Mindfulness for Elite Performance
The Neuroscience of Intuition & Leadership
Mindfulness enables performers and leaders to form a powerful bond from which visions, plans, and execution naturally flow. This article describes the neuroscience behind this process, and how you can implement it in sports, business, and life.
When my son was in ninth grade, he wanted to run track. I said, “Great! Run middle distance like your old man!” The coach and others recommended the same. He was given a training schedule and followed it closely.
He tried out for the team and got cut on the first day. I felt bad. I’m sure he did too. The advice was to train harder and try next year — stick to a strict daily workout plan. This story could have ended there. Many do.
Instead, we took a different approach. Two years later, in 11th grade, he tried out again. This time he made the team. Seventeen months after his first race, he had set two state records, was ranked in the top 3 in the U.S. high school 100 meters, and won a national high school championship (pictured above).
How did this transformation happen? In a word, mindfulness. We turned traditional training on its head and reversed almost every part of the process. You can have a similar journey; in running, perhaps, or wherever your path takes you. This article describes how.
Harder Doesn’t Work
How many times have you been encouraged to conform to a rigid schedule, and increase your efforts — try harder — only to experience limited success, frustration, or burnout? Pushing too hard in pursuit of goals, though it may seem ambitious, leads to suboptimal outcomes. Working all the time, running a ton of miles per week, crash diets, perfectionism, and excessive studying are signs of a toxic productivity culture that is harmful and ineffective. It is rooted in fear and misconceptions.
You cannot David Goggins your way to elite capabilities by pushing your physical and mental limits to the breaking point. He is inspiring, though, I must admit. But, as any high performer knows, grinding eventually yields negative returns.
Executing a long-term plan is more like a slow-motion golf swing. If you’ve not played golf, swinging as hard as you can never works. Even if it goes far, which it almost certainly won’t, it doesn’t go straight. A smooth and proper swing, however, sends the ball much further and right down the middle, almost effortlessly. This is how you should feel as you execute day-to-day — propelled by the process.
Leadership Tactics Don’t Work
Like many people, my success at work relies on collaboration. I need an effective way to work with and manage employees, consultants, partners, and investors. Finding a consistent way to work with such a broad range of people proved challenging. For years, I believed a mindful approach was the answer. I have practiced mindfulness since my youth. It offers clarity and empathy in a noisy world, yields better decisions, and is a net positive for everyone involved.
But I have to admit, I was afraid to commit to it. It can feel counterproductive at first — taking time to be mindful when so many things need to get done seems inefficient. Also, it was unorthodox as most others clearly weren’t using mindfulness as a leadership approach. Some resorted to posturing, political maneuvering, and sometimes outright manipulation. Some worked blindly at full speed. Others relied on explicit management frameworks and tactics. I ended up adapting on the fly as best I could.
Looking back, this was a mistake. Fear is terrible counsel. As you will soon see, none of these methods is very effective and all have negative side effects. They can feel contrived or even selfish. It’s awkward to work with someone applying tactics from a book or “playing the game.” Interactions can feel like reactions, but they don’t have to.
Mindfulness is the salve. It informs intuition.
Leadership flows naturally from mindfulness. Many things do. Coaching my son cemented my belief in mindfulness both for performance and leadership. Today, I apply it in business and all areas of my life. They say what you want lies on the other side of fear; this has proven true. It has deeply enhanced my performance, leadership, relationships, success, and happiness.
Note: As a performer, adopting a mindful approach is most effective under the guidance of a leader — a coach, manager, or mentor. If you lack such a leader, it’s beneficial to seek one out. However, if finding a leader you can work with proves challenging, don’t worry. You can step into a leadership role for yourself when necessary, although you will need to be more disciplined in your approach.
Why Mindfulness?
In another world, this article might be about scientific approaches, management frameworks, discipline, or motivation. But these are not what truly restrict success today. Our society has become rules-oriented, bureaucratic, and left-brained. For reasons I’ll explain below, this artificial environment has deep roots and hampers performance, both culturally and neuroscientifically. Mindfulness helps rebalance our brains and focus our efforts.
Like running, mindfulness is a basic activity that most people do at times whether they label it or not. And like running and exercise, it helps to have some structure in our practice.
Mindfulness is being fully present and engaged in the moment; noting thoughts, emotions, and the environment without judgment and with a gentle, accepting attitude — something like that. It is a natural state that I suspect most humans experienced at times, long before it became a practice 8000 years ago.
Running as a Methodology Benchmark
Running is an excellent way to compare performance methodologies because it removes confounding variables that can lead to spurious conclusions. It is straightforward and has precise metrics. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you may be, if you can run then you can measure performance to the millisecond. This simplicity stands in contrast to the complexities of work life, academics, and even some sports. In running, work titles, perceived abilities, backgrounds, and social dynamics hold no weight. Running provides a crystal clear benchmark.
I ran track at Georgetown University, known for its top middle-distance program and numerous Olympic athletes. The program was tough, and governed by numbers, times, and distances. The rigidity proved challenging and affected my performance, health, and well-being. I had successes on the track and failures, but the process was far too inflexible for me.
Don’t misunderstand; I loved my time at Georgetown and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I made great friends, received an excellent education, and had a lot of fun.
In high school, by contrast, my training must have looked chaotic or lazy. My hands-off coach let me train as I chose. Intuitively, I listened to my body and adjusted workouts based on how I responded. This created a natural, adaptive process. I often ran harder or easier than planned and shifted workouts around. Running mostly alone, I tuned into my surroundings and how I felt.
It took years to appreciate that my running before college involved mindfulness, a process I gravitated to naturally.
Why Mindfulness Works So Well
Many Americans today have imbalanced brain metabolism. This has arisen, in no small part, from a societal shift toward overemphasizing activities that burden the brain’s left hemisphere. This increasing shift has deep roots in our culture and is part of what has made America remarkable. However, it has been taken too far.
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville set out for America to find lessons that could be applied back in France, which was then experiencing political turmoil. While he observed many positive aspects of American society, he also offered criticisms:
Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. — Tocqueville, A. (1835). Democracy in America.
You’ve likely experienced this growing list of rules. When something bad happens, or when the “correct” process to accomplish something is determined, another rule is added to the list — “No, that is not allowed,” or “You must do it this way.”
To illustrate this change, consider a playground from a century ago:
Good or bad, there was less control, not just in leisure but across society. If something was unsafe or too challenging, you avoided it. There wasn’t a flood of information on how to accomplish things; you just did them and learned on the way. This process of discovery was considered key to personal growth.
There weren’t as many rules. Early Americans didn’t like rules — at all. Note that the Supreme Court deemed income tax unconstitutional — illegal — in 1895, and US government spending in 1900, adjusted for inflation, was $217 per person, compared to around $24,000 today. They wanted to be free from governing bodies, not bound to them.
Beyond cultural norms and bureaucracy, there is another, insidious effect of “soft despotism” — it rewires our brains through neuroplasticity to rely on rules to guide and direct our actions. This stifles performance and limits our ability to see our actions and lives in a broader context. It reduces our capacity to find meaning.
Rules and Intuition Are Opposites in The Brain
The brain’s left and right hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum, function distinctively and often in opposition. Roger Sperry’s 1960s split-brain research revealed insights and early theories into each hemisphere’s unique capabilities. Iain McGilchrist later corrected and refined these insights:
“The knowledge that is mediated by the left hemisphere is knowledge within a closed system. It has the advantage of perfection, but such perfection is bought ultimately at the price of emptiness, of self-reference. It can mediate knowledge only in terms of a mechanical arrangement of other things already known. It can never really ‘break out’ to know anything new, because its knowledge is of its own representations only. Where the thing itself is ‘present’ to the right hemisphere, it is only ‘re-presented’ by the left hemisphere, now becomes an idea of a thing. Where the right hemisphere is conscious of the Other, whatever it may be, the left hemisphere’s consciousness is of itself.” — The Master and His Emissary, p. 174, Iain McGilchrist
The left hemisphere closes down to certainties. It makes black-and-white decisions. It sees individual parts, not the whole. It is logical and uses rules. It exerts power and control. This is true even at the simplest level. The ability to use tools with our hands is encoded in the left hemisphere (even if left-handed), along with tendencies toward anger, speech, and mechanistic and abstract thinking. Notably, the left hemisphere insists it is correct even though it is wrong far more often than the right; an effect that can be seen in Wada tests where patients are asked questions with one hemisphere anesthetized.
The right hemisphere opens up to possibilities. It sees the big picture and provides meaning and context. It plays devil’s advocate. It understands nuance. It does not seek control; it observes. The right hemisphere remains vigilant to what might happen next whatever that may be. It has a preference for living things. It sees what is around us in the present moment and notices when things are out of place, or out of context. It is where humor, music, art, emotions, and facial expressions are felt and understood. It is our intuition.
Unlike the left hemisphere, the right knows that it doesn’t know. It bears the weight of uncertainty and through this awareness produces outcomes that cannot be willed to occur, such as wisdom, imagination, creativity, humor, empathy, courage, humility, virtue, love, admiration, faith, and understanding.
When we fixate on plans, rules, certainties, and details, we overuse our left hemisphere and blind our intuition.
Have you ever gotten deep into the details of something, and at some point, you realized you’ve been going down the wrong path? Most of us can use the right hemisphere to pull us back into context if we allow it.
This does not apply to everyone, however. Take, for example, a real case of a man with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a condition that lateralizes to the left hemisphere. He asked his therapist for rules to decide when it was okay to pick up a used newspaper — the amount of soot, moisture, the paper’s date, etc. His therapist remarked, “I just glance at it and instantly know.”
The patient’s dominant left hemisphere sought detailed logic — explicit rules — to solve a task the right hemisphere does effortlessly. Implementing rules strengthens the neural circuits that cause the problem, creating a vicious loop in the brain that makes the disorder worse. Therapy for such cases involves a counterintuitive approach: Rather than follow their instinct to create rules and routines, patients are encouraged to simply notice and sit with any discomfort (yes, mindfulness!).
When even healthy people prioritize rules over intuition for months or years on end — when it becomes a habit — it strengthens neural circuits that lateralize to the left hemisphere which blinds our intuition. This makes it far more difficult to navigate to successful outcomes and easier to navigate to unhealthy ones.
Mindful Leadership Starts With A Vision
Great leadership includes establishing a vision, developing a plan, and ethically maximizing team and individual performance toward the collective goal. It requires nuance and intuition. Black-and-white thinking diminishes leadership. It is never as simple as optimizing plan execution no matter how brilliant the plan.
Of course, you need a plan. But it is meaningless and far less effective if not anchored by a clear vision. If you don’t know why you are doing something, you can never do enough of it.
The first step is to establish and internalize the vision. Developing a mindful vision may seem lofty or idealistic but it is, in fact, grounded and requires discipline and patience.
Growing a Mindful Vision
You cannot will yourself to have a clear vision. Our brains do not work that way. When you use language and logic, set goals, make lists, or gather facts, you engage the left hemisphere. This drowns out intuition. You are more likely to fall into a goal that appears logical but doesn’t align with your potential and spirit.
Instead, first practice mindfulness and visualization. Give yourself time to rebalance; weeks, months, or longer. It’s more like growing a plant than repairing a car engine. Some activities you can do are:
There are countless others. Pick something you enjoy. Practice daily, if just for 3 minutes; neuroplasticity is biological and favors consistency. This is where you should be David Goggins.
Over time, this will free your right hemisphere metabolically. Think of it as diet and exercise for your soul. Developing a vision, or neglecting to, will have an outsized impact on the rest of your life. It is one of the most important things you will ever do, irrespective of age.
Gain clarity first, then create your vision. If you do this out of order, or if you rush it, it will not work. If you fail to establish your vision, you’ll become a participant in somebody else’s.
After my son was cut from the team, I reflected for a while and said, “Okay, I was wrong. Let’s work on a vision and get grounded first.” We incorporated visualization, meditation, mindfulness, and nutrition into his life (and mine); not rigidly, there was no schedule, but proactively, with optimism. He did this for two years while he played other sports. That’s a long time for a high school kid. His transformation happened here, it just wasn’t visible at first.
Over time, he honed his vision to soccer and track. Then, in 11th grade, he decided to try out for the track team again but this time run sprints. This vision grew out of his intuition. I said, “Let’s go!”
Crafting The Plan
With a vision in place, next, we needed a plan. Developing the plan engages your left hemisphere. It should be logical, realistic, and account for future scenarios. Anyone who has crafted a serious plan — be it athletic, business, or other — knows how much effort and thought it can require.
Now repeat this phrase to yourself:
The plan will always be wrong.
The plan matters. It is critical. But, also, it is wrong.
Remember when I said the right hemisphere plays devil’s advocate? As you execute, be critical of the plan. How can you accomplish the same thing or more with less effort? What is not needed? What’s a better way to do something? Put every action into context.
Once you balance your brain, navigating and adapting through intuition will seem effortless. Take every simplest path to the same or better result. Do this every day in everything. Why wouldn’t you?
Honing intuition is critical for reaching your potential. There is no other way. There is no shortcut. You cannot outthink or outwork it. You can never define the path exactly. You cannot make everything explicit.
We found the initial plan for my son online. We read exercise science articles, made initial assumptions, and changed some things.
That’s it.
Executing with Intuition
Mindful execution is a dance between the brain’s hemispheres — between opposites: planning and adapting, action and observation, logic and creativity, tradition and unorthodoxy, rules and freedom, responsibility and support.
For the next year and a half, he did workouts on and off the track. Sometimes we got creative. Here is one of his first track workouts.
No structured running, timing, or track spikes. Instead, we monitored his heart rate in response to soccer drills; and observed. It was fun, even in the rain.
We continued to read about exercise science and executed the plan mindfully. We let his body decide where it wanted to go. We pushed hard to make him the best runner possible, without dictating exactly how to get there.
Would he run the 100, 200, 400, 800 meters? We didn’t know. We doubled down on what was working and pruned what wasn’t. Over time, he gravitated towards short sprints — 100 and 200 meters.
The Result
Success! He did not have to win any races for this to have been a success. As you will see, the process itself is exciting, fun, and transformational. Unlike a boring, pre-set plan that you bang your head against daily while waiting for an outcome, it’s a journey from which you constantly learn directly from reality, not someone’s idea of reality. It still gives us things to talk about and bond over. Also, he became a great cook, an added benefit for me.
HS Senior PRs: 100 Meters: 10.15 (+4.2), 200 Meters: 20.93
No one — not me, coaches or experts, or even he — could possibly have predicted this outcome much less dictated it. Despite countless opinions, including mine initially, no one knew what race he should be focusing on or, more importantly, how to navigate to the best outcome.
Doing block starts and visualizing all practice before you’ve ever run a race while others are running grueling workouts can bring unwanted attention, believe me. But all these opinions, rigid plans, and rules — all wrong. He discovered what race he should run and how to train for it; we didn’t dictate it, we observed it.
Had we set his goals without a vision, or tried to impose our will without intuition, the outcome would have suffered. All I had to do was step aside and guide him to listen — to himself. It turns out he’s a talented sprinter. What do I know?
I believe most people can achieve similar success. I rarely meet someone who doesn’t have a unique talent. You can do it. But you can’t dictate what ‘it’ is or how to proceed exactly. It may be uncomfortable to break habits, it will be on the other side of fear, but you can. It may come quickly, or it can take months or years. It’s worth it.
As a leader, every member of your team deserves the chance to reach his or her potential, including you. Trust them. Trust yourself. If mindfulness can improve outcomes in something as seemingly unimaginative as running in a straight line, it will serve you and your team well in the far more complex realms of business and life.
Note: This article was inspired by a colleague who is currently living in a PTSD treatment facility. Please prioritize your mental health. Encourage others to seek professional help when needed.
I hope you enjoyed this article! I welcome your ideas for the next article! For sports training, join us here. For business, you can find me at RightBrainCapitalist. Connect on LinkedIn and say hi!
