From High-Functioning Anxiety To High-Performance Living (My Story + Full Guide)

When you go on any journey, there’s a few key things you need to know.

1. You need to know where you are.
2. You need to know where you’re going.
3. And you need to know how you’re going to get there.

In this blog I’m going to share my journey from high functioning anxiety to high performance living and I’m going to give you the full guide if you’re wanting to make that change as well.

If you’re reading this then I’m going to make a well-informed assumption that you are a high-functioning person who is stressed out and anxious.

Welcome to the club!

You’re like most successful business owners and entrepreneurs.

We’re all a bit unhinged.

We’re pretty good at managing our stress levels but sometimes they can get the better of us.

You see this in a lot of successful business owners who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, porn or sex (or just the work itself).

A lot of entrepreneurs are like autistic kids who become hyper-fixated on their businesses and everything else in life takes a back seat.

• Their health goes to shit.
• Their mental health goes to shit.
• Their relationships go to shit.

The things that make life worth living seem to disappear and all that’s left is just the daily grind.

It can turn really sad, really quick.

• Negative thoughts start creeping in.
• Anxiety and depression start to build.
• You’re left feeling unfulfilled with life.
• You start to get snappy and frustrated.
• You become distant and not present.

It’s a slippery slope.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for the hustle.

The question you’ve got to ask yourself is…

Is it worth it to sacrifice your life for “success”?

If you’re like the business owners I work with then you want to keep growing your business but with less stress (and without sacrificing success).

If that’s you, I’ve got good news for you…

You can.

I’m about to show you exactly how I did it and lay out the complete guide to go from high functioning anxiety to high performance living.

This is not some click bait title.

I’m going to lay out the same step-by-step plan I personally used and have now taught to 250+ business professionals to help them totally transform their lives.

There's one fundamental idea you need to understand before we begin.

It’s this…

• The beliefs you have in your mind, create the thoughts that you think.
• The thoughts you think in your mind, create the feelings you feel.
• The feelings you feel, create the actions you take in your life.
• The actions you take become your habits.
• Your habits create your results.

If you’re not having the results you want in your life, you’ve gotta change your habits.

If you want to change your habits, you’ve gotta change your actions.

If you want to change your actions, you’ve gotta change your thoughts and feelings.

If you want to change your thoughts and feelings, you’ve gotta change your beliefs.

Write that down and really THINK about the idea.

It’s the most powerful idea you can ever understand.

It’s the vehicle we’re going to use to get you from A to B.

Remember, we need to know where we are..

A) High functioning stress and anxiety

We need to know where we want to go…

B) High performance living

And we need to know how we’re going to get there.

When you really grasp the idea I just shared with you, you’ll realise that you have access to an infinitely powerful mind and you can use that mind to create new beliefs which will create new results in life.

The implementation of this idea alone will change your life completely.

Now before we dive into anything else, let me share my journey with you…

My Story

I come from a family of business owners on my Dads side

My dad, my uncles and aunties, my grandma and grandpa, my cousins, my brothers.

We’re all crazy.

I grew up running a muck in my dads shops with my brother.

We were exposed to entrepreneurship for our whole life.

Now my family members have had success in business, but I also saw a lot of destruction in their personal lives.

Addictions, stress, relationship breakdowns, depression, you name it.

So from a relatively young age, I decided I didn’t want to have success if that’s what it meant.

I wanted to make something of myself but I didn’t want it to be a sacrifice at the altar of my personal life.

I wanted to have a more holistic version of success.

A version of success where I could be healthy, wealthy and happy.

I wanted to be a fit, sober, and high-performing individual.

I wanted to be a family man with a wife and kids who love me and love spending time with me.

I wanted to be a great leader in my business and provide meaningful services to my clients.

However due to the environment I grew up in, there were a few personal challenges I had to overcome on the way to creating the life I live now.

I struggled with anxiety, overthinking and a lot of general fears in my teenage years.

This led to drinking and drugs in my early 20’s to “escape”.

I got the substance abuse under control in my mid 20’s and started to work on building businesses.

I had a few failures.

Then I found my purpose in life and things started to change.

For a bit more context, I started meditation when I was 17 to help with my mental health.

I didn’t tell anyone about my meditation practice for nearly 10 years.

It was very personal to me and back then meditation wasn’t as cool or trendy as it is now.

But when COVID hit, I realised I had a unique skillset with meditation, mindset, stress and anxiety management and self development.

This is when I became a teacher and a coach.

I started to help people who were struggling with the stress, anxiety and overwhelm that came with the covid years.

The business took off.

I grew a lot in the first few years. 

This is when the high-functioning anxiety started to come up.

I had got my anxiety under control from my teenage years and early 20’s.

But now with the added pressure of the business, getting married and starting a family, it came back.

It was different this time though, more subtle.

Like most business owners, I just thought it was part of the package.

Until I started burning out, feeling tired and exhausted for no reason and getting fatigued.

This is when I realised there was something going on.

This is when I made the decision to get it under control and lock in on high-performance living.

That’s what I’m going to talk to you about in this post.

The full guide for how I went from high-functioning anxiety to high-performance living.

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

• Life Audit
• Goal Setting
• New Habits
• Discipline & Consistency
• Accountability
  

Life Audit

First things first, we need to audit your life to see what’s not working and what needs to change.

You can do this by answering a simple set of questions.

• What’s currently challenging me?
• What’s not working for me in my life?
• What areas of my life do I know I need to improve in?

Before we start adding anything else, we need to know what to remove.

There’s a concept I love called “Via Negativa”.

It’s a Latin term that means “by way of negation” or “the negative way”.

Often success in life is not about adding more, but by stripping away the baggage holding you back.

Goal Setting

Once you’ve cleared your mind of the baggage and the shit that holds you back, it’s time to get clear on what you actually want in your life.

If you want to live a high performance life, you need to be crystal clear on what that looks like for you.

Again, a simple set of questions can help you gain some incredible clarity on the kind of life you want to create for yourself.

• What do I really want in life? *Paint a picture about business, relationships, health & life
• What would my perfect day look like?
• What is in my vision for my future?

Notice how when you think, you think in pictures.

When you think of your car, what do you see?

When you think of your partner, what do you see?

When you think of your business, what do you see?

When you think of your health, what do you see?

When you think of your body, what do you see?

This is an experiment to help you understand that you think in pictures.

So when you think about the life you’d love to be living in 12-months time. 

What do you see?

Use your imagination here.

DREAM BIG.

Spend some time writing the thoughts you see in your mind on paper.

“Thoughts untangle through lips and fingertips” - Unknown

If you’ve been too “in your head” lately, overthinking everything, it’s because you haven’t taken the time to untangle your mind.

It’s kinda like if you don’t “work out” your body, you feel like shit.

If you don’t “work in” your mind, it starts to go to shit as well.

This brings us to the next step.

New Habits 

Now you’ve got some clarity around what you need to stop doing.

You’ve got some clarity around the goals you want to work towards.

You also need to know what habits to start doing to get you toward those goals.

I teach my clients a simple morning routine that helps them set up everyday in a way that supports them in moving in the direction of their goals.

You’re a fully grown adult so you don’t need someone to hold your hand all day everyday.

But when it comes to reprogramming your mind and changing your beliefs, there are some daily habits you can implement to fast track that process.

Remember that idea I shared with you at the start of this video?

Your beliefs create your thoughts which create your feelings which create your actions which create your habits which create your results?

That’s what I can help you with.

• Changing your beliefs by reprogramming your mind.
• Managing your emotions by regulating your nervous system.

This will help you to stop overthinking and being consumed by negative thoughts.

It will help you to stop being so triggered, anxious and frustrated.

When you get these mental and emotional issues sorted, you’ll be able to focus on the habits you need to achieve the goals you’ve got for yourself.

Discipline & Consistency

The next step is to be disciplined and consistent.

You’ve gotta LOCK IN.

If you find this hard to do, it’s because you have shit beliefs about yourself and your ability to be disciplined.

Or you have shit beliefs about what it means to be disciplined in the first place.

Those beliefs are not helping you get where you want to go.

Discipline and consistency are ingredients that can not be forgotten in the recipe for success.

There’s no way around it.

If you find it hard to be disciplined, ask yourself the following question.

• What do I believe about being disciplined?

Your answer will reveal your mental limitations.

Transformational Takeaway: You can ask yourself this question in any area of your life to discover your limiting beliefs: What do I believe about… XYZ?

This brings us to our final point.

Accountability

If you’re not where you want to be in life, it’s because you haven’t done what’s necessary to get there yet.

It’s as simple as that.

It’s insane to think if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you’ll get a different result.

If you want a different result, you need to do something different.

You’ve heard it before, “if nothing changes, nothing changes.”

There’s nothing like having someone in your corner who’s gone through the struggle and is living the high performance ethos to call you out on your bullshit and keep you accountable.

If you haven’t done it by yourself so far, why don’t you try something different?

If you’re ready to finally draw a line in the sand and start backing yourself to create the life you really want to be living, I can help.

There’s a couple of ways you can work with me:

1. You can join the Mind Launch Membership and get self-paced access to the tools, methods and your own personalised game plan.

*We are running a Spring Awakening Deal until 30th September. Anyone who joins before the end of the month will receive our Conscious Creator course included in your membership. Price will be going up 1st Oct 2025.

2. You can hire me as your 1:1 coach and I'll keep you accountable with weekly coaching to take your performance to the next level.

I look forward to welcoming you in and helping you out.

With Optimism,
Josh