By Kate Salmon, Senior Manger, Marketing
Full disclosure: I am not someone who gets excited about sports. I’m that person who watches the Superbowl for the half-time show and the commercials. So when I heard that our closing speaker at Recharge was a mental performance coach who works with Olympians, I was not convinced that his talk was going to be up my alley. I could not have been more wrong.
Jean François Ménard, who introduced himself as JF, took the stage after a full day of amazing Recharge sessions and panels. By 4pm everyone was eager to get the day wrapped up so they could mix and mingle at the cocktail reception, but by 5pm the whole group was clamouring for more of JF’s stories. What did he share that got the room so riled up? I think he spoke to that little fire that we all have inside of us – that drive to conquer and succeed – and gave us tactics to nurture that fire.
Go with the Flow
When JF worked with an Olympian who suffered from a broken back in the months leading up to the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, the road to victory seemed impossible. Rather than focus on this huge, distant goal, JF refocused his athlete’s energy on getting better every week. By accepting things as they were and adjusting accordingly, Derek Drouin stayed focused and went on to win a Gold medal in men’s high jump. As Kathryn Matheson said on her panel earlier in the day, It is what it is, not what it should be. And it can still be great.
This means when you have a big deadline looming in the distance, break it down into little milestones that you can hit every week to stay on track.
Cultivate Resilience
A resilient mind works like a GPS, says JF. When it encounters an obstacle, it simply recalculates the route and finds another way to reach its goal. It doesn’t even complain! While we humans can be permitted the occasional gripe, it’s important that we never lose sight of our goals or our means of achieving them. And if we need more motivation, we can celebrate little wins along the way!
This means taking a minute to be intentional about how you respond to new challenges. If you start consciously rerouting your thought pattern from annoyance to acceptance, eventually it will become natural.
Find your Why
We all have a raison d’être that goes beyond getting a product launched or meeting a revenue target. This is the internal motivation that drives us. Find out what yours is and bring it front and centre. My Why is to write beautiful, compelling things that make an impact on the people who read them; remembering that gives me a sense of purpose when my fire is burning low.
This means writing out a mission statement and making it your desktop background, so when you start work every day you remember why you’re here.
On behalf of everyone who attended Recharge 2018, I want to thank JF for making us feel like we could all be Olympic heroes. You can find the visual summary of the session here, and if you’re a Roundtable alum, don’t forget to register for Recharge 2019 at a special early bird rate!
