Maximising mental performance

Keywords

Resilience - Coaching - Focus - Emotions - Performance - Self-awareness - Decision-making - Neuroplasticity - Intentionality

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Evan Marks, a seasoned mental performance coach with over 25 years of Wall Street wisdom, shares his journey from a career in finance to coaching professional athletes, C-suite executives, and Wall Street professionals. He also talks about his experiences coaching NASCAR drivers including Jimmie Johnson and their pit teams, and the need to focus on the significance of acknowledging and utilising emotions for enhanced performance.  He also discusses the mental and physical stamina required for professional drivers and the exceptional conditioning that enables them to maintain focus and performance under pressure for extended periods.

Evan also focuses on the importance of self-awareness, emotional management, and intentional decision-making and explores the concept of neuroplasticity and its relevance to personal development.

Main topics

• How the human brain's perception of time and its ability to slow down and speed up can be useful in high-pressure situations.

• Intentionality in decision-making and how it allows individuals to create beneficial behaviours despite their feelings.

• Neuroplasticity and its relevance to personal development.

• The importance of being conscious and intentional to create new neural pathways for personal growth.

• The role of emotions in shaping behaviour and the importance of self-awareness in managing them.

• The need for individuals to prioritise their values and energy to achieve a healthy work-life balance.

 Action items

You can find out more about Evan at M1PerformanceGroup.com or through his social media LinkedIn in/Evan-Marks, x-twitter @EMarksPW or Instagram @EMarks72Web: M1PerformanceGroup.com

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.   

Resilience and accountability to ‘Win the Day’

Keywords

Resilience – Coaching – Accountability – Productivity

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Dr Russell Thackeray talks to Ben Kirk, a productivity and high-performance expert. Ben shares his story of how he and his family adapted to the change of moving to Sweden for 10 years. He discusses the setback he faced in his entrepreneurial journey and how he bounced back by leveraging those lessons in his current role as a business and executive coach in Australia. Ben goes on to talk about the role of a coach being direct and challenging and how coaching can help individuals identify and overcome procrastination and perfectionism and provide support and accountability, particularly for those who struggle with these issues.

Main topics

• The significance of resilience and learning from mistakes in the context of accountability.

• The importance of continuous improvement and goal achievement and this approach promotes learning and progress, even in the face of setbacks.

• How coaching can help individuals identify and overcome procrastination and perfectionism.

• The importance of creating habits and routines, understanding triggers, and increasing clarity.

• Implementing strategies for personal and professional growth and the concept of weekly review.

 Action items

• Explore Ben’s website, wintheday.com.au

• Connect with him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/benkirk/

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.   

Changing lane. Making impactful change.

Jennifer or Jen Crowley is based in Chicago and is an author, certified life coach and leadership consultant.

In her 30’s Jen thought she had life she was meant to have. Married with a son, she also had a high profile job as Vice President and General Manager of a wine distribution company. Suffering from all the stress and anxiety that goes with juggling a high pressure role and family life she then went through what she refers to as a six year character building period. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, then a while later her father was badly injured in a motorcycle accident. Both are now happily retired in Florida but as the only child, Jen had to provide considerable support. Then, the president of the company was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and died very suddenly. Jen was emotionally and physically exhausted and wasn’t taking great care of herself.  Her job defined her so when the company was then sold to a large international group she decided to stick with it. There was an interesting and demanding integration period and as she went into her 40’s her life was very demanding – she was fighting for resources at work, fighting for time with her son and struggling in a marriage that was no longer working.

Finally, Jen and her husband divorced and at this point she started taking much better care of herself. She was eating well, meditating and communicating much better with the people around her. She became a coaching mentor at work and came to realise that people were comfortable around her. They would talk to her about their work, their anxieties and what was happening with their family and Jen found that trying to help people was the part of her job that she enjoyed most.

Six years after the company had been sold Jen realised that life wasn’t supposed to be so hard and took the decision to leave her twenty year wine career.  At 45 she decided that she needed to figure out what was going to happen next. She didn’t have any plans apart from taking three months off to get her head as clear as possible. Over the next three months she realised that although many people thought she should be happy because she seemed to have everything she needed, she wasn’t. She needed a different path where she could help other people. Initially she worked as a consultant to entrepreneurs but after a few months he made the decision to move into coaching.

Jen now works primarily with women looking to make impactful changes in themselves and in their lives. With a background in science, Jen’s approach to change is process driven and built around the importance of getting ready for change and then implementing it. In her coaching she deals with widespread issues, but many of her clients are in similar situations to the one she found herself in. Woman in their 40 ‘s who are realising that they are not happy, not doing things that they think are important or meaningful to them.

Jen feels the key to change is having open conversations and asking questions that dig down into what people really want. Sometimes people are so busy taking care of everyone else they simply need the time and opportunity to think and talk about themselves.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Jennifer here. Our previous podcasts, upcoming guest list and previous blogs are also available.

You can find out more about Jennifer at  changeablecoaching.com

Mindset matters

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled - Mindset matters.

Janet Watson is the founder of Watson and Associates, a consultancy based in San Francisco that delivers customised coaching and development for a wide range of corporate leaders. Janet was coached from a young age in competitive figure skating and from this her passion to teach started. She turned pro before undergrad school and began coaching skating where her thought was always “How can I make something good, even better?” From developing coaching programmes for athletes, Janet moved into executive coaching after being asked to teach at a university in California on their strategic communications program.

Janet works with a number of female executives and feels that women in leadership roles need to develop skills that will help them survive the rough and tumble of corporate life to secure positions in the boardroom and make a difference at a senior level. Whether it’s preparing for a board meeting or media training for a radio or TV interview, Janet feels you need to ‘hone it till you own it’ and be aware of where and what you need to improve.

Janet’s experience has been very varied – a competitive athlete, a coach, a national spokesperson on TV, radio and media tours, a consultant, a professor and an advisor. She pulls elements from each aspect of her career in custom tailoring coaching for executive business needs. For example, from her athletic career, dedication, focus and time management and from her academic role, objective setting and learning styles. She also had to decide what areas to lose and what to keep – to decide what she held in heart and was true to her

Although she now has a role she loves and embraces, life was not always so easy. 24 years ago she underwent emergency surgery and almost died. Over her 5 months of recovery she undertook a lot of soul searching as to why she had been given a second chance at life. She found being grateful for each small step forward helped carry her on to the next week. That what was meaningful to her was how she could be in service to others. She really enjoyed helping and supporting executives through co-creation – coming to a new idea together and then working on it to foster growth and expand their businesses while still feeling supported

One of the things Janet is passionate about is mindset. Mindset prepares us for some of the most important conversations in our lives. Janet looks on mindset as a key component of success that is also linked to assessing opportunities. This perhaps goes back to her athletic experience where you need to visualise outcomes. Whether it’s going into a competition or a boardroom meeting, you need to ask yourself and others good questions. What mindset do you want to go in with? Are you ready? What part of your experience do you get to share today? Putting yourself in the right mindset s important so how do you prepare for this competition so you have the best outcome or the outcome you would like?

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Janet here. Our previous podcast episodes, upcoming guest list and previous blogs are also available.

You can get in touch with Janet at http://www.watsonandassoc.com

Change the narrative and get unstuck

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released Resilience Unravelled – Change the narrative and get unstuck.

 In this episode, Dr. Russell Thackeray talks to Russell Heath, a life and leadership coach who is based in New York City. Russell has been a life and leadership coach for over ten years but before this he ran an environmental group that protects the national forest in Alaska. Over a period of time he came to realise that what the organisation could do was limited ,not by finance or by circumstances, but by his leadership - he could only take it as far as he was himself was developed and able to go. He attended leadership training courses but found that these focused on skills like presentation and staff management rather than the underlying behaviours needed to deploy the skills. In 2010 he moved to New York City where he undertook training and coaching to learn how to be a leader but eventually decided to go into business himself and retrained to be a professional coach

Russell now works with high performing professionals who are stuck in some way- they want more out of their professions, are very successful and have a good family and home but want something more and don't know what it is. The framework he uses works around the idea that we all develop a way of looking at the world and a set of behaviours and values at a young age. These are developed for our own physical and emotional survival and, whilst they produce results for some people, others often in their 30s or 40s find they aren’t producing any satisfaction or meaning.. They are stuck because this is all they know but what they need to do is look at the world to see what would produce meaning, fulfillment and excitement.

Russell uses the Ontology style of coaching. Ontology is the study of being and is about developing the ability to choose our being regardless of circumstances so we can choose the way of being that best enables us to fulfil on what is important to us. Ontological coaching expands our capacity to choose so we aren’t driven by our “default” behaviors but have the freedom to choose who we want to be. This allows us to accomplish our goals, deepen our relationships, and live a rich and rewarding life.

If we’re not getting the results we want we need to ask ourselves what we need to do differently to get better results’? ‘Do we want these results? What do we need to do differently? Who do we need to be to get different results? Money and status are external to ourselves but we can sometimes have difficulty giving them up for something more meaningful. How then when we achieve something can we avoid getting stuck? If we win is it what we wanted?  When we get so focused on getting there we realise we didn’t enjoy the journey.

Changing purpose or narrative is a key part of getting unstuck. We are in conversation with ourselves and that conversation determines how we see the world. Changing this can produce different results but we need to shift more than our linguistical world. To bring lasting change we also need to need to shift our emotional and physical worlds.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Russell here. Our previous podcast episodes and upcoming guest list are also available as is our full blog archive.

You can find out more about Russell or get in touch with him through his website.

If you would like to find out more about Russell’s Alaskan based thrillers visit https:/russellheathauthor.com/

Out of pain comes purpose. Equus Coaching, reinvention and changing course at 60

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled – Out of pain comes purpose. Equus Coaching, reinvention and changing course at 60

In this episode, Dr. Russell Thackeray talks to Nancy J. McKay who is based in Colorado. Nancy is the Founder of Amazing Outlook Coaching and believes that you can't be courageous without first being vulnerable.

Nancy has been through some challenging and life changing events and became acutely aware that life is short, and there was no time to lose to follow her dreams. She completely changed course at the age of 60 and became a Certified Mind-Body-Eating Coach in 2018, a Certified Wayfinder Life Coach in 2019 and a Certified Equus Coach in 2020. She now uses her experience, training, and passion to help women explore and eliminate what is holding them back, challenge old beliefs and patterns and replace them with tools and strategies that empower them change their lives.

Nancy herself struggled with alcohol for many years. Her Father was an alcoholic and killed himself in 2007. Nancy also tried to commit suicide and this wake-up call led to her finally getting sober when she was 52. She was then diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was 58 and the experience of going through chemo helped to change her perspective on life – she didn't get sober and survive to be miserable! She had a good job but was very unhappy so started on a programme of personal development. She enrolled in a coaching programme and from there started her own coaching business.

Nancy feels that ‘Out of pain comes purpose’. Many people don't want to feel pain but if we are willing to look at it, we can grow from our pain. Nancy thinks that she wouldn’t be working as a coach if she hadn’t had cancer. Her life looked good from the outside but she was dying inside. She had to do something else because her life was about more than recovering from alcohol and cancer.

Nancy’s cancer diagnosis came after she had been alcohol free for six years so she feels it was not so devastating because she had learnt from the journey getting sober She also considers it was worth the journey to be where she is now – she doesn’t look on her cancer as a battle rather accepting it as part of her. She feels it was her greatest gift because it made her wake up and made her realise she wasn’t connecting and was living under a veil that was between her and life. Nancy thinks its not circumstances that make life make good or bad but how we think about the circumstances that make us happy or sad.  

One of the techniques Nancy is qualified in is Equus Coaching which uses horses as co-facilitators. All the work is on the ground and the horses act as a mirror, responding to the energy we put out. Horses are aware if we are not being authentic but if we are aware of our truth they will interact. Nancy used this herself and once she realised how powerful the release and transformations could be, decided she wanted to learn the process herself so she could share it.

Although it's a very specilised coaching style there is really nothing that stands in the way. Even if people are scared of horses they can benefit just being close to them. Nancy finds people are generally more concerned about what they will learn about themselves. The link to the horse releases something – you just need to be open, willing and curious 

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Nancy here. Our previous podcast episodes and upcoming guest list are also available.

Our full blog archive is also available.

You can contact Nancy at nancy@amazingoutlookcoaching.com or visit her website:

www.amazingoutlookcoaching.com