Fight Your Fear and Win: Seven Skills for Performing Your Best Under Pressure--At Work, In Sports, On Stage

Synopsis: We’ve all been there: that make-it-or-break-it moment of our careers—on the brink of a deal, poised at the starting gate, under the spotlight waiting to speak or perform in front of our peers. At this point, where everything seems to be on the line, most of us experience one overriding reaction-fear-and this fear can have negative physical, mental, and emotional consequences on how well we do our job.

Don Greene, Ph.D., a renowned sports psychologist, teacher at the Juilliard School, and "stress" coach to top executives and entertainers, has spent decades studying fear and its effect on performance. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Greene shares the proven techniques he has used with Olympic athletes, Grand Prix drivers, the Vail Ski School, Golf Digest Schools, the New World Symphony, and Merrill Lynch traders to help them perform their best under pressure.

In his years of working with Olympic and professional athletes, network news anchors, classical musicians, actors, dancers, trial attorneys, brokers, and CEOs, Dr. Greene discovered that there were certain commonalities in people's responses to high-pressure situations. Untrained, these individuals' reactions were allowing fear to take over and affect decision-making, poise, and display of skill. But Dr. Greene found that by applying methods such as the centering technique, these same people could work through their fear and perform better than ever before.

Fight Your Fear and Win begins with a self-assessment performance survey that will allow you to pinpoint your own reactions to stress: how you handle distractions, how you are affected by nervousness, your mental outlook, your response to fear, and your ability to bounce back from failure. After completing this self-assessment, the book takes you through the seven essential skills required for optimal performance:
1.Determination
2.Energy
3.Perspective
4.Courage
5.Focus
6.Poise
7.Resilience

Interspersed with true stories from Greene's wide variety of experiences training everyone from the San Diego S.W.A.T. team to singers at the Metropolitan Opera, each chapter includes a series of mental and physical exercises that will help you track your progress. This simple twenty-one-day plan will make a profound difference in the way you approach challenging situations, and allow you to think more clearly and creatively under pressure. Whether you are giving a closing argument in a courtroom, making a presentation at work, auditioning for a role, or stepping up to the first tee, Fight Your Fear and Win is the ultimate tool to conquering your fear and achieving success when you need it most.