ANATOMY OF PEAK PERFORMANCE. No matter your pursuit – whether sport, music, a creative endeavor, academic or professional pursuits, or a high-stakes presentation at work  –  performing at your best requires an ideal blend of relaxation and focus, ease and tension. This ideal blend is different for each person. Too much physical tension hinders the fine motor control needed to perform with dexterity. Too much mental tension inhibits the ability to retrieve relevant information from memory and apply it in novel ways. Too much ease and you lack the focus to tune out extraneous ‘noise’ and concentrate on the task at hand. The ideal amount allows you to perform at your best in stressful situations without wasting energy. More effort does not always yield better results (consider what happens when you *try* to fall asleep). In fact, effort can get in the way of results because it introduces more tension into the system, making you work harder against yourself. 

QUALITIES WHICH UNDERGIRD PEAK PERFORMANCE. Let’s consider Olympic athletes, or peak performers in sport. When they compete at the Olympics, they are meticulously tuned, trained and practiced. They’ve all put in the training and preparation, so there is often minimal difference in their physical capabilities. Think for a moment about what gives the winners their edge. Much of performing at your best requires mental and emotional agility:  to remain calm under pressure, to respond to adversity without shutting down, to improvise when the unexpected happens, to persevere in the face of difficulty, and to think creatively to conjure new solutions when plans fail. 

HOW NEUROFEEDBACK CAN HELP. NeurOptimal® neurofeedback is a tool for training mental agility, emotional agility and brain optimization. It trains your brain’s flexibility and resilience, which allow you to quickly and appropriately respond to the situation at hand, and then efficiently return to a more relaxed baseline. For performance, this could mean an enhanced ability to: 

• soothe the anxiety and pressure and bring yourself back to an ideal flow state - your perfect blend of relaxation and poise, ease and tension

• quiet the fear, doubt and worry thoughts and refocus on the task at hand with calm confidence

• interpret potentially negative events from a positive mindset

• feel confident in your abilities and preparation

• access calm in the face of otherwise challenging, overwhelming situations 

• manage your emotions in order to perform at your best without wasted energy