Mindfulness: The Number 1 Mental Skill that Boosts Performance
When you think about the mental skills that set people apart, what do you think of?
You may think of confidence, motivation, resilience, self-talk, or mental toughness.
And, you would be dead wrong. None of these are even in the top 10 according to the Lochbaum et al. 2022 systematic review of 30 meta-analyses across 40 years of sport psychology research
The number 1 mental skill that boosts performance?
Mindfulness
Whether on the sports field, board room, or beyond, mindfulness is the number 1 predictor of better performance. However, mindfulness does not just stop at being the number 1 mental skill that boosts performance.
It has also been found to reduce injury while increasing mood, readiness to train, and energy levels according to a study done by Haraldsdottir et. al, 2024.
Unsurprisingly, depression, anxiety, and stress ranked in the top 5 for having negative effects on performance. The encouraging part is that mindfulness acts as a deterrent against these, telling us that it not only boosts performance but also counteracts the negative effects of performance inhibitors.
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present and aware of your current experience—without overreacting to or getting lost in thoughts.
The keyword in this definition is practice. The same way we “practice” our skills in sports, or “practice” making our muscles stronger in the gym, or “practice” selling our product better.
We can practice being in the present moment, aware of what is happening, and not judging or reacting to our thoughts.
The more one practices, the better they get at it, and the stronger their brain (specifically the prefrontal cortex) gets. It's a parallel process to the gym; the more you lift a weight, the stronger your muscles get.
What Mindfulness is not:
Mindfulness sometimes can get a bad rap, and that's because people do not understand what the practice really is.
Mindfulness is NOT a relaxation practice - sometimes one can feel relaxed while practicing, but not always, and sometimes practicing can be extremely difficult. The same way we expect workouts to be hard, why wouldn't we expect it to be hard to train the mind?
Mindfulness is NOT clearing your mind of thoughts - the mind doesn't work that way, it's a non-stop thought and emotion-producing machine. Rather than emptying or controlling these thoughts, it's about recognize the thought has happened and returning to the anchor of attention.
Mindfulness is NOT about judging quality - when recognizing thoughts, we aren't trying to work with them, but rather recognize the habits of what the mind wants to think about and what comes next. There are other times and places to work with the quality of those thoughts.
Mindfulness is all about being here now.
Performance happens in the present moment, and we want to train to get really good and recognizing that we are not in the present moment and shifting ourselves back.
This gives us the best chance to perform at the highest level as much as possible.
Training Mindfulness:
Practicing mindfulness comes in all shapes and sizes, the same way you can run, lift, swim, bike, etc., to train the body.
When we train our clients, we like a variety of different exercises from anchoring attention on certain parts of the body, listening to a certain part of a song, tossing tennis balls with a partner, breathing, appreciating great things about the community they are in, and repeating phrases to build confidence.
Each practice is different, just as each moment is different.
Sometimes it's short, sometimes it's long, sometimes it's active, sometimes it's sitting.
Regardless of what it is, it's all about being here in the present moment, right now.
Try a practice:
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Haraldsdottir, K., Sanfilippo, J., Anderson, S., Steiner, Q., McGehee, C., Schultz, K., & Watson, A. (2024). Mindfulness practice is associated with improved well-being and reduced injury risk in female NCAA division I athletes. Sports health, 16(2), 295-299.
Lochbaum, M., Stoner, E., Hefner, T., Cooper, S., Lane, A. M., & Terry, P. C. (2022). Sport psychology and performance meta-analyses: A systematic review of the literature. PloS one, 17(2), e0263408.
