High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 745: Thinking Under Pressure with Max Pollack, Cognitive Performance Specialist with Special Forces

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

In this episode of The High Performance Mindset, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with Maximilian (Max) Pollack—a Cognitive Performance Specialist supporting U.S. Special Operations—to explore what it truly takes to think clearly, stay composed, and execute under extreme pressure. Drawing from his work with elite military operators, Max shares a powerful perspective: high performance isn't just about toughness—it's about training your mind and body to work together when it matters most. His expertise sits at the intersection of psychology, physiology, and performance, helping individuals regulate stress, sharpen attention, and make better decisions in high-stakes environments. Throughout the conversation, Max introduces the concept of being "introspective about your perspective," and explains how elite performers build awareness, control their internal state, and lead their thinking—especially when everything around them feels chaotic. He breaks down what separates the mentally elite from others, highlighting the importance of emotional regulation, intentional self-talk, and the ability to downshift in moments of intensity. You'll also hear practical tools you can apply immediately—including breathing techniques for rapid regulation, the role of biofeedback in building awareness, and how to "be the commander of your brain" through intentional self-talk. Max emphasizes that lessons are everywhere—if you're willing to reflect, learn, and apply them. This episode is a masterclass in cognitive performance—showing you how to build clarity, confidence, and control so you can perform at your best, especially when the pressure is highest. You'll Learn: • What separates mentally elite performers in high-stakes environments • How to regulate stress and stay composed under pressure • The power of "introspective about your perspective" • A simple breathing tool to downshift and regain control • How imagery and biofeedback can enhance performance • Why self-talk is critical—and how to "command your brain" • One key strategy to perform more consistently when it matters most Episode Resources & Links Watch the Mental Performance Summit: https://mentalperformancesummit.org/ Learn more about the Mentally Strong Institute: https://mentallystronginstitute.com/ Download the National Confidence Research Study: https://confidencestudy.com/ Request a Free Mental Breakthrough Call with a Mentally Strong Coach: https://freementalbreakthroughcall.com/ Follow Max on LinkedIn: Maximilian Pollack, CMPC, BCB | LinkedIn

Today on the high performance mindset, I'm joined by Max Pollack, a cognitive performance specialist who works with the U.S. Special Forces, helping elite operators sharpen their focus, regulate stress, and perform under some of the most demanding conditions on the planet. Max is a certified mental performance consultant and biofeedback practitioner, and his work sits at the intersection of psychology, physiology, and performance. He trains individuals to optimize attention, manage pressure, and make decisions when it matters. the most often in environments where the stakes couldn't even be higher. And you know what I love about Max's work is that while it's rooted in special operations, the lessons apply to all of us, whether you're leading a team, competing in sport, or simply trying to show up your best under pressure. Today we're going to dive into what it really takes to perform in high-stakes stress environments, how to train your mind to like the elite and practical tools that you can use

to stay focused, confident, and in control when it matters the most. Max, welcome to the performance mindset. I'm so pumped to have you here. Thank you, Sandra. Very happy to be here. It's funny because I used to watch this back when it kicked off in COVID, and now I'm on it. And now it is. All right. Many years later, five years, hundreds of episodes later. Yes, yes. Max, last week, we were both a part of the Mental Performance Summit. We had six speakers, bless you, seven speakers, talk all about mental performance. What was your top takeaway from that summit. Wow. There was so many takeaways. I think Zach Brandon talked about playing offense with your time. And I was like, that's really good. So many times we find ourselves playing defense.

We're in our day-to-day and our attention keeps getting pulled in different directions and then our calendars keeps filling up. But we might be losing sight of what really matters, what's most important. not incorporating the things that should be incorporated. So take that message and just play offensive with your time. Make sure that you schedule things accordingly. So you are in line with your values, with what matters, and with who that matters. I had so many takeaways. I wrote like five pages of notes as I was trying to also, you know,

move people along and be the MC. But I had, and there's so many things I could say about it. But one of my favorite parts was when Chris Goodman said, when you focus on what you can't control, that ends up controlling you. And I, you know, I just never heard it said that way. And I was like, wow, you know, isn't that absolutely true that those uncontrollables control you? And we know, you know, that doesn't lead to high performance and peak performance.

The really cool thing is people can head to mental performance summit.org and they can still purchase the recording. And you get a copy of my upcoming book coming out, September 1 called The Confidence Habit. It's only $39. It's kind of a no-brainer. That's what I think. It's a no-brainer. I mean, if you're not doing that, then I don't know what you're doing.

So, Max, I want to actually start by asking you a question about being introspective about your perspective. And you and I've had lots of different conversations, and that was just one thing that really stood out to me about your philosophy. So tell us what it means, you know, maybe three things that are included within this concept of being introspective about perspective. So being introspective about perspective, I think is critical for any human being. We have to really be able to take what's happening in our lives, no matter how big or small it is, and understand if the way that we're thinking, how we're perceiving situations is supporting us or hindering us in the situations that we find ourselves in. So one thing that I like to work with with my clients is something like that I refer to as a triple C approach.

Catch it, check it, change it. So with that, first you want to be able to catch whatever thought that you are having or belief that just shows up for you in any situation. Check to see if that thought is actually grounded in reality. Is it supporting you? Is it helpful? Is it actually accurate? Or is it pulling you away from what matters? Pulling away your focus, making you think in ways that takes you maybe down a dark path, catastrophizing, et cetera.

And then simply change it. Let's shift to a perspective that gives you the best chance, the best shot at handling the moment with precision. I feel like this really, really shows up for people, shows up for me. and I learned that this was necessary in some key moments in my life, where it might be more likely that we fertilize our mind with unhelpful thoughts that are maybe based in fear or assumption, but really we need to fertilize our mind with truth. So that's what I think of when I think about introspective,

being introspective about perspective. I love a few things that you said there that are really like tool-based that people who are listening can use, right? Catch it, check it. Is it true? Is it helpful? And then you get to change it, right? Fertilizing our mind with the truth.

So many times our brain goes to the worst case scenario and lives in fear and the future instead of, you know, what's important now. And I think about your work with special operations, like how cool is the work that you do, right? So when you think about all that work with the special operations, what do you think separates the mentally elite from everyone else? A lot of things off the top of my head. I think you would have to come down to they don't necessarily just rise to the occasion. They are so well trained that they fall back to their training, especially from a mental standpoint. So they trust like a common military terms, trust your training, trust your training, right?

Because the military pours in so much time, effort, money into it so that when the storm hits, when they're faced with adversity, when they're in a situation, they don't have to think so much. Well, they think, but it's just, it's just falling back to like muscle memory. So the mentally, the mentally elite really do, I'd say four things pretty darn well. Okay. They control their attention, especially when it's under pressure, because they've trained under pressure almost always. They recover very effectively faster than the average person or than the average performer.

They allow their training to actually guide their action. So everything that they've done, they've already. contingency planned, they've experienced, they learned how to take apart, put together a weapon, redo it a million different times under different circumstances with different types of situations, and they're ultimately prepared for anything with contingency planning. So as long as they have a good idea, when I enter this environment, this is what ultimately could be there, or it could be this, or it could be that, or a thousand of the things. they've pretty much wrapped their mind around all of them.

And so from the elite, they're really good at because of that training. They simply bring their attention to this very moment, especially when things are chaotic. They simplify and say, trust your training. Come back to what matters right now. What does this moment need for me right now? And I say, that's surprising. I love the most four things, Max,

And I think about, you know, how we can apply these in our everyday life, no matter if we're a leader or, I mean, I'm a speaker. I'm a mental performance coach. But I have to do the same thing. I have to cut my attention to what matters most under pressure. I have to recover quickly, right? I have to have contingency plans, especially when those moments are really important to me, you know, that I want to do my best. How do you think we can use these four principles in our everyday life? As you think about how you use that.

Yes. You know, for these, I think that we simply have to allow ourselves to bring our focus and attention to the present moment, to invest our time, energy, and effort into what supports us to be our own version of high level and elite in whatever our performance domain or our craft is in. And it's not just for like a training environment. It's in your everyday life. the more you can train your brain through neuroplasticity, which our brain can adapt and change over time, just by the way that you think, how you process information, we can be very deliberate and say,

is this way of approaching situations, what I want for myself in the hard moments and the easy moments? If the answer is yes, then you want to keep thinking that way. You want to keep doing those things. But if it's not, and you're like, man, I could level up here.

I could definitely be better here. Find a way to do it. That's what high-level performance do. They just keep finding a way to plus one to make themselves 1% better. And I think that's what we have to do for ourselves. Wonderful. Well, I'm thinking about, you know, in high-stakes environments, like special forces, right? What does Agnew Performance actually look like day-to-day?

And if you could describe, like, one mental skill that you've trained, that you think has made the biggest difference in, you know, in life or death situations, What would that be? So in cognitive performance, I would think that what's really, really critical is being able to think clearly, make decisive, quick decisions. When I say quick, like they've been thought through appropriately and executing especially under pressure. That's critical for this environment. And if it, to be able to do this, there's so many things that matter that understand that unlock your ability. But if I had to choose one skill, I think I would share with you something

related to self-regulation because we want a person to be able, especially in a high-stake situation, they've got to self-regulate because if they don't, it doesn't matter how much training you have, how great of a shooter you are, how fast of a runner you are. It doesn't matter because you won't be able to use all those resources effectively. Therefore, while attention is critical, self-regulation, I'd say, would even supersede that. So to make that come to life, we have to understand the nerve system, right? You have sympathetic, stress-based, parasympathetic, relaxation-based. This is what helps us self-regulate. Now, if we can take this understanding that under stress, sympathetic is hijacked. We're activated. And under relaxation, parasympathetic

is activated. I want to show you, I want to help our people that we're working, with activate a little more parisepathetic. Not so much that they're like truly relaxed because you don't want to be too relaxed, but help them balance the nervous system so that they're not hijacked on either side. And I do that through downshift breathing. So downshift breathing is just a simple way to like bring your system back online, especially when things start to elevate and become more challenging. name. And I actually use an acronym called down because that's exactly what we're trying to do.

We're trying to downshift the body at the nervous system activate the parasympathetic. So the mind and body can function together. And so I'll actually go over with you. So down. I'll be sure if you've got my not. Okay. So down starts D is drop, drop tension. We want to allow ourselves to drop tension in our body, which is going to allow us to release the shoulders,

release the jaw, allow ourselves to even allow the muscles of the face to just fall, just a little bit. If your shoulders drop a quarter inch, great. Whatever allows that to happen, it's telling your nervous system that you actually are able to think and relax. So first, drop tension. Oh is open the breath. So slowly inhale through the nose, the belly expands, and your chest stays nice and still. And as you exhale, the belly falls and the chest also stays still. So it's going to have a belly rising and falling effect.

And you're by opening the breath and then w is for down, widen the exhale. So making your exhale, I said exhale for a reason. you want to extend your exhale longer than your inhale. Why would we want to do that? Well, because our inhale makes our heart rate increase in beats. So if we inhale, our heart rate starts speeding up. If we want to relax, we want to wind down the nervous system and allow our brain to think, what do we have to do?

Slow the exhale. Because the exhale allows our heart rate to slow. And if it's longer than the inhale, we have now, we've hijacked our nervous system and helped it do what it needs to do to calm. So therefore, something such as four seconds inhale, six seconds to exhale allows that to come to life. And now you're calming the nervous system. And lastly, N is narrowing the focus.

Our brain is going to be on a million things, especially in high-stituate, high-pressure situations or challenging situations. We want to bring it to one thing. narrow your focus to your breath or to even muscle tension reducing it, I would really just almost always go to the breath. What, like if I focus on my breathing in and out, I can really take my, um, my sympathetic nervous system hijack and downregulate that and get to a more neutral, relaxed state.

So that is a downshift of the breathing. I love that. I love that it's been really practical and something that people can use when they're thinking about their breath. So drop the tension, open the breath, widen the exhale, and narrow the focus. So obviously, maybe tell us a bit about how someone in special forces might use this down shift and then how you and I could use this in our everyday life. Yeah. So for someone in special forces, this is going to be something that can be used prior to a mission or they're in the midst of one. So you can use it beforehand, like pre-performance

for teens, if you're, you know, you're going to go in and you have to do something that's very important along a mission set, they can do this as they're on their way, right? Help get their nervous system where they need to be. Or, for example, you're stacked on a door. You have to go in to a close quarters combat situation. You've got to be at a clear sector, a clearer room. What do you need to do? You got to make sure that you are regulated. Do you have 10 minutes? Probably not. You're probably, you only have a matter of seconds. Well, guess what? If you were to practice this, train this at a high level. Effectively, you can achieve amazing results within two to three breaths. Two to three breaths. When I train people, I can literally, when I show them how to do

this, I enter like this meditative state within it. I'm telling you two breaths, even though it feels like one breath on there. So, like in those moments, you can become a Jedi in a way. And this is the Jedi trick. works very, very well with high training. And in everyday life, every one more, like everyday life, this can show up anytime that you feel that there's something that's like your nervous system's taking over, you're losing some control. I've even had friends that are starting to have, like, they've told me about like feeling

like panicky in certain situations that are not typical for them. Great opportunity to use this. Use this. But like when you're entering those situations. when you experience symptoms like that and bring yourself down a few notches. So what would you tell us in terms of training this consistently so that we could do it in one or two breasts or three breasts

to really have this more Jedi focus and aura about us? Yeah, I would say, so there's a thing called passive volition and active volition. we don't want to have too much active volition, meaning that you're like deliberately trying to do something. It's like you're trying to relax. It's an oxymoron. So we can't do that.

What we want to do is just really make it simple. Just if you had to narrow it down, focus on one thing in the breast. Notice the belly rising and falling. If that's not typical, if that's not easy for you to do, just lay down a bed tonight, put one hand on the belly, one hand on the chest.

find the belly rising and falling. If that's achieved within a set, you know, a couple days, you can then start to slow the breath. And once you've done it, you now just simply have to practice. And by doing that, you can then employ that anywhere in any situation. And it will likely lead to very impactful results for you. Well, such a practical tool that people can use in their everyday life and high stakes environments when they want to perform at their best.

but the idea is like you training it consistently. You know, one of the thing that I loved in our conversations that I've had with you is this idea that you believe that lessons are everywhere. We just have to find them, right? So what does that mean to you and how do you use that in your everyday life? I completely, that is like, I'm a walking billboard for this idea that there is lessons in every experience that we have. Some are bigger lessons or harder lessons than others, but they're there for the Tatee.

I had a West Point student at one point that I was consulting with, and he was complaining to me about a lot of things that he was experiencing at West Point that were hard, that were difficult, and that he just thought was kind of unnecessary or pointless. And he was frustrated by it. He's like, look, I just don't need to do this. I'm still going to be fine here and do my own thing. I don't need to graduate from this program. And in that conversation, I just, I never even thought of this until that moment.

But I'm like, think of all these experiences like a fruit. We've got to, like, if you have an orange, you want to get the most juice out of the orange, right? Like if we live life and we don't directly take these experiences and get everything we can out of them, we're only taking a bite out of that orange. We really need to take the full orange. So how do we do that? Find a way to squeeze the juice out of every experience you have. And you never know.

You might actually grow substantially from that and enjoy the process. And from this West Point high performing individual, he didn't really view it that way at first. And I remember in that conversation, it was a light bulb. And he was like, I'm really thinking about that thought a lot. and he took it and ran with it. And it's a pretty amazing thing that he's done since he left that conversation. So I think that's just that's one immediate takeaway.

Like lessons are everywhere and we just have to find a way to squeeze the juice out of everything. It's great for everyone that does this. It makes me think about a couple of things, Max. So last week we hosted the Mental Performance Summit, which is an incredible summit. And people can still go and check out the recording at Mental Performance. Summit.org. But you were on and we had six, five other mental performance consultants besides me. So like, you know, and we had a Mountain West coach of the year. But while coach Jason at come and speak and that was really amazing. But, you know, there were so many examples of people who've gotten through difficult things and they were looking for, you know, the silver lining or I talked about how, you know, looking for things that happened for you, not to you.

and that's based on a Byron Katie quote, like just looking for the good and all the difficulties. I love this idea of like squeezing the most out of situations because there's some research to show that we only spend 47% of our time in the present moment. But most of the time, we're not even in the moment. We're thinking what we got to do next. So we're not really fully taking in the experience. So how do you do that in your own life? Wow.

So I think taking in. everything you can from the experiences is it's like, all right, for example, if you watch a movie, what are you watching the movie for? Are you doing it because you want to enjoy a movie? Or are you doing it because there might be a really powerful story that you want to learn about? I know that when I go into a movie, I walk out of there and I've always been able to take something away. Even a crazy action-packed film that you're like, I don't even know what that was about, except I got a couple of takeaways. Search for the messages.

Find the juice. Find the value. And it then starts to move its way out of just looking at movies for, you know, enjoyment and a lesson. Big Fish is a great example of that. And then in addition, it's bring it to your own life with your kids at home, whether you're an operator and you're on a team. Like finding the opportunities to learn in our day-to-day experiences

are challenges when we failed. We were in a CTB environment as well once and somebody went in and something that went wrong that never should happen, happened. And it's like it was like the unthinkable. And in that moment, people were just like dumbfounded. Like I don't know what the heck. Like what just happened? Like it was like a freeze moment for and for like people that are at this level,

it's hard to get to a freeze moment because they're so well trained often. And that type of moment, there was. was juice there to squeeze out, to learn what can happen in the ultimate circumstance. And then how do we grow from this? How do we get better each and every time? It's like your own after-action review. So lots of answers to how we bring it. Just one thing is, is take notes in the movie, think about moments of success and failure,

what led to it and how do we bring more success and how do we squeeze the juice out of our life and be better parents, be better teammates, be better executives. musicians, surgeons, whatever your cup of tea is, just keep finding a way to squeeze the juice. You know, you recently had to really practice what you preach in terms of, you know, your own experiences with your family. Tell the listeners a little bit more about what you and your family have gone through the last several years and the ways you've worked through that personally. Yeah. So I have the best family in the world. But we were faced with a very, very, very tough circumstance. My son and daughter were born as twins 14 weeks early back in COVID

2020. And when that happened, it was a very challenging situation. We had to, we were presented with very difficult circumstances and told by the doctors that there was, you know, low likelihood of a positive outcome. And there was going to be a lifelong, very big challenge ahead of us. our whole life was going to change overnight. And even tough decisions had to be made in terms of what we are going to do moving forward with life or death scenarios for the family. It was extremely challenging. With that, what I think, what I've understood is, and wow, when I talk about it,

you like even feel a visceral response. My hands get cold, which is a sympathetic response, by the way. But with that being reminded, we have to make sure that we are fully present in a moment with the people that matter in those situations, that we can communicate effectively to the people that need to be communicated with, the surgeons, the hospital staff, the nurses, make sure that you are standing up as your greatest advocate for your family and with infants that are born that early. you got to be a pretty darn good advocate and find a way to utilize the support around you every step of the way. There's so many lessons and I can share a lot about it, but to keep it short and simple, the hardest moments in our lives are often the greatest teachers. And that moment for me taught me more than I could have ever wished for, but I have grown because of it. And my son and my daughter are the most amazing rises of my life. And I will never be more grateful than I am now.

And I also have my daughter Shiloh and she's incredible. Goodness gracious. Love my kids. Oh, thank you so much for just sharing that with us. I think this makes you just like a real human. And Max, when you were talking about it, my own father has been in the ICU for over 40 days. It's in a very, very difficult time for our family. And just like honestly, like complete roller coaster where one day is great next day it's like we got to have serious conversations about what's next right and I have thought a lot about mental skills and mental performance and like stress just as I'm like the person receiving this in news and like how do I regulate myself and how do I not get so low and the role of doctors and nurses in that it's been

really fascinating to see just from a, like a, you know, a family member's perspective of the patient, like how doctors and nurses are having to regulate themselves. But one of the things that we did that was really, really important for us is like after the first week, man, it was, we were so low. And I just started taking the sticky notes out and just every day putting a win on the wall. I just wrote a win. And then we, we made a board that now stands that every single day we write a win. That's even just like a small win that could be, you know, I mean, the other day he sat up in his chair and he had done that for 30 days, you know. Amazing.

You know, and so, but we have to, I think about actually how that is about building our confidence. And one of the things we found from our national research study on confidence is you have to capture those wins, right? And you have to, you know, be present because so many times we can be thinking about what's next instead of being, you know, really focused on the, on the people that we love. What do you think has been like the biggest lesson learned for you in terms of just like navigating this with your family and being present with them? By the way, thank you for sharing that with all of us, Sandra. It is so beautiful seeing those wins and honoring them and, you know, keeping those, literally keeping notes on them. I think that that's a message that. That's a message

that everyone needs to be able to resonate with in some way because despite your circumstances or what scenario you find yourself in because we all have challenges. We all have our own fight. Sure. And so just really keeping the belief strong, the optimism, I, and the hope is the engine that's going to keep you firing in all cylinders. without it, that engine is not a vehicle you want to drive because it is just going to be a bumpy ride and it might not start one day.

So we got to make sure that we keep hope high and keep refueling our hope like you're dealing with your family, with that windboard, like all these winning moments. And because as much as we probably would hope that this doesn't happen, there are going to be adversities that we all face that you and I have both faced in the hospital environment with our families and others are facing currently in other situations we have to find a way to build the reservoir up of hope so that okay when these things happen our belief is we will find a way through it we will do what's necessary and say what's necessary we'll do our research and we're going to take action in a way that supports the staff that gets everyone

around us the health they need, including ourselves. And I think that's a beautiful formula to filling the hope bucket, or I guess, or filling that engine and keeping the field. Yeah, thank you. So just for, you know, for being vulnerable about your story too. And I know you and I could both talk more about that and the lessons learned. But I think that if I could summarize what we've talked about so far is like being present with the people that you love, of when it really, you know, when it matters to you. And the hardest moments are what teaches you the most. You've got to keep that engine firing.

And, you know, one of the reasons that I think about this windboard and how important this windboard has been to us is because we know, you know, just in general, confidence is just a huge topic for our listeners. They know confidence is one of the strongest predictors of our success. And I was just kind of curious about if we go back to like this, your special forces work, How is confidence really built in these environments where failure has, I mean, serious consequences if it's in special forces, but I also think about doctors and nurses and, you know, there's consequences. Absolutely. There's a lot of ways that confidence is built here in these environments, but just one overarching approach to understanding that is I think of confidence in high risk environments, not.

necessarily like being this soul feeling. It's more so like a receipt. So you're not, you're not waiting for, oh, what do you say? I said, cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're not waiting for confidence to show up for us. We have to earn confidence. We have to stack confidence. You know, you're going to carry it with you in all these environments, especially you want it the most, when pressure mounts when it's there. So how I kind of, a lot of times what I'm working with my folks, with the folks that I'm working with, and for everyone here to think about is like confidence comes from what I call the three

unshakables. The first unshakable skill is knowing your craft so darn well that it's smooth like butter. We talked about this earlier. You know, it's all a quiet work that you have to do to get. to that point, like all the reps and all the drills, that's going to be critical. But in addition to that is the contingencies that you've had to walk through, that you've had to maneuver in your mind with imagery, envisioning all aspects of what could happen, not just what will likely happen, but what could happen.

And you've walked through it because you do that. And mastery is how you've achieved the first receipt. and the first unshakable because you've mastered what's coming. Second is unshakable support. Without support, as you and I both know in our situations in life right now, it's not easy to get through that. And you have to have support. And if you're in special forces, special operations,

you need support as much as everyone else, if not more. So I'm not doing this alone. As long as you can say that to yourself, I'm not doing this alone. I've got my battle buddies. I've got my teammates. I've got my leadership, et cetera, on my side. The elite performers, they're not relying on just confidence for themselves.

They have connection and you have to be able to know that you have a team that has your back. They've got your six, right? And you train yourself to respond, adapt and recover, especially when that's not the case. And, you know, so you're not doing this alone. Now, the third unshakable is self-trust. Whatever happens, I can handle it. Just believe in yourself, like having belief in yourself that is unwavering, as we've already talked about, you know, not everything is going to go perfect, but because we've done

everything that's necessary to be able to respond and adapt and recover when it doesn't go perfect, that's how we know we can, we're ready. We can trust that we're ready for anything. So putting them all together, you've got. unshakable skill, unshakable support, and unshakable trust. I love that. And I think people can really use that and apply that. Unshakeable skill, unshakable support, unshakable self-trust.

And, you know, the way I think about confidence, like, it's a continual journey. You know, a lot of people think it's just like, you know, you turn on a light switch and you're always confident. But we know it's like this lifelong skill we have to keep growing because we can face setbacks and adversity and, you know, difficult. difficulties in our personal lives, like both of us and you and I have talked about. And so that can impact confidence in how we show up. So it's like the skill we have to keep on nurturing, I think, no matter how old we are and how successful we are. What do you think is the role of self-talk

in not only confidence, but in cognitive performance, especially when these are these extreme environments that you really train people to be able to perform under pressure in. It's a great question. Self-talk, it's going to be a key differentiator of readiness. Because you're fertilizing the mind with information. And you wanted to be the director of what you, of what's going to fuel your performance. So I think of self-talk kind of like a commander, right? So the commander in your brain is giving you the information that you need to succeed.

The commanders, though, these folks are not going to beat around the bush and give yourself all kinds of unnecessary sources of information. They're not going to tell you a bunch of stuff. They need to get to the point. They're laser-like in their messaging. So time is the currency. So especially in pressure situation, time is currency. So with that said, state the information.

that's needed and then get out. Get in, get out. Laser-like. The information has to be clear and informative that allows you to perform without having to like get the brain too busy with over inundation of unnecessary information. So with that said, I would just say,

use self-talk and find out what is, what do you need to arm yourself with that a commander would listen to or would say? and don't give it any more, just the necessary information, and then get it and get out. Be leisure light. Max, I knew our conversation would be incredible. I loved all the value you provided in just this really short time. I'm going to do my best to like summarize it.

When I asked you at the beginning about being introspective, about perspective, you gave us three things to consider to catch our thoughts, to check them and to change them. And I think that's even kind of what you're saying about self-talk and being the commander of your brain. You know, so important to catch it, check it and change it. You know, I love when you're talking about just this idea of like truth and what is actually true. And most of our self-talk we know is not true. And we talked about the importance of like being able to control our tension under pressure, recover quickly, right? And allow our training to guide us.

I love your drop acronym. Again, to downshift your breath. So drop the tension, open the breath, widen the exhale, and narrow your focus as a way to execute under pressure. And then at the end, right, when we were talking about confidence, don't wait for it. You asked us to really stack our confidence, stack our confidence with our wins. And then, you know, when you said like three unshakable skills of confidence is mastery skill and self-trust. incredible. Tell us, Max, how we can find more about your work and what you do and how can we follow along with your work. Absolutely. So you can go to my website, www.Ooptimal mindset consulting.com. Also, I have a podcast, Pivotal Moments Podcast with Max Pollock. I need to re-up it a little bit, but I will get back on there and put more material out. And I'm also on LinkedIn. So just look up my name, Maximilian, M-A-X, I-M-E-E-M.

I-L-I-N-P-L-I-N-Polick. Everyone gets that wrong. And I usually will share information there. But thank you, Sandra. This has been awesome to be part of this. And you are an inspiration. You've done a great deal for the field. And you continue to be a catalyst for growth.

So thank you. I can thank you from everyone. I'm sure that's listening here. We thank you. Thank you. I so appreciate that. And I should have asked you this question earlier. but you just wait through our mentally strong coach certification,

which is really cool because you already have, you know, degrees in performance psychology, but you just went through our January cohort, and we do this mentally strong coach certification twice a year in January and then in June. And basically we're teaching just mental tools and skills that leaders can take back to their businesses or coaches like you who work with sport or maybe life coaches.

or mental health practitioners, they can use it in their work. So what led you to join the certification and what was the biggest takeaway? I've always been looking forward to learning from you or whatever way I can. So that was an open avenue. I'm like, let's do this. But in addition, there was so many awesome practical tools, like you said. Like it's, you put things in almost like a cookbook fashion. Hey, to improve these areas or take on these skills.

here's some techniques. Here's a nice wide array. Learning about those was essential and very useful to anybody, wherever you find yourself. And for a coach like myself, yeah, I have a lot of training in a lot of different areas, but somebody that wants to always grow

is going to take on opportunities like this. And so I'd recommend to the world, give it a shot, learn from Cindra and her team, and also the connections you have with the people involved in the certification training is invaluable. It's very, very helpful stuff. So thank you for letting me be part of it. Yeah, thank you so much. And the cool thing is we get to keep on seeing each other once a month

because there's continual support for all our mentally strong coaches. So thank you so much, Max. What an honor for you to be here. And I loved learning from you. Keep up the great work and keep prushing it. Thank you, Sandra. Have a great day. Way to go for finishing another episode of the high performance mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and enjoy my exclusive community for high performers,

where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Cyndra.com. See you next week.