Looking Outside Motivation: Lauren Johnson, Mental Performance Coach

In these volatile and uncertain times, it can feel harder than ever to achieve things for ourselves and our teams, so today we take a cue from the performance experts, speaking about Motivation with mental performance coach, Lauren Johnson.

The stakes are high for professional athletes, but they cope with the same challenges as all of us; building mental toughness to persevere physically, and creating positive habits to practice towards exceptional results. Lauren learnt this first hand working with the New York Yankees, coaching them to perform past the point of physical and mental exhaustion.

Today, Lauren shares the principles of psychology that apply whether you’re an athlete or marketer. The principles of: self awareness to know your own signals before you burn out, self control to react appropriately in the space between external stimulus and your response to it, and of the laws of diminishing returns, beyond that point at which we are truly effective, whether we realize it or not.

As two perfectionists, Lauren and Jo discuss the flaw it reveals of inflexibility. It's consistency which makes us effective. And high quality input should be achieve over time rather than all at once. Lauren also stresses that our motivation should focus also on the people we lead, because building their competence – also slowly, and not all perfect at once – will build their confidence. That confidence should then serve them in the big moments when it matters most.

Now a keynote speaker who holds a Masters in Performance Psychology, Lauren shares honestly that this wasn’t her dream, but a tragedy and the ultimate disappointment in her life led her down a new path of opportunity she has embraced to help others.

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To look outside, Lauren turns to her training in recognizing that space between the stimulus and subsequent emotional reaction, using rational thinking to process what she’s seeing, thinking and feeling. (An arguably pivotal skill to train in devise times.) She also turns to her husband, who knows when to prompt to that kind of rational thinking.

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Lauren Johnson is a mental performance coach and keynote speaker. She works with CEO's, professional athletes, and fortune 500 companies through national speaking engagements, educational training workshops and consulting. Prior to opening her own consulting practice, Lauren served as the Mental Conditioning Coordinator for the New York Yankees. She received her Masters Degree in Performance Psychology from National University. Lauren's practical, straight-forward advice and mental performance strategies helps individuals become elite decision makers because her belief is you become elite by choice, not by chance.

Download Lauren's free motivation guide & learn more about her work at laurenjohnsonandco.com

Follow Lauren on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn

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Looking Outside is a podcast dedicated to exploring fresh perspectives of familiar business topics. The show is hosted by its creator, Joanna Lepore, consumer goods innovator and futurist at McDonald's. Find out more at looking-outside.com.

Connect with Jo and join the Looking Outside community on LinkedIn.

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All views are that of the host and guests and don’t necessarily reflect those of their employers. Copyright 2023.

OBOY and FinderKeeper music features in Episode 34.