5 ways to be your best

You may never stand on an Olympic podium, says Peter Jensen, but you can still put in a gold-medal performance in any arena of your life. A psychology coach, Jensen has worked with Canadian athletes at every Olympic Games since 1984. He believes that what sets elite competitors apart—and what anyone can emulate—is their approach.

“If physical fitness is power, strength, endurance and flexibility, then mental fitness is perspective, energy management, imagery and focus,” says Jensen, author of Igniting the Third Factor, a book on helping people reach their potential. He reminds his students that athletes’ physical gifts only partly account for their triumphs. “Getting mentally fit sets the table for success.”

Jensen says that his involvement in sports, growing up in a small mining town in northern Quebec, led to a fascination with sports psychology. “From a very young age, I competed in everything: baseball, hockey, football,” he says. “I had a very excitable personality, and learned that my excitability got in the way of performing at my best in certain situations.

This was a lesson that laid the groundwork for his philosophy as a performance coach. “If an endeavour is at all competitive, the mind can play a huge role in success or failure.”

His work with national teams, Olympic coaches and premier athletes led Jensen to found his consulting firm, Performance Coaching, in 1991. Helping athletes win Olympic medals is one aspect of Jensen’s business; helping people in organizations perform like Olympians is the other.

But just how can we achieve our potential? Jensen and a few medal-winning athletes share their best advice.

1. Understand Pressure

You might think that competing in a world championship is nerve-racking. But athletes rise to the occasion because they’re ready, not because they excel under pressure.

“Most pressure comes from being unprepared,” says Cherie Piper, a member of the Canadian Olympic women’s ice-hockey team, who played in the Olympics in 2002 and 2006, and is a 2010 hopeful. Before a big game, Piper is relatively calm. Nerves aren’t bad, but why should Piper feel pressure? She has trained for just that occasion.

One of the things she has learned from Jensen is managing the “arousal level.” Two factors drive up that level—the perception of an event’s importance and uncertainty about its outcome. When your arousal level gets too high, you can lose focus and make mistakes.

Whether playing sports, trying to ace a business pitch or writing a test, being primed breeds confidence. You think Roger Federer shakes when he’s down love-40 and serving to save the match? He’s aced that serve thousands of times, so he knows he can again. That’s not pressure. Pressure is meeting a client when you haven’t reviewed the file.

2. Focus on the Now

How often have you heard the athlete’s cliché of taking it one period/quarter/inning/game at a time? In high-level athletics, performance expectations can be overwhelming, says Jensen. Thinking about the future isn’t beneficial. You’re aware of the ultimate objective, but you need to narrow your focus to: What do I need to do right now?

This means ensuring a focus on expectations. Consider a salesperson thinking of how to make the year-end numbers. It’s as daunting, in its own way, as a championship is to an athlete. What’s constructive is thinking about the next chance to perform and improve—just as the salesperson should simply concentrate on the next sale. “And the results take care of themselves,” Jensen says.

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