MENTAL TOUGHNESS:
THE BASIS OF HIGH PERFORMANCE
Our ever-changing world is challenging people and teams to adapt faster than ever. In the middle of uncertainty, we must perform at a high level and constantly improve our results.
However, being highly technically skilled is not enough. When our results do not match our skills, we get frustrated, doubt our abilities, and often work harder to get results. We skip necessary rest and sleep, drink more coffee, and use other stimulants to keep us alert.
Those quick fixes may work in the short term, but they do not reap long-term results. Even worse, they sabotage our performance and results and our physical, mental, and emotional health.
HOW CAN I HELP YOU?
With a series of mental toughness workshops that will help you to unlock your potential and build the mindsets, behaviors, and attitudes that make personal and professional success possible.
FORMAT
Zoom or face-to-face group workshop
Each workshop has a length of 60 – 90 – 120 minutes.
Each workshop is highly interactive and follows the principles of experiential learning.
You will have an active role in the activities and discussions, and you will leave with concrete strategies and accionable steps to apply immediately in your life.
TARGET AUDIENCE
People and teams that must perform at a high level under pressure:
Doctors, health care providers, lawyers, sales teams, musicians, graduate students and more.
You may say, “This stress will pass,” but the pressure, the stress, and demands will likely steadily increase, and if you keep the same strategies and stay in this cycle:
Your irritability and emotional outbursts will negatively affect your work and personal relationships
Your lack of focus will lead to more frequent and more serious mistakes
Your mental fog and lack of clarity in critical moments will lead you to make bad decisions limiting your results and performance
Your low energy and motivation will cause a negative spiral of thinking,
All of this may cause you to feel trapped lowering your confidence, and leave you exhausted and burned.
For an ever-changing world and high-pressure environments, it is crucial to equip you with research-backed skills and strategies that you can apply in your everyday life. You need to develop the focus required to perform under pressure and learn how to replenish your energy sources to be able to transcend difficult circumstances and regain a sense of control so you can achieve your full potential consistently without sacrificing your health.
LEARN MORE ABOUT EACH WORKSHOP
Workshop 1: Developing your Jedi Focus
A fully connected focus is a complete, positive connection with an experience, learning opportunity, performance, action or interaction.
Focusing is the most important mental skill for performing at a high level in any field and endeavor. The type of focus affects everything you do and what you experience and accomplish in life – from your family life to your professional successes.
Unfortunately, many have not had the opportunity to learn to focus in positive and connected ways, leading to difficulties in learning and performing, and feeling overwhelmed with pressure and stress.
Understanding what focus is and how to do it will improve your performance, you will be more efficient, be able to do more in less time, reduce stress, and achieve better results.
Objectives of the workshop:
At the end of the Jedi Focus workshop, you will be able to:
Describe what focus is and why it is important in your discipline
Identify the consequences of multitasking
Analyze your best (and less than best) focus and how it influences your results
Distinguish between what is under your control and what is not
Identify three foci that you can use every day to perform at your best
Employ strategies to refocus when distracted
Develop an everyday plan that will allow you to perform at your best every day
Suggested length: 60 – 90 - 120 minutes.
Workshop 2: Balancing work-life the two zones of excellence
Life consists of two zones: the Green Zone and the Gold Zone. The Gold Zone involves the performance domain/discipline, whereas the Green Zone is the area that gives you energy.
To achieve your full potential, you need to recognize both zones and be able to enter the right zone at the right time. The Green Zone without the Gold Zone does not allow you to achieve your performance potential, but the Gold Zone without the Green Zone leads to stress and burnout. When both zones are full, you experience a sense of meaning and purpose in life. You can think and analyze situations clearly, make good decisions, be creative, and have the energy and motivation to achieve your goals. This allows you to perform at your highest level. However, when you do not respect each zone and keep them separate, the zones become blurry and you will experience a lack of motivation, have low energy, be more irritable, feel physically and mentally scattered, and have a sense that something is missing.
People who consistently perform at a high level have energy reserves and know what to do to replenish them constantly in order to be at their best when they need it the most. In this workshop, you can learn that too.
Objectives of the workshop:
At the end of the “Two Zones for Excellence” workshop, you will be able to:
Describe what the Green Zone and Gold Zone are and their importance to perform at a high level
Recognize the impact that mixing both zones have on your life and performance
Analyze your Green Zone and how you can leverage one area of it to improve the rest
Identify sources of energy gains and energy drains and develop a plan to manage your energy
Identify three strategies to implement right away to foster the Green Zone and sustain high performance
Suggested length: 60 – 90 minutes.
Workshop 3: Developing a Growth Mindset for Success
What is behind the results of elite athletes and high performers? Let’s reveal the myths around talent, motivation, and inspiration to reconnect with what makes it possible: A growth mindset (source: Carol Dweck) and ongoing learning.
What is mindset? Mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world and yourself. It influences how you think, feel, and behave in any given situation and therefore what you do with your performances. Consistent high-level performers follow their own best paths, are self-directed learners, and do not waste hard-learned lessons. They embrace them, remember them and act on them.
Objectives of the workshop:
At the end of the workshop “Developing a Growth Mindset for Success,” you will be able to:
Describe what is a growth and fixed mindset
Apply self-talk strategies to develop a growth mindset
Use a strategy to analyze your performances to learn lessons and act on them in the future
Suggested length: 60 – 90 minutes.
Workshop 4: DEVELOPING A POSITIVE PERSPECTIVE
Learning to have a positive perspective and finding what gives us joy is key to a positive and meaningful life. However, just looking at the glass as half full may be challenging for some people since many have not had the opportunity to learn what looking at a glass half full means, or are able to recognize what gives them joy.
Highlights can be found within simple daily experiences and in life’s greatest challenges. They directly affect the quality and joyfulness of our everyday lives. Having a positive perspective influences your well-being and also the people around you.
Objectives of the workshop:
At the end of the workshop “Developing a Positive Perspective,” you will be able to:
Describe what a highlight is and its importance
Recognize what type of highlights you enjoy the most
Develop a plan to enjoy more highlights every day
Suggested length: 60 – 90 minutes.
Workshop 5: Forest Therapy Walk to Relax and Refresh
High-stress environments, non-stop technology, demanding careers and multiple pressures to be on top of things, can lead to stress, dissatisfaction, frustration, sadness and burnout. If people are not intentional about caring for their mental and emotional health, all of these stressors and more can negatively impact daily life.
In our tech-advanced culture, many of us now spend a lot more time indoors than we do outdoors. We're constantly tied to screens that fight for our attention. The more we gravitate indoors, the more disconnected we become. This disconnection leads to increases in anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, and many other illnesses and diseases, both physical AND mental.
Forest Therapy is a research-based framework for supporting healing and wellness through immersion in forests and other natural environments. It is inspired by the Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku, which literally translates as "forest bathing." In the 1980s, Japan experienced an economic boom due to the massive migration from the countryside to the cities, which coincided with a technological boom. The population is increasingly separated from natural environments and spent more time in offices, in front of screens, with artificial light, and with long and stressful working hours. They began to experience an increase in autoimmune diseases, cancer, and heart problems.
The Japanese government initiated several projects to stimulate visits to the forests as preventive medicine. In multiple studies, they found many benefits for people's physical, mental and emotional health.
Forest Therapy – or "Forest Bathing" – is a guided nature experience that aims to support your health and well-being and restore your relationship with the natural world. The walk is open-ended, there is no prescription for what you "should" experience, or what benefits you "should" receive. Instead, it is a practice of developing a deepening relationship of reciprocity.
It consists of a safe, slow, and relaxed stroll, covering a short distance (no more than half a mile). During the walk, the guide facilitates a series of sensory invitations to lower the rhythm of the mind and body, awaken the senses, be present and interact in a deeper way with the natural environment.
Connecting to nature is needed now more than ever for our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and the health of the planet. The medicine of nature is the antidote to our modern stressful lifestyles. There are many wonderful health benefits attributed to forest therapy, including boosted immune function, improved cardiovascular and respiratory health, attention restoration, and a reduction in stress and depression.
*The walk can be in person or by Zoom. If you participate remotely by Zoom, you can join from a nearby natural area, backyard, porch, or even from inside. Find a place in nature near where you are, your garden, back yard, at home by a window. Anywhere that feels good to you.
Objectives of the walk:
During the Forest Therapy Walk, you will have the opportunity to:
Slow down
Reconnect with nature through all of your senses
Feel refreshed, relaxed, and connected to the beauty, simplicity, and uniqueness of the natural world around you.
Structure of the walk:
1. Arriving and Introduction
Arrive at the place of the walk and be welcomed with a brief introduction to this practice and what the walk entails.
2. A Journey into Sensory Awareness
The first part of the walk is a gentle journey into the awareness of our body, supporting us to truly arrive in the present moment and awaken our senses. This is an invitation to slow down and meet the world from a place of awakened presence.
3. Connection and Relationship with Nature
As the walk unfolds, we come into a closer connection with our surroundings through a series of invitations that open the possibility for relationships with the world around us.
4. Tea and Closing
The walk comes to an end when we all come together to share tea. This is a time to gather and share stories.
Suggested length: 90 minutes - 120 minutes - 180 minutes.