Human beings struggle to gain insight and push through pain because we don’t give ourselves time to quiet our minds. Why is mental training and conditioning so integral to the success and resilience of athletes? How do you incorporate tools or practices to help people strengthen their minds? On this episode, Mark Allen talks about what it took to become a globally-respected, legendary athlete.

You can be conservative and not fall apart, but that’s not racing. -Mark Allen

3 Things We Learned

Athletes want to be peaceful, but powerful

“Peaceful but powerful” is the goal for an athlete. It’s all about finding a place where you’re completely at peace but can access your strength and steadiness.  

Sometimes you have to be completely different

So many times in our lives we accept the rules in a way that isn’t “frontal lobe”, and we don’t question them. However, sometimes when your competition is going in one direction, you may want to go another.

Give yourself time for a quiet mind

When you're fully engaged in something and your mind is quiet, answers can come that you would have never been able to think of on your own. When you’re daydreaming, the creative problem-solving part of your brain is at its peak. It’s important that we give our minds this opportunity to be open to recovery and new insight.

Peak performance is the same across all disciplines. It’s all about being able to sharpen the mind so you can deal with fear and doubt, and how you’ll react when things seem impossible. It takes a willingness to give everything, despite the risk of failure. Connect to a place of potential and possibility, instead of helplessness and impossibility. You have to condition your mind to a point where-- no matter what-- you’re going to take that next step. It doesn’t have to be perfect to keep going. If you can bring your mind to a place of peaceful power, all the fear and doubt with be shut out and your brain can drive you forward with full force.