Welcome to Week 34 of the High Performance Playbook.

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If you’re new and just tuning in to the HPP, we cover the strategies and frameworks that separate the 1% from the .01%. We dive deep into: health & fitness + longevity, personal finance & investing, business growth hacks, and how to optimize all areas of your life.

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Ready? Start your engines… Let’s GO:

Mindset & Psychology

Cognitive Anchoring: Automate Your Best Decisions

High performers aren’t more disciplined by nature. They’re more strategic about how they design their defaults. Rather than relying on bursts of motivation or heroic willpower, they build systems that make the right choice the easy choice. 

One of the most effective of these systems is cognitive anchoring: linking high-value actions to cues, environments, or rituals so behavior becomes automatic.

Think of it as setting up mental “autopilot.” A leader who wants to read 30 minutes of strategy each morning might pair that habit with a daily coffee ritual. The smell of coffee becomes the signal: read now.

Over time, the brain associates one with the other so tightly that the act requires almost no deliberation. The result is more consistency, less friction, and freed-up mental bandwidth for decisions that actually matter.

This approach scales across every domain of performance.

• Fitness: Lace up your shoes right after brushing your teeth. The cue of brushing triggers the workout.

• Nutrition: Keep healthy snacks visible, indulgent ones hidden or not even in the house. Your environment becomes an anchor.

• Work: Start deep work after a short breathing exercise or playlist. The sound becomes your focus cue.

• Learning: Leave an open book on your pillow. When you see it, you read. No negotiation.

The secret lies in three deliberate steps:

1. Identify the behaviors that create disproportionate results.

2. Pair each with a reliable, repeatable trigger already in your daily rhythm.

3. Reinforce the link with consistency until the behavior feels instinctive.

Anchors are powerful because they transform intention into identity. What starts as an external reminder becomes an internal reflex. You don’t want to focus on simply doing the reps, but becoming the kind of person who does what you’re trying to do.

Think more, “I’m the kind of person who does this.” Every anchor built reduces decision fatigue, tightens focus, and compounds momentum.

Cognitive anchoring doesn’t just help you do more; it helps you think less about what to do. The best performers don’t chase discipline. They automate it.

When your routines carry your priorities forward automatically, you start every day with an advantage.

😴 Biggest Story of the Week (Mindset & Psychology)

Health & Fitness + Longevity

Mitochondria Matters: Power Your Cells, Power Your Life

Think of your body as a city. Every cell is a building, and mitochondria are the power plants keeping the lights on.

When they run efficiently, everything hums: your mind is sharp, your muscles are strong, your mood is stable. When they falter, fatigue, fog, and inflammation creep in.

These microscopic organelles are the foundation of your vitality. They convert food and oxygen into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the currency your body uses for every function including thinking, moving, repairing, and even sleeping. Mitochondrial decline is one of the earliest markers of aging. 

When energy production drops, every system compensates, leading to metabolic slowdown, reduced immunity, and cognitive drag.

The good news is you can train your mitochondria like muscles. Research consistently shows that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and resistance exercise stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis, the creation of new, more efficient mitochondria.

Movement signals your body to upgrade its energy systems. Even brisk walks, sprints, or weightlifting sessions can rebuild cellular endurance.

Nutrition is the next lever. Micronutrients such as CoQ10, magnesium, and B vitamins act as cofactors in the mitochondrial energy chain. Without them, your “power grid” short-circuits.

Real food sources like leafy greens, eggs, nuts, and fatty fish supply these nutrients naturally, but supplementation can help if your diet or energy levels are lacking.

Lifestyle habits amplify or deplete this cellular power. Chronic stress floods the body with cortisol, impairing mitochondrial function. Quality sleep allows mitochondria to repair oxidative damage accumulated during the day.

Sunlight exposure, especially morning light, synchronizes circadian rhythms and supports energy metabolism through vitamin D and nitric oxide pathways.

Emerging research even shows that intermittent fasting enhances mitochondrial resilience. Periods of fasting trigger autophagy, your body’s cellular cleanup process, recycling old or damaged mitochondria and replacing them with fresh, efficient ones.

The takeaway is simple but profound: your energy isn’t just a mood or mindset issue; it’s a cellular one. Optimizing mitochondria means optimizing life itself. 

You likely don’t need a new supplement stack or biohacking gadget. Start with movement, sleep, sunlight, and stress management. Layer in smart nutrition. Your cells will reward you with focus, stamina, and a deeper sense of vitality that compounds over time.

When you power your mitochondria, you power your life.

🏃‍♂️ Biggest Story of The Week (Health & Fitness)

Personal Finance Tip of the Week

Discipline as the Ultimate Wealth Lever

When most people think about wealth, they think in numbers: income, portfolio size, interest rates, or returns. 

But true financial mastery isn’t primarily mathematical; it’s behavioral. The most powerful wealth lever isn’t luck, insight, or even intelligence; rather, it’s discipline.

Discipline bridges the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. It’s what transforms abstract financial goals into daily action.

Studies in behavioral finance consistently show that consistent, disciplined investors outperform impulsive ones, not because they find better opportunities, but because they stick to a structured plan when everyone else reacts emotionally.

At its core, discipline is about systematizing good decisions so they happen automatically. High performers know that willpower is finite and emotions are volatile, so they build guardrails around their financial lives.

Automatic contributions to investment accounts, debt repayment schedules, and strict spending caps create friction against bad decisions and flow toward good ones.

Automation is the unsung hero of modern wealth building. When your saving or investing contributions happen automatically, you bypass the daily temptation to “wait until later.”

When credit card balances are paid in full every month, you eliminate the mental fatigue of managing interest. Every process you systematize frees up cognitive bandwidth for higher-level thinking like strategy, creativity, and leadership instead of micro-managing your impulses.

Discipline also acts as a shock absorber during market volatility. The disciplined investor doesn’t sell in panic or buy in euphoria. They keep executing the plan. Over years and decades, that steadiness compounds just like interest.

The short-term wins of speculation fade, but the quiet power of discipline builds unshakable wealth.

And here’s the paradox: the more disciplined you are, the more freedom you create. When your finances are structured, you can take strategic risks like launching a business, investing aggressively, or traveling without the background anxiety of instability.

In every wealth story that lasts, discipline is the constant thread. Not the biggest wins, but the smallest, repeated choices that are usually automated, consistent, and unglamorous.

You don’t need to predict the market. You need to master yourself.

In the long run, discipline isn’t just a virtue, it’s the ultimate form of leverage. The compounding of capital begins with the compounding of consistent behavior.

💸 Biggest Story of the Week (Personal Finance)

Business Playbook - Huge Update

Major Full Circle Moment: My partners and I Just Bought Back Our eCommerce Company for $1.8M (After Selling It For Mid-8 Figures Just a Few Years Ago)

I still can’t believe this actually happened.

Imagine launching a brand in 2017, growing it fast, selling it in 2021 for an 8-figure exit…and then buying it back a few years later for around 1/10th of what you sold it for. 

That’s exactly what just happened… a full-circle journey packed with lessons for entrepreneurs who care about real growth and real ownership.

Here are a few nuggets that any entrepreneur can relate to:

• Build a standout product. The California Beach Co.’s flagship Pop ‘N Go™ Playpen is more than “just another kids playpen.” Its patented technology allows it to be set up in seconds, carries a UPF 50+ shade, is lightweight (only 7 lbs), and fits travel-ready families. We exited in 2021 because we had been building for 4-5 years already and we had the opportunity to take some chips off the table at the height of the eCommerce wave. Today, that reputation and the strength of the brand is the foundation for us buying back the company.

• Relaunch with intent. Buying the company back means re-aligning it with our original vision of safe products for parents, adventure-ready, and built to last. This isn’t a rewind, though. As an entrepreneur, when you reacquire or double-down, you re-commit to what made the business unique in the first place.

• Story amplifies brand momentum. The narrative here of launch, sale, buy-back (Dave Portnoy style) creates visibility and authenticity in one. When you talk about your business, tell the full story: the risk, the exit, the return. It resonates with people. We’ve learned so many lessons in this process, I could write a whole book about it. And the fires we had to walk through together built a bond across our team that is unshakeable and is now the driving motivation to turn this brand into a $100M+ company.

So if you’re building, scaling, considering an exit, or want to stay in control, remember this: ownership isn’t just about equity, it’s about vision, timing, leverage, and TEAM.

*PS: If you’d like to follow our journey as we build a $100M eComm brand, follow us on Instagram HERE. You can also follow me on X where I post daily business content.

👨‍🏫 Biggest Story of the Week (Business)

DOPAMINE HIT

Thanks for reading!

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🗓️ STAY TUNED:

Next week, we’re exploring how Anchoring Your Mind in the best response to given situations or cues can make you exponentially more effective.

… Stay tuned. You won’t want to miss it!

Here’s to your success,

Austin L. Wright

Join my inner circle - Follow me on X for daily business breakdowns, lifestyle hacks, and a behind-the-scenes look at what my team and I are building.

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_{Disclaimer: The ideas shared in this newsletter are those of the author, and this is in no way intended to be medical, legal, or financial advice. Always do your own research and consult with licensed professionals.}