The Power of Perception: How Your Mind Shapes Athletic and Life Performance

If your perceptions, beliefs, and expectations can empower a sugar pill to reduce your pain, change your mood, alter your immune system and so on, then how is your mind contributing to your performance in sport and in life more generally?

Our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and actions result from a constellation of physiological processes in our brains in precisely the same sense as the circulation of our blood is caused by the beating of our hearts. 

Coaches would never tell an athlete to just run, swim, or bike around in order to become a faster competitor. And yet, this is exactly what most athletes are doing when it comes to mental performance. It is not that simple.

Before reaching for the next greatest supplement, training program, recovery tool, gizmo, etc., ask yourself what you are doing right now to leverage your brain physiology in ways that move you closer toward your goals.

We can do better. Feel free to shoot me a message if you would like to connect around these issues.

Image: Meta-analysis of functional imaging data from placebo control conditions of 20 double-blinded, randomized controlled, peer-reviewed clinical trials. Colored regions represent significant changes in activity within the brain’s pain network in response to an inert treatment believed to be an analgesic.