Dr. Vanessa Shannon, Ph.D., CMPC, mental performance consultant and former director
of Mental Performance for the Cincinnati Reds, opened the third day of The RISE Summit on SDOH with a keynote address on performance psychology as a powerful, science-based discipline to enhance performance under pressure.
Dr. Shannon has spent more than 10 years of her career on high-level athletic environments at the University of Louisville and the Cincinnati Reds, working with elite athletes to train their minds as much as they train bodies.
Performance psychology—the study and application of the psychological factors that enhance human performance—has been battle-tested in some of the most demanding high-pressure environments in the world, where human error isn't just costly, but can be fatal, said Dr. Shannon.
It’s based on three core principles: self-awareness and self-regulation; mental preparation or recovery; and communication and team cohesion.
But it doesn’t only apply to elite athletes and soldiers, she said. It can offer individuals, organizations, and teams a comprehensive framework to optimize performance under pressure through cognitive and emotional regulation.
“We keep asking people like you to be resilient, which is incredibly difficult when the settings and systems you're in and that are around you aren't designed to support resilience,” said Dr. Shannon. “We keep asking people like you to be resilient without giving you the tools to actually be resilient.”
The issues related to stress and burnout are affecting professionals throughout the health care industry. It’s impacting those in Medicaid, Medicare, commercial health plans, hospitals, provider groups, government, and community-based organizations, noted Dr. Shannon.
The good news: There are practical, learnable, and immediately relevant practices that take anywhere from 30 seconds, two minutes, and five minutes, yet offer disproportionate returns.
“Resilience isn't about being unshakable; it's about knowing how to reset and recover,” she said. “These are trainable skills, not fixed traits.”
Here are five practices Dr. Shannon shared to maximize your mental performance:
1. Tactical breathing
Implementing tactical breathing such as “box breathing” (a technique used by the Navy SEALs) into your morning routine or before a high-stakes meeting or difficult conversation is a simple, discreet practice that takes less than a minute and will help regulate your nervous system in real time.
Here’s how it works:
Inhale for four seconds; hold for four seconds; exhale for four seconds; hold for four seconds; and repeat.
A simple practice that does remarkable things, lowering your heart rate, reducing stress hormones, and activating the parts of your brain responsible for clear thinking and decision-making.
2. Mental rehearsal
You can practice mental rehearsal by visualizing a difficult conversation or decision point and imagine yourself handling it with clearness and calm, a strategy that high performers across fields use to prepare for challenging moments before they happen.
A simple process with a powerful effect:
Close your eyes. Bring a moment to mind—a conversation you're dreading, a tough decision you're anticipating having to make. Picture it in detail, not just what's happening, but how you want to show up. Your tone, your posture, your presence. With visualization, you can start small. Visualize the opening line of that hard conversation. See yourself pausing instead of rushing to fill the silence. Imagine choosing a calm tone.
The neuroscience behind it: When you mentally reverse something with enough clarity and emotional intensity, your brain begins to code that experience as real.
3. Two-minute values check-in
This quick two-minute practice calls for you ask yourself two questions that can realign everything else. It is one of the most effective ways to cut through the noise and recenter yourself to start the week before the emails hit, before the meetings stack up, before the pace of the system takes over, said Dr. Shannon.
Here’s how it works:
Pause, breathe, and bring your focus to what really matters. This is about anchoring yourself in purpose, not just anchoring yourself to your to do list.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What matters most this week?
- How will I move through this week in alignment with those values?
For example, if the value is compassion, it might mean approaching a tough conversation with empathy even when you're exhausted. Or choosing to extend patience to others, but also to yourself.
When you operate without these internal check ins, it's easy to default into autopilot and react instead of respond. But when you ground yourself in your values, you start to perform and lead with intention, not just ambition.
4. Transition between roles
Use transition routines, which Dr. Shannon refers to as a psychological reset button, between roles, like a short walk after meetings or a moment of reflection after a clinical interaction, to signal a mental shift and create space to recover.
These brief pauses might seem small, but they serve a powerful purpose, said Dr. Shannon, explaining that they signal a mental shift and help create space to recover.
“In high pressure environments, you may need to move from one emotionally charged situation to the next, with little to no buffer to switch gears quickly from decision-maker to listener, from strategist to caregiver, from high stakes operator to parent or partner the moment you walk through the door,” she said. “That kind of rapid role switching taxes the brain and blurs the boundaries between who we are and what we do."
But transitions matter, according to Dr. Shannon. They're not downtime. They're the bridge between moments. And how you navigate those bridges shapes your capacity to show up well in the next role, she explained.
Here’s how to do it:
- Take a breath
- Ask yourself: What do I need to set down so I can be present here?
- Take a breath
- Ask yourself: What do I need to carry forward?
These routines help clear the cognitive clutter from the last interaction, so it doesn't follow you into the next. It's a flexible practice that doesn’t require extra time and can be built into the time you already have.
5. Focus on the good
It’s easy to get caught on the hamster wheel in which you bookend your days with waking up thinking about all that you have to do and going to bed thinking about everything you haven’t gotten to yet.
Here’s how to make a shift:
At either the start of end of your day, write down three things you're grateful for and three things that you've accomplished.
This can shift the way you experience your day and are able to tolerate the load that is put upon you, said Dr. Shannon.
While these practices are a small shift, they have big reward. “When tension rises, these micro adjustments create macro impact over time,” she said.