ASTRIDMERKT.COM

PEAK MIND. PEAK BODY. PEAK PERFORMANCE.

“A neuroscience-based approach to traditional therapy” Astrid’s passion is to empower individuals to take control of their health to live their best life. She helps high-achievers decrease their obstacles to perform better when under pressure and unlock their peak potential. With over 13 years of experience in counselling and group facilitation, she is grateful to have worked with clients globally from all backgrounds. Astrid is specialises in using your mindset and breathing to gain control of your internal states to empower the way you feel, think, and move. “In a society where you need to be ahead of the game, and stress is what fuels you, learning how to shut down is essential to refuel. When you recharge, you can continue to perform at full throttle the next day”

Astrid Merkt | Vol 2 | February 1, 2022

An Athlete’s Mental Edge

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal: nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson  

Training the mind is like training a muscle. Within the peak performance space, most would think of physical strength, endurance and agility; yet what we miss the importance that our mind plays in gaining that extra edge. Mental strength is just as, and even more important than the physical training. When you have the top elite athletes competing, there are only micro differences in their skills and ability. Mental fitness and mindset is what truly differentiates the winner from the rest. Recent media coverage on athletes’ mental health has shed light on this, and how ignoring it could have detrimental consequences. Working on our mind just as much as our body is gaining recognition and acceptance. Luckily, mental resilience is a skill that can be trained and learned. Athletes and high performing leaders are starting to share how crucial it is to keep our mental health and performance a top priority. 

As a psychologist with a background in exercise science, my passion lies in unveiling the human potential within each high performer. I help defeat limiting beliefs, strengthen your winning mindset, and increase your window of tolerance through the power of your breath.

Gaining that mental edge comes with building resilience, fine tuning your self-awareness, and challenging your maladaptive belief patterns. Just like going to the gym to train the body, the key to unlocking your full potenital is held in taking the mind to the gym. With the right coach or therapist, cognitive refraiming, mental fitness exercises and reconditioning of our old patterns can shift us into superpower gear. 

Starts with your environment and routines

“Nothing is impossible, even the word says it – I’M POSSIBLE” – Audrey Hepburn

Routines

How you start your day and end your day will prime your mind to keep structure and control. Behaviors and mental affirmations will build the confidence to set yourself up for success. Knowing that a challenge and setback is an opportunity to learn, or grow is what sets the foundation for resilience. To get right back up when you get knocked  down  builds your power within to keep control of your inner environment when your outer environment is not in your power to change it. 

Keeping consistency with routines sets your brain up for success when faced with chaos. During this pandemic, humanity has been faced with much uncertainty and fear. Those two combined is what defines anxiety. So bringing yourself certainty with what you can control, and bringing yourself into the present moment rather than the scary future diminishes that anxiety and brings you into a better emotional state. 

Grounding and connecting to what makes you feel good brings the certainty you crave, and it fuels you to keep making the steps forward. Practices such as meditation, morning lemon water, mobility and breathwork, and journaling can help you stay on an.upward trajectory towards your peak performance. Finding this safety and control amongst the daily nuances, allows you to then dive deeper into finding your unique identity – what makes you truly tick. When you are secure with what, why, and who you are, energy can be best spent on enjoying the process and journey towards limitless growth and output.

Recovery

Enjoying the process and the small milestones daily in your routine is what fuels your motivation. The motivation to keep pushing yourself to perform and train at your best, but also when to pull back and rest.  This part of the equation is your recovery routine. Sleep being at the top of that routine has been scientifically proven to have the biggest impact on your mental and physical health. When you sleep, you repair and clean out your systems, and consolidate your memories from what you learned. The next restorative practice to down regulating the high-strung nervous system is how you breath. The psychology of breath shows how controlling your breath controls your internal states. How you breath also affects how fast you use up and refuel your energy stores. Using specific breathing exercises can increase your output and influence how restful and efficient your sleep will be to fully repair and restore. The mechanics of your breath influences your strength in your physical performance and helps in reducing injury. The mechanics is where and how you breathe. This also sets the baseline of how your nervous system and underlying mood runs in the background daily.

Muscle repair is also just as essential, as the faster the metabolic waste is eliminated, the better you can bounce back into strength. You lose a lot of magnesium when you sweat, and data shows that 75% of us are already deficient in this element. ALKA12 topical magnesium lotions offers the fastest way for your body to absorb this essential ion into your system. It is a crucial element that gives your cells – of the brain, muscles, and bones – the energy needed to function at their best. When you recover the mind and body, you have the strength to build back the tissue to train harder and overcome more challenges. Mentally unwinding the day also influences how the nerves that innervate those tissues in our body fire, and magnesium works on the cellular level to calm the mind down. Developing a mindset of fun and becoming process oriented towards that winning goal can separate you from the rest.

Being Limitless

When you face your fears, get to the root of it, allow it to surface, and then tackle it down, you step into your limitless potential. Working with athletes and high performers, I always see fear to be the biggest struggle to break through the plateau. You would think fear of failure or not winning is ubiquitous, yet it is always much deeper. The deeper fears usually lie in a fear of embarrassment or rejection. Fear can also commonly be disguised as anger. So when I tackle that deep rooted fear with clients, we redirect that latent energy into their superpower to breakthrough and transform. Are you ready to be limitless?

Your power lies within

If you are curious to take your performance to the next level, ask yourself these 3 key questions:

>>> What is the one deep rooted fear that could be holding you back?

>>> How are you curating your environment to maximise your training and recovery?

>>> How are you training the mind, just like you would at the gym and with a trainer, to gain that mental edge?

If you are ready to explore your unique success and get to where you truly want to be, I am happy to connect and see what piece of the puzzle could be missing; or which of your strengths could be boosted to elevate your “A” game. To take the first step, request your free 20 minute

consult at www.astridmerkt.com

I’d love to hear from you!