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It's a fancy word that means pondering past experiences -- often, our mistakes -- over and over. It could be something you said. Something you did. Something you didn't do.

Whatever the reason, we as human beings spend a lot of time dwelling on our past. And science says 70 percent of the time we only relive the negative aspects of our lives.

Why do we have such a hard time letting go? Perhaps it's because, deep down, we're wired to be problem solvers. We need to make meaning out of negative experiences.

But obsessing over a mistake won't change the past. It won't solve the problem. It will make it worse (according to psychologists at Yale and the University of California).

These psychologists say that living a mistake over and over impairs our problem solving abilities. It leads to increased negative thoughts and depression. It even erodes our support network -- no one wants to hear from the person who can't let things go.

In short: Dwelling on past mistakes puts us in, and keeps us in, a bad state. The very thing we're trying to get out of.

One of the key roles any leader plays is finding ways to motivate your team to reach your organization's goals. But the secret to motivating people is, wait for it .....that you can't do it. I have studied this issue by talking to and working with thousands of people over many years and the one thing everyone can agree on is that you can't motivate someone to do what they don't want to do.

What you need to do instead is find out what people want and then show them how they can get it. Motivation is intrinsic. People get excited about pursuing a goal when it's in their own self-interest. As a leader, the trick is to see if you can find an alignment between what your people want and what will help grow the organization. The upside is that if you can tap into the underlying desires people have, you will get amazing performances in return from them.

We might spend days, months, or even years trying to figure someone out. Is he who he says he is? Should I trust her? The wheels in our head spin as we think of all the variables and how they'll play out.

And still, we keep hearing that we should just listen to our instincts. Complicated questions, simple answer. What should we do, and where did this whole idea of the gut instinct come from, anyway?

Intuition isn't some magical, mysterious quality that we carry with us. It actually comes from the knowledge and past experiences that we all carry. Even if we're unable to explain why we feel the way we do, there's a logical explanation behind our gut feelings.

Whenever you encounter anything new, the unconscious side of your brain is constantly making assessments. It takes in certain cues, such as a smile or parts of a story, and then matches it with something similar in our database of memories to come up with a conclusion. Meanwhile, our conscious side remains unaware of this rapid process taking place.

A 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology revealed that sitting up straight and sticking your chest out can boost self confidence, while slouching can lead to negative thoughts. Another study found that good posture actually increases your productivity and creativity.

There is a world of difference between normal activity and peak performance.  It’s the glimpses into the peak state that fuel the intuition that we’re meant for greater things.  In this article, we’ll take a look at peak performance and a surprisingly simple strategy for more consistently tapping into our peak mode.

The Psychology of Peak Performance

Two elements turn ordinary activities into performance activities: 1) we keep score of the outcomes that matter and 2) we institute practice measures to systematically pursue the improvement of our scores.  Such deliberate practice lies at the heart of the development of chess players, athletes, Broadway stars, and elite medical facilities.  Once we keep score and devote ourselves to a continuous improvement in what we do and how we do it, we transform routine into growth.  Recreation is not a cumulative activity.  It is activity pursued at the time for its own sake.  Peak performance, on the other hand, is cumulative: it’s a focused, ongoing attempt at improvement.  We can go to the gym for enjoyment or we can go to the gym to train for aerobic conditioning.  The first activity is expressive and present-centered; the second is instrumental and forward-focused.

Incompatibility has the potential to derail even the simplest of projects.