Performance on demand is what it all comes down to. ~ Dr. Bruce Pinel
Dr. Bruce Pinel (web) is a mental performance consultant with over 20 years of experience in sport psychology. He works with elite athletes competing in world championships and the Olympic Games, helping them win over 450 medals in international competition.
Bruce helps competitors cope with pressure and achieve peak mental performance. These skills and strategies apply across many high pressure contexts, including the legal profession. Even if you don’t consider yourself a “competitor,” you will want to hear him share practical, actionable tips and practice you can use to manage stress, stay healthy and achieve great things.
In this episode, we also discuss Bruce’s work in health and injury management. He has helped more than 5000 people through a multi-disciplinary, pragmatic approach that combines medicine, psychology and sport science to support recoveries from injuries and accidents.
In the legal profession, we all deal with stress. We all experience defeat. We all want to perform on demand and achieve our best results. Bruce shares several different strategies that will help you get into what he calls “an ideal performance state” – both as an individual and as part of a team.
Topics Covered
- Strategies and practices to achieve peak performance
- Physical and mental wellness
- Training and preparation
- Managing stress
- Managing and coaching teams
- Dealing with failure
- Rehabilitation for people with serious injuries
Quiz
The Quiz for this episode is here
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Show Notes
4:50 How Bruce describes what he does for a living
9:26 Performance as a general concept in the legal profession
12:50 Mental preparation and training
14:30 Performance boosters “away from the field of play”
19:50 Adjusting with a move into a (competitive) environment filled with other high performers
26:00 Preparing for an event like an Olympic athlete
34:45 Work ethic, training, preparing, grinding, intensity and maintaining high quality over a long duration
39:09 Tapering training and preparation before a big event
42:20 Cognitive exhaustion and performance
48:20 Breathing in a stressful situation
53:45 Training and practicing techniques to make them automatic responses and achieve peak mental performance
58:05 Cue words for successful performance
59:20 Ideal performance state
1:00:20 Using music to get into an ideal performance state
1:02:20 Mindfulness
1:03:50 Coaching and managing to bring out the best in a team environment
1:06:00 Team cohesion: social cohesion and task cohesion
1:08:10 Bad advice given out to high performers
1:09:40 Embracing the stressful factors of a high performance environment
1:11:40 Dealing with failure / avoiding failure
1:17:15 Battling to the end
1:18:20 Rehabilitation for people with injuries
1:19:30 Being proactive with change
1:25:10 Balancing the desire to assess damages and the promotion of recovery
1:28:20 How Bruce defines success
1:28:46 Toughest choice or sacrifice to get where Bruce is
1:29:39 How Bruce would do a week’s worth of work in 3 hours
1:30:25 How Bruce looks after himself
1:31:57 Best resources for learning about peak mental performance
1:33:24 Before my work in performance consulting is done, I want to…
1:36:45 Best book read in the last year The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
1:38:19 Where to learn more about Bruce http://www.drbrucepinel.ca/
1:38:45 Canadian Sport Psychology Association
1:39:10 Calls to action for legal professionals (look beyond your profession to learn how to perform on demand)