Several athletes made epic comebacks at this year’s Olympic Winter Games, from gold medalist Alysa Liu’s triumphant return to figure skating to alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin’s slalom victory, which came after she was disqualified from the event at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Most of us can’t relate to the pressure of competing on a global stage, but there’s a lot we could learn from those athletes’ resilience, according to Cindra Kamphoff, Ph.D., founder of the Mentally Strong Institute and a mental performance coach who’s worked with Olympians, NFL teams and Fortune 500 CEOs.
Her goal is to help people perform their best every day, whether they’re preparing for a playoff game or hustling to meet a tight deadline at work. “The same skills that elite athletes use, we need to use as well,” she tells CNBC Make It.
When you’ve experienced a setback or made a mistake at work, Kamphoff recommends using a technique she calls “learn, burn, return” – it’s “the same thing I would teach an elite athlete going to the Olympics,” she says.
The first step is to figure out what went wrong, Kamphoff says. Her primary question for a client who experienced a career setback is: “What would you do differently next time?”
