What Does Optimal Performance Look Like?

(Click here to return to the List of Assignments)

The goal of this reflection is to articulate these responses knowing what you know now, then use that as a basis for comparison later.  Prepare your responses as a cohesive paper using the numbered points as a guide for your paper's flow.  In other words, your opening paragraph will describe

  1. In your words, what is Optimal Performance? 
  2. Describe a situation where a desire to achieve optimal performance transformed into obsessive or compulsive behavior.  Then, describe the nature of optimal performance that enables a person to be neither complacent nor obsessive.
  3. What is the relationship between the concept of Five Components of Wellness and the concept of Optimal Performance? 
  4. What do you think is the single biggest barrier keeping all of us from seeking lives of optimal performance? 
  5. Prochaska has proposed that in making personal changes one goes through a predictable series of stages or “Stages of Change” which he defines as follows:  pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation/determination, action, maintenance and termination.  Where do you think the process breaks down for most people?  Why?
  6. Fantasize and describe:  Imagine making a change that resulted in more optimal performance in one component of wellness.  How would that affect the other four?