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Peak Performer

Peak Performer

Auteur(s): Larry G. Maguire
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 A show about the mental skills of peak performance from psychologist and lecturer Larry G. Maguire. On Peak Performer, you can get tips and advice on how to obtain the best from yourself and others while maintaining psychological health. We'll examine aspects of performance such as leadership, motivation, well-being, expertise, intelligence, personality and positive psychology. Learn to manage stress and anxiety, cope under pressure and produce consistently higher-level performance at work with the psychological skills of experts. Read more at https://peak.humanperformance.ie/

peak.humanperformance.ieLarry G. Maguire Développement personnel Hygiène et mode de vie sain Psychologie Psychologie et santé mentale Réussite
Épisodes
  • Day 30: Final Day of Mental Skills

    Day 30: Final Day of Mental Skills
    Sep 4 2025

    Over the past number of weeks, we have taken a deep dive into the nine mental skills of peak performance. But performance is not only about objective achievement and attainment of reward and recognition; it is also about mental well-being. The nine mental skills we explored are;

    * Mindset serves as the foundation, encompassing your fundamental beliefs about ability, challenge, and growth that shape how you interpret every experience.

    * Motivation provides the energy for action and direction for sustained effort. It’s what gets you up in the morning and moves you through the day.

    * Goals Setting creates the structure and accountability necessary for systematic progress. Based on your core values, goals provide the prospect of achievement.

    * People Skills enable effective collaboration and influence, recognising that peak performance rarely occurs in isolation. It allows you to understand yourself and others.

    * Thinking Skills involves managing your internal dialogue to support rather than undermine confidence and focus. It is how you speak to yourself on an ongoing basis.

    * Mental Imagery harnesses your mind's capacity to rehearse success and prepare for challenges through vivid mental simulation. It is the preparation of your organism to perform at its best.

    * Anxiety Management transforms nervous energy from a performance barrier into a competitive advantage. Anxiety is a natural occurrence, but how you interpret and respond to it matters.

    * Psychological Flexibility represents the development to respond to challenging emotions in a way that maintains your effectiveness under pressure. It is to be malleable rather than rigid.

    * Focus allows attention to be directed towards optimal performance without distraction and serves as the gateway to flow states where peak performance feels effortless and natural.

    Get the full 30 Days of Mental Skills Series here [All Sessions]

    The Mental Skills Basics Course

    If you have been trying to achieve something but have failed. If you keep falling into the same holes and can't get out. If you've been struggling to get ahead for too long and want change, then this course is for you. In this self-paced course, you'll learn the mental skills of peak performance. (You’ll also get a free first draft of the book “The Mental Skills Handbook”)



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    17 min
  • Day 29: The Mental Skills Daily Practice

    Day 29: The Mental Skills Daily Practice
    Sep 3 2025
    These final sessions serve as your roadmap for implementation of Mental Skills, providing a structured approach to developing these skills systematically while maintaining momentum through the inevitable challenges that accompany any meaningful change process. The journey from knowledge to transformation requires more than understanding—it demands deliberate practice, strategic implementation, and sustained commitment to growth. In other words, show up, do the work, and see positive results.Your Daily Mental Skills Practice: An Evidence-Based FrameworkTo help you begin immediately, here's a structured daily practice that feeds the development of all nine mental skills while building sustainable practice habits. This program requires only 15 to 20 minutes in the morning and again at night, but creates the foundation for lifelong mental skills development. You can even use spare moments during your day to revisit some of these practices. Each component is grounded in extensive research from positive psychology, neuroscience, and performance science.Your Daily Mental Skills Practice1. Journal DailyBuy a small black journal, size A5 is good, and write your thoughts daily. In the morning, before the demands of the day take hold, write in the present tense how you wish your day to go ideally. At night, write about how your day went. Be truthful about it–if it didn't go according to plan, say so. However, don't end on a negative note. If something didn't work out, find a positive aspect to that thing. Ask yourself, what did I learn here? What advantage can I take from this experience? Finish by identifying three things that went well today. No matter how shitty your day was, mine for the good. It’s there; you just need to see it. You've got to mean what you write–this is very important, because you can only move on from difficult conditions if you accept them for what they are. If you fall asleep on a negative tone, you'll wake up with it.2. Meditate for 15 mins DailyMeditate for 15 minutes, either last thing at night before you fall asleep or first thing in the morning before the day begins. Meditation helps you calm your nervous system and purge yourself of negativity. Meditation in the morning helps you “get out ahead of the day, so to speak. When you engage in meditation regularly, there is a compound effect that allows you to approach difficulty with composure.Get this free meditationMeditation represents perhaps the most scientifically validated intervention for stress reduction and cognitive enhancement. Pascoe et al. (2017) reported that when all meditation forms were analysed together, meditation reduced cortisol, C-reactive protein (protein produced by the liver in response to inflammation in the body), blood pressure, heart rate, triglycerides (high triglyceride levels are associated with increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and metabolic syndrome) and tumour necrosis factor-alpha (produced by immune cells when the body detects threats or damage).3. Monitor Your ThoughtsHuman beings have a negativity bias, perhaps as an evolutionary survival mechanism, and so the inner critic is always waiting to pounce. So stay alert. When you catch yourself giving yourself a hard time, stop and ask yourself if your thoughts are true. Ask yourself, “is this accurate? It might be true, but am I so sure that it is?” Look for a counterargument. Ask yourself, what might be an equally plausible and less negative explanation for this situation?Take time and tease that out. Understand that although these automatic responses may accurately reflect past experiences, they do not necessarily have to be true of future events. You have a choice, so learn to question these negative sentiments. You see, you've been conditioned by society and by your immediate environment to be hard on yourself–it’s supposed to motivate you, but it doesn’t, not for very long. Most of the time, other people are concerned for themselves and don't think that way about you. In fact, they don’t think about you at all, so treat yourself like you would a best friend.Get this worksheet to help you4. Mine for the GoodThe world is shaped by our opinions, beliefs, biases, culture, and other factors. It trains us to notice threats even when our environment is overwhelmingly supportive. When faced with unsavoury conditions, acknowledge them and then look for evidence to the contrary. Ask yourself, what am I missing here? Where is the good in this? What am I supposed to learn here? Even when you are otherwise in good form, look for and acknowledge the good in your life. Be grateful for those ordinary, everyday things that make your life better, even though you regularly take them for granted.As mentioned above, take a moment at night to reflect on three things you did well or that worked in your favour today. These things don’t need to be dramatic or stand out; they can be ordinary things that always go your way, but you fail to ...
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    17 min
  • Day 28: Present Moment Awareness

    Day 28: Present Moment Awareness
    Aug 22 2025
    Have you ever been so completely absorbed in something that time seemed to slow down, speed up, or even stand still? You were playing a musical instrument, solving a complex problem, or engaged in a physically demanding activity and you then realised hours had passed in minutes. This is the experience of flow—what researchers call the pinnacle of human performance and the psychology of optimal experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). At the heart of every flow state lies one critical mental skill: present moment awareness.Present moment awareness involves paying attention to current experience with an attitude of openness and acceptance (Bishop et al., 2004). Rather than being lost in thoughts about past regrets or concerns for the future, present moment awareness anchors your attention in the here and now. This isn't merely concentration—it's a broader, more flexible awareness that includes thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and environmental cues without judgement or resistance.As defined by one of the leading mindfulness researchers, Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994), it means "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally" (p. 4). This quality of attention creates the psychological foundation necessary for optimal experience to emerge.Mental Skills Basics Course (Free)The Gateway to FlowPresent moment awareness serves as the gateway to flow states because it directly enables several critical conditions that research has identified as necessary for optimal experience. When Csikszentmihalyi (1990) first identified the nine characteristics of flow, he discovered that each depends fundamentally on the ability to maintain present-focused attention.Complete Concentration and Action-Awareness MergingFlow requires what researchers call "complete one-pointedness of mind", where focus becomes laser-like and mental energy is entirely devoted to the task at hand (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). Present moment awareness creates this concentrated attention by training your mind to resist the pull of distracting thoughts and irrelevant concerns. When you're truly present, there's no mental space for worrying about other obligations or ruminating on past mistakes—all cognitive resources become available for task execution.Loss of Self-ConsciousnessOne of the most remarkable aspects of flow is the temporary disappearance of the internal critic that typically monitors and evaluates performance. Present moment awareness facilitates this by reducing what psychologists call "cognitive fusion"—the tendency to become entangled with your thoughts and treat them as absolute truths (Hayes et al., 2006). When you cultivate non-judgmental awareness, you learn to observe self-critical thoughts without being controlled by them, freeing up mental energy for optimal performance.Enhanced Feedback ProcessingFlow states require immediate and continuous feedback to maintain optimal challenge-skill balance. Present moment awareness enhances your sensitivity to environmental cues and bodily sensations that provide this crucial information (Brown & Ryan, 2003). Athletes in flow, for example, report heightened awareness of their body position, breathing, and the subtle changes in their performance environment. This enhanced sensitivity allows for real-time adjustments that keep you in the optimal zone.The Liberation from Linear TimePerhaps the most fascinating aspect of flow states is what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) identified as the "transformation of time", where hours feel like minutes or seconds stretch into eternity depending on the activity's demands. This temporal distortion reveals a profound truth about the nature of psychological time that has critical implications for achieving peak performance.Our conventional understanding of time as a linear, uniform progression is a social construction rather than an inherent property of reality. Clock time—with its rigid schedules, deadlines, and temporal anxiety—represents an artificial framework that we've imposed on experience. This becomes starkly apparent during flow states, when the usual temporal structure that organises daily life dissolves (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989).Research into the neuroscience of flow reveals that this temporal liberation occurs because the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which handles temporal awareness and cognitive control, shows decreased activation during optimal experiences (Dietrich, 2004). Simultaneously, the brain regions responsible for present-moment processing become more active, creating what researchers call "transient hypofrontality"—a temporary downregulation of the brain systems that make our sense of linear time.To truly access flow states consistently, we must release our attachment to linear time concepts and embrace what might be called "experiential time"—the natural rhythm of engagement where duration is determined by the depth and quality of attention rather than clock ...
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    20 min
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