EPIC Performance
Lessons from 100 Executives and Endurance Athletes on Reaching Your Peak
EPIC Performance is an encouraging guidebook that nurtures personal achievement via a supportive framework.
Bryan Gillette’s motivational self-help guide EPIC Performance encourages overcoming doubt, dreaming bigger, and actualizing one’s goals.
Introducing five pillars of success that are arranged in acronym form, this book highlights values like envisioning (or understanding one’s values and purpose), planning, iterating (or continuously improving one’s plans), collaborating, and performing. Within these steps come lessons, as about the value of finding an accountability partner; of writing down and vocalizing one’s dreams; and of surrounding oneself with people who have similar passions. The book also draws on the experiences of successful people in diverse fields to punctuate its points, appealing to the successes of educators, coaches, and venture capitalists alike.
In familiar form, the book advises its audience to take calculated risks, but it also cautions them not to expect overnight success. Here, success requires planning ahead, and one’s progress toward success can be measured. A sense that pursuing a great idea can require an emotional investment emerges, alongside encouragements that people have a back-up plan just in case.
In its moves between being ambitious and realistic, the book often comes to seem applicable to people’s real lives and situations. This impression is offset by Gillette’s personal anecdotes, which cover his unique travel experiences and impressive work as an endurance athlete. A seventy-six hour marathon experience through the Sierra Nevada is among these singular memories, as are family adventures in Africa, the Middle East, and South America; such experiences are mined for more general lessons in taking risks and preparation.
Every chapter starts with a brief introduction to the content that follows. The chapters themselves are short and succinct, with their information separated into clear, digestible subtopics. Straightforward lists help to break the material down further, as with a record of the behaviors that are required to execute a specific plan; of means of identifying the issues that may crop up when one is pursuing their goals; and of ways to evaluate the root causes of one’s issues. Additionally, reflection questions pair with useful exercises at the end of each chapter so that the audience can self-assess, helping people to determine which goals are most important to them. These include tips to set a prospective date by which to achieve one’s goals, and to break the work toward that goal down into manageable bits. Further, the book includes sidebars that summarize its main points for easy reference.
EPIC Performance is an encouraging and navigable guidebook that nurtures personal achievement via a supportive framework.
Reviewed by
Edith Wairimu
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
