start to speak to myself in a positive way. Everything I write down is affirmative. It’s affirming my positivity, my mindset, what I’m attracting, what I’m focusing on, what I’m building, what I’m creating. It’s powerful and I love that practice so much. Between the meditation and the journaling, it lasts a few hours, at least. It puts me in a positive mindset, like I said, at least for those first few hours of the day.

I’ll start catching myself speaking to myself in a not-so-kind way. I’ll have to use some affirmations or pattern interrupt with some body movement. I go for a walk and lift some weights. I’ve talked about this in, I believe, an earlier episode on dealing with rejection. When I’m working with clients, I do the same kinds of things. We put into practices that will work for them, but it’s about recognizing limiting beliefs, interrupting those limiting beliefs, and creating more empowering thoughts.

2. Mindfulness

When you have that mindset of strength and resilience and growth, a growth mindset, you will use more discernment and life. That leads me to habit number two, which is mindfulness. A lot of people ask, “What’s the difference between mindset and mindfulness, Jen?” To me, mindfulness is about using discernment.

Choice. Getting to choose the thoughts that we think every day. Getting to choose the acts, our actions that we put into practice every day. Getting to choose how we want to feel. Do you even remember that sometimes you get to choose how you want to feel every moment of every day, regardless of what’s happening out there, regardless of what your boss said to you, regardless of the deadlines, regardless that you got dumped and rejected and the bills are due?

Regardless of all of that, you get to choose how you want to feel every minute of every day. Guess what? There’s so much power in that. That is where the power lies for real. Using discernment, being mindful, how we use that in my burnout to badass is about tracking. Tracking certain habits. First, you want to get present to the habits that are already running your life.

You might not think you have a lot of habits, but you have a lot of habits. They might not be supporting you, you might not be conscious of them, you might not be choosing them, but they’re choosing you. Habits like blowing off your workouts, going for the sugary dessert after lunch when you could have a piece of fruit. It’s all those things. Those are habits that are part of what you’re doing because you’re not choosing powerfully. Recognizing where those are, again, that’s where the power is.

3. Meditation

After mindfulness, we have meditation. I can probably do an entire series on meditation because it’s such a big part of my life these days. It’s changed my life. It’s something that I double down on. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing bait and switches with either being on podcast interviews or even this show. It’s like, “Yeah, all that stuff, but you should meditate.” If you feel like I’m throwing it in your face a lot, it’s because I’m so passionate about it. It’s because it is the thing that has probably made the biggest difference in my life. 2018 is when I committed to a daily practice and I haven’t missed a day since then. In 2018, I went to a Mindvalley Intuition Training.

It’s like a bait and switch. I was like, “Intuition. I want to be more intuitive.” The whole thing was a Jose Silva meditation training. In fact, I’m not sure the order of the episodes that are coming out, but I have the cofounder of Mindvalley, Kristina Mand, coming on this show. I told her that’s how I was in the same room with her and her ex-husband, Vishen Lakhiani who trained me in Jose Silva’s method of meditation.

You’ll find out more about that if you’re interested in that technique or anything like that in that episode with Kristina Mand. You don’t need all that. All you need is three minutes and your breath. That’s how you start. Small baby steps. In fact, in my Burnout to Badass program, we start with one-minute meditation, because most people’s excuse of why they can’t meditate or won’t meditate is because it takes so long.

“I can’t sit there that long. I can’t turn off my thoughts for that long.” Yeah, that’s okay. You’re not supposed to. No one said you have to meditate a certain way. There are many methods of meditation. When people ask me what I’m doing these days, it’s very different from what I was doing 3 or 5 years ago or even last year. I add things to My meditation little by little. If I like a different technique, I’ll add it in or I’ll do a second meditation in the evening.

Right now, I’m leaning into Joe Dispenza’s meditations. If you want to learn more about this, Joe Dispenza, will you come to my show, please? That would be so amazing. One day, people. We’re planting the seed. Anyway, look them up. If you’re a beginner, I do not suggest you jump into Joe Dispenza meditations because they’re out there and you need to read his books to understand what he’s doing, or else it’s going to feel very weird.

In the meantime, like I said, you can use a free app like Insight Timer, Headspace, Calm and use guided meditation. Start at 1 minute, then 3, then 5 and see how it goes. The key is consistency. It’s showing up to the mat every day. Getting to the dojo, showing up to the mat and doing the work, putting in the reps, getting stronger and stronger, building that muscle. I will say this. It changed my life. How? It makes me calmer. I’ve leaned into a deep faith that things will work out. I used to be a worrier. I worry about everything all the time. You can ask my sister. She’d be like, “Stop worrying about everything. Stop worrying so much.” I was like, “I couldn’t turn it off,” until meditation. Not in the first few days, weeks, or probably even years. It takes a long time, but the benefits are so life-changing.

4. Movement

We have mindset, mindfulness, meditation. The fourth M is movement. Notice, I use movement and not the word exercise because some people can’t stand that word, exercise, so they will avoid it at all costs. Everyone knows that we need movement in our lives, that our bodies are meant to move every single day. We’re not meant to sit at a desk for twelve hours a day. We got to get outside. We got to get oxygen flowing through our bodies. Those cells need it. We need to energize ourselves with that motion, whatever it looks like.

Over the years and, again, with my fitness background, I know that there are three important parts to movement. One is strength training. The older we get, the more important it is for your bones, women, for your hormonal health, to balance out those hormones. All humans for human growth hormone to be released when we’re sleeping. Strength training helps get that going as well. Muscle acts as a sponge. The more muscle that you have on your body, the faster your metabolism will be.

As I said, it acts like a sponge to sugar. Anytime you eat sugar or carbohydrates, things that turn into sugar right away, your muscles are going to be the first things to use that sugar. Make sure you strength train. The second thing is cardio. Obviously, we have to get blood pumping and our hearts pumping with cardiovascular exercise. Last but not least, some type of stretch recovery, foam rolling, or something like that for recovery for your muscles.

Foam rolling is excellent for fascia and yoga. Whatever you like to do, make it part of your routine. The biggest problem for most people is they get stuck into 1 of those 3. For example, there are a lot of cardio queens out there that only do cardio and then they don’t stretch or they don’t lift weights. Obviously, we know people who don’t lift weights but don’t stretch. They’re walking around like meatheads. All three give you a balanced physique, but they’re also great for your mental health.

5. Nutrition

I have two more left. Nutrition and sleep. I can do an entire episode series on nutrition, but here’s what I did instead. I made you a free handout that you can download that has my twelve food rules. It’s “food rules” because they’re guidelines that I swear by that I believe if you actually follow these, then you’ll never have to diet. You’ll never have to worry about weight or anything because these twelve food rules do the things that help you with your mental health to help boost your confidence, to help you be able to focus all day long, to give you energy all day long, because it balances your blood sugar.

That’s pretty much the whole thing. If you know how to balance your blood sugar, you’re doing great. That’s the key right there. If I had to boil it all down, those twelve food rules will help you balance your blood sugar. Also, I touch on things like gut health because that is also connected to your mental health. I have a couple of bonus sheets on there that give you high-protein breakfast options because that’s where people get tripped up a lot, as well as some great healthy snack foods on that. If you go to Pages.JenniferCasetta.com/foodrules, that is where you’ll find it. Make sure you get that handout ASAP.

6. Sleep

The last of the six habits of high performers is sleep. This poor little habit is ignored by so many people when it is so important and connects to a lot of other habits. If you’re not eating well throughout the day, or you eat too late and have this big massive meal and you have too much alcohol that disrupts your sleep patterns, then you don’t sleep well. You wake up feeling awful. When you wake up feeling awful and not rested, there are studies that show that you will snack more and make poor decisions when it comes to nutrition.

People blow off workouts more when they’re tired. Their moods are terrible, so that’s going to set you up with a negative mindset, and so on. Do you see how all these things are connected? Do you see that? I think it’s so beautiful. Make sure that you get some great deep regenerative sleep. It’s when your body heals, it’s when your cells regenerate. It is so important out of these six. I want to say it’s probably number one, but I already said mindset was number one. Maybe it’s number two. Getting great sleep is going to keep you young, happy, joyful, fit and strong. Make sure you make it a priority.

How do you do that? In my Burnouts to Badass group, I made sleep hygiene handouts for them. We talk about it, but it’s about a few different things. It’s making sure you have the right nutrition so you’re not waking up because of too much caffeine, sugar or alcohol. It’s setting up your environment. Look around your bedroom as your environment. Set up for success. Do you have blackout shades? Is there light coming in from clocks or anything like that? You want to make sure it’s dark and cool. You want to make sure that screens have been put away. Things leading up to your bedtime as well is important.

Make sure you turn your screens off 30 minutes before and you’re not spinning and spinning in your thoughts. There are ways to downregulate your nervous system before you get into bed, like meditation, journaling or the things I’ve talked about already. Being mindful, a positive mindset before you go to bed as well.

There are ways to downregulate your nervous system before going into bed, just like meditation and journaling.

Closing Words

So much to unpack there. I would love to hear from you. What was your biggest takeaway from this episode? What would you like some more information on? What can I do for a deeper dive for you? I appreciate you so much for reading, but I want to make sure that I’m constantly delivering value for you. It’s about you. Let me know. I welcome the feedback. Make sure you get that handout that I already said at Pages.JenniferCasetta.com/foodrules. That’s it, folks. Six habits of high performers so you can feel like a badass all day long. Thanks for listening.