The Psychology of Performance: How to Be Your Best in Life

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice. Practice. Practice.” Today, the relatively new science of performance psychology tells us that old answer is incomplete at best. In The Psychology of Performance: How to Be Your Best in Life, clinical sport psychologist Eddie O’Connor, PhD, shares the best ways for you to reach your personal Carnegie Hall based on the latest scientific research – whether your performance environment is music, dance, business, or sport. These often surprising research results will make you rethink your own performance strategies, offering approaches you might never have considered and busting myths you might have taken as truth.

As Dr. O’Connor explains, the work of a sport psychologist is not defined by sport, but by the science of performance psychology, the mental aspects of superior performance in settings where excellence is central – usually sports, the performing arts, business, and high-risk professions such as the military. In Dr. O’Connor’s work and in this course, sport is a lens through which to view the issues of practice, anxiety, injury, confidence, and more – issues that apply to any performer.

We’ve always known that physical training can reshape our bodies. This exciting research reveals that mental training also can modify the structure and function of our brains, resulting in increased neurological ability to perform a particular skill. Purposeful practice gets you there. Learn why it’s the only thing that can.

About the Great Courses

It all began with just a few videotapes—and a brilliant inspiration.

Tom Rollins, the founder of The Great Courses, was a law student at Harvard University and was facing an important exam on the U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence—an exam for which he wasn’t prepared.

Dreading the notoriously boring subject but knowing his success depended on understanding the material, Rollins obtained videotapes of 10 lectures by a noted authority on the subject, Professor Irving Younger. Rollins planted himself in front of his television late at night and put the first tape into his VCR. What he discovered changed his life.

The tapes were unlike anything Rollins had experienced in his Harvard lecture halls. Professor Younger’s lectures were outrageously insightful, impressively thorough, and engagingly witty. Most important: They hammered home the concepts in a way that made the subject both accessible and interesting. They made learning not a chore to be accomplished but an adventure to be experienced.

Rollins played all 10 hours of those lectures nearly nonstop. A few days later he passed his exam and went on to make an “A” in the course.

He never forgot the unique power of recorded lectures by a great teacher—the way that a bright mind could ignite a passion for lifelong learning. And years later, in 1990, Rollins founded The Great Courses to share that unforgettable experience with the rest of the world.

Product details

• Full Audiobook MP3 Program
• Full PDF Guidebook Included
• Listening Length: 12 hours and 18 minutes
• Author: Dr. Eddie O’Connor, The Great Courses
• Narrator: Dr. Eddie O’Connor
• Release Date: September 22, 2017
• Publisher: The Great Courses
• Version: Original recording
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0758MHNS6