Category Archives: Pressure Performance

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How to Coach Your Team Through Anxiety on Opening Day

It is the time of year for season openers. Some have already begun. For a lot of athletes, the first game of the season is accompanied by excitement and anxiety. While a little excitement will keep them on their toes, too much anxiety can be a disaster. Below, I’ll share two tools with which you can equip your team to be at their best on opening day. 

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Why Imagery Needs to be Part of Your Routine

Why is it that the benefits of practice and preparation can evade us when it’s time to make the big play, close the deal or deliver the speech? Our muscles tighten, our tongues tie themselves in knots and we’re as awkward as a giraffe in puberty. Fear raises its nasty head, doubts creep in and all we can picture are the things that can go wrong. Has this ever happened to you?

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3 Tactics to Corral Nervousness and ACE Your Next Performance

If you are trying to be great at something, pursue excellence and fulfill your potential, chances are you’ve experienced the feeling of being nervous. Leading up to your big sales pitch, before briefing the board on last quarter’s numbers, before the first game of the season, preparing to give that speech – many of us have been there. The interesting thing about nervousness is that we only experience it when we want to be awesome.
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4 Powerful Lessons About Pursuing Our Potential from America’s Olympians

Over the past two weeks, I have enjoyed the athletic displays of excellence that characterize the Olympics. Sochi 2014 has been no exception. Truly there were so many great moments, performances, once-in-a-lifetime experiences and terrific stories. Among the American delegation, the stories of four athletes caught my attention because they teach us about pursuing our own potential.
 
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Mental Rehearsal: From Saving Lives to Winning at Work

While on vacation in Alaska, my wife Laura and I stopped off for a hike at Russian River Falls, a great place to see salmon running upriver. Perfect! At the trail-head, there was a sign warning of wildlife and reminding each passerby of the proper responses – something we had seen nearly everyday during our vacation.  A couple of miles into the hike, we came around a blind curve in the trail. Suddenly, silently, I felt Laura grab my right arm, as she directed my attention down the trail ahead of us. There, 40 yards away, around a slight bend in the trail, were one immense brown bear and two large cubs.