February's Mental Fitness Workouts

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What to Expect:

• Some mental training activities to try during the month of February

The most common question I get from executives and high performers outside of professional sports is: “what mindset training should I be doing?”So, for the next several months, I'll be sharing some simple things you can do to take your mental fitness to the next level. Just like physical exercise, training your mind can be a bit repetitive and takes a real commitment. But it's worth it.

If you want to build your mental fitness skills this year, here are some things to help you get started. And, if you want specific things you can do each day during February in addition to these foundational skills, I’ll be sharing a daily workout here starting Feb 1.

Foundational Mental Skills

1. The Balanced Critique

At the end of each day or performance, answer the following 3 questions:

• What did I do today that I want to keep doing?

• What did I do today that I want to do differently?

• What did I learn?

Answering the questions in this way (not what you did well/poorly) helps us become more objective, nonjudgmental evaluators of our performance. This is the start of a robust performance journal that we'll build on.

2. Mindfulness

If you haven't started a regular mindfulness practice, now is the time! You can start small - just 5 minutes a day will do. Some of my go-to mindfulness recommendations:

• If you like apps: Headspace, Stop-Breathe-Think, Calm

• Mindful Music - just listen to one track on an instrumental, and see if you can follow that throughout a song. If you get distracted, come back to that track.

• Mindful walking - a little bit more of an advanced practice, but a great one to do if you can get outside. I've gotten some good feedback on this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRuqe26F8SU

3. Values work

Take some time to reflect on what matters most to you. If you didn't complete the values exercise from last month, now would be a good time to try! You can check that post out here.

I'm looking to interview 5 high-performers about their goals, progress, and current challenges. If you want to connect and share more about what you're working on, please reply to this email.

In exchange, I'm happy to offer some tips and tricks to help you work through the challenge.