The Emergency Mind Podcast Episode 116 - Gloria Park on Rehumanizing Human Performance
May 1, 2025
Gloria Park, a sport performance expert and positive psychology advocate, shares her journey from competitive figure skating to optimizing human performance. She highlights the crucial role of emotional understanding and stress management in high-stakes environments like the military and hospitals. Gloria discusses integrating well-being with peak performance, fostering emotional intelligence in children, and creating supportive systems for medical professionals. Her insights champion the balance between excellence and humanity, urging a holistic approach to thriving both personally and professionally.
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Gloria's Figure Skating Struggles
- Gloria Park's struggles with emotions and stress hindered her success in figure skating despite natural talent.
- Her career ended at 16 due to injury, sparking her passion to understand human performance deeply.
Whole-Person View of Performance
- Human performance involves much more than discrete moment skills; identity, history, and social context deeply affect it.
- Ignoring whole-person factors leads to an oversimplified and incomplete view of performance.
Mental Skills Often Ignored Until Crisis
- Mental performance skills often lag behind physical skills in training and are mainly sought when problems arise.
- This reactive approach causes resistance, as performers avoid psychological help unless clinically significant issues emerge.