Enhanced Recovery. Sharper thinking. Sustained performance. From @martinsoorjoo.
London
Joined December 2009
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We avoid silence.
We finish a high-pressure week and immediately fill the void with 2x speed podcasts, Lo-Fi beats, and background television.
We treat silence like an unwelcome guest we have to entertain.
Centred, grounded power comes from silence.
Studies show that just two minutes of absolute, unmitigated silence lowers blood pressure and regulates the nervous system faster than listening to "relaxing" music.
On Sunday evening, the highest ROI move you can make isn't consuming more content.
It's shutting it down.
Winning doesn't just change your results.
It can change your brain.
In experiments with mice, repeated victories changed neural circuitry involved in competitive behaviour.
And made subsequent victories more likely.
It's called the Winner Effect.
So what can we learn from this about rebuilding our drive to win after setbacks?
That's one of five practical moves in my latest podcast episode - How to Ignite Your Competitive Fire.
Link in the first reply.
10 mins - no fluff pod.fo/e/6f3a31
The finish line hasn’t moved.
The conditions have.
Shorter days. Different light.
Rising load before 31 December.
Clocks go back this weekend in the UK, next weekend in the US.
Running the same intensity and the same routines now raises the cost of every remaining week.
Adapt how you operate.
Don’t add more intensity.
You need to see what no longer fits and change that.
Adapting is not the same as lowering your standards.
Little sleep. Intense day.
And an evening you need to be fully present for.
You push through on coffee and willpower.
You arrive, but not really.
The following protocol rapidly restores and recharges. 15–20 minutes flat on the floor / bed, eyes closed, a voice guiding attention through the body.
You stay awake.
The nervous system stops fighting.
The practice is Yoga Nidra or NSDR.
There's strong evidence e.g. a trial published this year gave tired adults ten minutes of it and measured less fatigue, less stress, and better perceived recovery in the short term.
You come out of a session clear and calm.
Not wired and tired.
Clear enough to give the evening what it deserves.
No app, no mat, no experience needed.
A floor and a free recording.
Popular guided 15 min free session in first reply.
What do you reach for when the day has taken more than you had?
The Sustained Edge retweeted
Great study-
Same penalty spot. Same twelve yards. Same goalkeeper.
When scoring wins the match, the best players in the world score ninety-two times out of a hundred.
When missing loses it… same players, same distance… sixty-two.
Nothing changed except how the target was framed. One is playing to win.
The other is playing not to lose.
A clear target gives you direction.
Framed as a win, it gives you the drive to go after it.
A win makes the next win more likely.
Biologists call it the winner effect.
However...
A loss lowers the appetite for the next challenge.
That's the loser effect, and its impact is real.
Boxing promoters solved this before the scientists did.
When Tyson came out of prison, Don King didn't put him in with the champion.
He gave him two easy fights first.
After a loss, do the same.
Book a challenge you'll win.
Reset your neurochemistry and go for the next big win.
The perfect Monday didn't happen.
No workout. No journal. Overloaded inbox.
And the verdict is in: the week's off to a bad start and will end that way.
Wrong.
The week doesn't care how it began.
It cares whether you're still in the game on Wednesday. Drop the standard.
Win tomorrow.
Win the week.
Monday morning. The week is already in front of you. Two ways to meet it.
As a threat: the demands look bigger than what you’ve got.
Or as a challenge: you’ve got what it takes, and this is where you use it.
Across a large body of studies, the challenge state wins. Clearer thinking. Better decisions. Better performance — on the same task, under the same pressure.
Here is what matters right now: that state is a reading, not a feeling you have to wait for. And a reading can be changed in sixty seconds.
So before the first call or the inbox: one slow exhale, longer than the inhale. Then the question — not “what might go wrong today?” but “what am I going after first?”
On Monday - offence is often the best form of defence. Go in strong. Then, once you’ve got momentum, calm down from a position of strength.”
Settle. Then go. Ease off once you’re ahead.
Source in the first reply.
The Sunday scaries are not a feeling.
They are a strategy — and a losing one.
Dread puts you into what psychologists call a prevention focus: watching for what could go wrong, playing not to lose.
Research on pressure shows it’s the posture pressure pushes you into by default. It is the wrong one for the thinking Monday asks of you.
The week doesn’t respect a defensive crouch.
So tonight, one question.
Not what might hit you — what will you go after first?
Decide it.
Write it down.
Then sleep.
The deciding is tonight’s job.
One difficult meeting can cost you three days.
Not because of the meeting.
Because you keep having it in your head before it happens.
In the shower, on the drive, at 2am.
Rehearsing the argument.
Predicting the objection.
Running the worst-case version.
That's the anticipatory tax.
You pay for the event before it arrives.
Preparation is useful.
Pre-living it is not.
Train for the moment.
But stop performing it in advance.
If your Saturday is spent recovering from the week, the week has cost you too much.
Recharge isn't the reward for the work.
It's part of the work.
The goal should not be a weekend that repairs you.
Make it a week that doesn't break you.
Equanimity is not passive calm.
It's the ability to experience pressure, praise, disappointment or uncertainty without being immediately pulled around by it.
A 2024 meta-analysis of 110 studies found that equanimity-related mindfulness strategies reduced emotional reactivity.
That matters under pressure.
Less automatic reaction.
More space to assess.
More choice over the response.
And the useful part: equanimity appears trainable.
Not indifference.
Composure with options.
And if you want to read more on Equanimity..
[1] Ian M. Raugh, Alysia M. Berglund & G. P. Strauss, 2024, Affective Science, 32 citations. Implementation of Mindfulness-Based Emotion Regulation Strategies: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00281-x
[2] Catherine Juneau, R. Shankland & Michaël Dambrun, 2020, Mindfulness, 30 citations. Trait and State Equanimity: The Effect of Mindfulness-Based Meditation Practice DOI: 10.1007/s12671-020-01397-4
Your competitive drive peaks around 50.
Testosterone is already lower.
The two do not slide together.
Experimental evidence shows competitive preference rising into midlife even while the hormonal substrate falls.
Desire can remain.
Mobilisation becomes less automatic.
For high achievers carrying consequence, the edge is whether the drive is being trained.
The laptop is closed. You are still working.
The meeting replays in the shower. The unanswered email sits on the kitchen table. You go to bed on duty and wake up already behind.
That is not a discipline problem. The body does not switch off on its own. It has to be moved across a line.
The people who face this at its most extreme learned that the hard way. Elite units train the transition out of a fight as carefully as the fight itself. Breathe down. Debrief. Hand over the kit. Then go home.
The civilian version takes ninety seconds.
Capture what's open.
Close the day in one word.
Move your body across the line: a walk, a shower, a change of clothes.
Recharge is not what's left over. It is a skill, and it starts at the door.
A penalty to win the match: the best players in the world rarely miss.
A penalty to avoid losing it: the same players miss far more often.
Same kick. Same distance.
Playing not to lose makes you worse at the very thing you are protecting.
Before your next meeting that matters, write down what you gain if it goes well.
Then walk in and get it.