Good morning and welcome to the Increase Your Impact podcast. Justin Suu here, episode 1,700.

We've hit the 1700s. Thanks for joining me on this journey. And if you have the time, please head over to

iTunes to leave a rating and a review. I'm always grateful and appreciative of that to help this podcast grow.

I recently heard a story of an elite athlete who was going through a lot of stuff off the field,

which many of us do experience things outside of our sport, school, work, whatever it may be.

But she had to compete.

She had to perform at the highest level.

Now, if she allowed it to consume her,

these things would have paid a huge toll on her focus, on her energy, her attention, and her ability to be the best teammate she could. And so what she did is she wrote down all the things

that were on her mind and she put it down and she told herself

I'll come back to this and then what else she would the other thing she did is she wrote down a few

cue words that she wants to focus on that she wants to remember for the game she goes out there

performs very well comes back and picks up all of the stuff, the heavy stuff that she

left in her locker. For those of you who need to perform but are going through something difficult,

you can apply this mental locker strategy in your own life. If you have to perform,

but there's nothing you can do about it, write down the things that

are on your mind, put it in your locker, put in your backpack, put it in a drawer in your office

and say, I'll get back to this. Go and perform. Know what you have to focus on for that moment

and then come back and pick up whatever it is that's on your mind.

It's obviously temporary.

It's obviously not going to solve all of your problems.

However, it can help you stay focused for your performance in the here and now.

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