Learn, Burn Return

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Cindra Kamphoff, who spoke from stage about mental performance. She works with professional athletes and executives to help them be more resilient, specifically helping them quickly disrupt negative thought patterns that would affect their performance. 

She taught her powerful 3-part process, a quick exercise anyone can do at any moment to realign and refocus, and I wanted to share it with you.

The process is: Learn, Burn, Return.

First, in the face of underperformance, Dr. Cindra encourages you to take a quick look at it. There’s probably something you need to learn - a pattern that you need to be aware of, environmental factors you need to keep in consideration, or some other insight that’s relevant to the next attempt. Don’t dwell, it’s meant to be a quick audit.

Then, you burn it. Forget it ever happened. Move on emotionally, removing any attachment to the poor result. You integrated what caused it and keeping it in your memory no longer serves you. Confidence is built by having an overwhelming number of positive instances that prove your capabilities. Don’t let one bad move spoil everything else. Dr. Cindra recommends you have a ritual you physically do to shake it off.

And last, you return. You go right back into being fully focused on the present, undistracted by what just happened - whether that’s a game, a presentation, or something else that demands your best. The truth is, you can only do your best when you give your best.

In one case, one of her athletes, Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Adam Thielen dropped a big pass. He ran off the field (processing the mistake and learning from it), when he got to the sideline he made a hand gesture flushing it down the toilet (burning the memory), and dialed right back into the game (return). 

His next opportunity, he made a big play that won the game. And it was only possible because he used the ‘Learn, Burn, Return’ process to restore his high-performance.

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