![f0049-01](https://article-imgs.scribdassets.com/6e55q1g4u8cpmqpf/images/fileIHV336HD.jpg)
EXCELLENCE IS A LOT messier than you think. Thirty or so years ago, mental-performance coaches would spend hours and hours with Olympians, aiming to help them have a flawless event. “There was a lot of focus on being in the zone—in your flow state—and basically trying to set up the perfect performance,” says Sean McCann, Ph.D., who has coached athletes for 33 years as a senior sport psychologist for the U. S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee.
But perfection is rare; chaos is everywhere. (See: the 2020/2021 Games and, well, life.) As the ideas of mind-fulness and resilience gained status in research circles and the zeitgeist as ways to manage that chaos, they took root and got results in high-performance training, too. Mental-performance experts