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CNHC Registered Practitioner.
Registration number CNHC09774
© 2025 by Focus Mindset Performance Therapy. Powered and secured by Wix
Improving Mental Performance
Building Emotional Fitness
Welcome to the Blog
Everything here is my opinion unless quoted, and where possible I’ll always credit the source. I also accept full responsibility for any spelling mistakes, well we can’t all be perfect.
You’ll find a mix of short, coffee-length reads and the occasional deeper dive. The aim is simple: to entertain, educate, and hopefully leave you thinking long after you’ve finished reading.
If there’s a topic you’d like me to explore, feel free to get in touch. While I can’t offer personalised advice through the blog, I’m always open to inspiration.
Most importantly, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it.
All Posts
Why All This Advice Isn’t Making You Better
So much help! There has never been more advice available. Scroll through social media for ten minutes and you can learn how to become more confident, productive, disciplined, resilient, mindful, successful and well-rested. You can improve your leadership while making breakfast, build mental toughness on the commute and apparently transform your life before lunch. Yet people are still struggling. Stress remains high. Attention is increasingly scattered. People feel overwhelmed
tonyskehan
3 days ago4 min read
This word can change your life
Is your stock answer “I Can't Do That”? Don't go there. One of the most limiting things we can say to ourselves is also one of the simplest. “I can't do that.” It sounds like a statement of fact. A bit like saying the kettle is broken or the dog has eaten your homework. There is nothing left to discuss. But sometimes “I can't” isn't a fact. It's a conclusion. We make the decision based on what we know, what we've experienced before, how confident we feel and, occasionally, wh
tonyskehan
Aug 173 min read
Want next week's winning lottery numbers?
Ask a sports pundit. If they can tell you exactly what an athlete is thinking from 80 metres away and three camera angles, six random numbers shouldn't be much of a challenge. One of the more unusual bits of advice I give sports clients is this: Watch your chosen sport with the sound off every now and then. Not because all commentators are poor. Far from it. Some offer excellent tactical insight and explain the game brilliantly. Others seem to have developed the remarkable ab
tonyskehan
Aug 33 min read
The 90 second window.
Why Anger Lasts Longer Than It Should Here's an interesting fact that most people don't know: the initial surge of stress chemicals released when something annoys, frightens or angers you only lasts about 90 seconds. That's it. Assuming the threat has genuinely passed, your body can clear the first wave of stress hormones from your bloodstream in roughly a minute and a half. This idea is often referred to as the 90-Second Rule of emotions. The catch? What happens after those
tonyskehan
Jul 204 min read
Prepare Minds Not Just Muscles
Pre-Season Builds More Than Fitness Everything looks good at this time of year. A new season is on the horizon. The sun's out, the lads are getting through pre-season, and perhaps you've added a couple of decent players to the squad. Confidence is high, optimism is everywhere and everyone is talking about what's possible. Enjoy it. Just don't mistake it for progress. Remember these weeks when it's the middle of January, it's chucking it down on a Tuesday night, you've taken a
tonyskehan
Jul 63 min read
The Shopping Trolley Test
Trolley Rage and the end of the world! Why That Abandoned Trolley Is Ruining Your Day There it is. A lone shopping trolley sitting diagonally across a parking space like it owns the place. A few short paces from a trolley bay which is in plain sight. No sign of its former owner. Just a metal monument to someone else's decision-making. For some people, it's mildly irritating. For others, it triggers a level of outrage normally reserved for tax returns, slow Wi-Fi and people wh
tonyskehan
Jun 223 min read
Men's Mental Health Week: Good Intentions, Mixed Results
Good Intentions, Mixed Results There are quite a few angles you could explore if you're trying to give a balanced view rather than simply declaring Men's Mental Health Week either a triumph or a cynical PR exercise. On the positive side, many men are genuinely poor at recognising and dealing with mental health problems. Not necessarily severe depression or crisis situations either. Sometimes it starts with relatively minor issues: stress, loneliness, anxiety, burnout, feeling
tonyskehan
Jun 83 min read
The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon
You Don't See Many Of Those About Why Your Brain Thinks Everyone Suddenly Owns the Same Car as You You buy a new Volkswagen Golf. Nothing extravagant. Just a sensible, respectable decision made after weeks of online research, three spreadsheets, and a level of comparative analysis usually reserved for military procurement. Then something peculiar happens. Within days, the roads appear absolutely saturated with Volkswagen Golfs. They are everywhere. Outside supermarkets. In tr
tonyskehan
May 254 min read
The Quiet Art of Politely Falling Apart
The National Sport of Pretending We’re Fine Mental health in Britain occupies an odd place in public life. We talk about it far more than we used to, which is broadly a good thing, but we also manage to misunderstand it with impressive consistency. Somewhere between NHS awareness campaigns, LinkedIn posts about “wellbeing”, and older relatives insisting that everyone in 1974 simply got on with things, the conversation has become both more open and more confused. One of the mo
tonyskehan
May 114 min read
Emotional Fitness: Less Reacting, More Control
A practical, no-nonsense way to handle pressure, think clearly, and respond better when it counts Emotional Fitness: Less Reacting, More Control Emotional fitness is one of those phrases that sounds faintly suspicious at first. A bit like “mindfulness” did before it was printed on tea bags and corporate posters. You can almost hear the inner sceptic: is this just feelings dressed up in gym kit? Not quite. If physical fitness is your capacity to move, recover, and cope wit
tonyskehan
Apr 274 min read
Most Self-Help Advice Sounds Good. That’s the Problem.
Is it any good? Here’s the issue: A lot of self-help content isn’t failing because it’s wrong. It’s failing because it’s too neat . Too polished. Too certain. Too easy to agree with. And if you’re not careful, you can devote a colossal amount of time and effort to it… without it actually helping you think, feel, or behave any differently. It can actually make you feel worse. The Advice That Sounds Right (But Falls Apart Quickly) Take something like: “Just let it go.” It sou
tonyskehan
Apr 203 min read
No Time for Patience
(Or So You Think) A slightly uncomfortable truth to start: Most people don’t think they’re impatient. They think the world is slow, inefficient, and mildly irritating. It’s not them. It’s everything else . We now live in a world where you can order something in the morning and feel put out if it hasn’t arrived by the afternoon. Three seconds for a webpage to load? Practically a personal attack. So, patience starts to look like a design flaw. An outdated setting that needs upd
tonyskehan
Apr 133 min read
You’re Not Seeing Reality
You’re Not Seeing Reality You’re Not Seeing Reality (Which Is Slightly Awkward) Let’s start with something mildly inconvenient: You are not seeing the world as it is. You’re seeing what your brain thinks is there… and then treating that as fact. Your brain is basically that person who half-hears something and answers anyway. With Confidence. Your Brain: Fast, Efficient… and Occasionally Making It Up You might imagine your eyes work like a camera: Light goes in. Image gets
tonyskehan
Apr 73 min read
I’m not accepting that.
The Power of Acceptance “Just accept it and move on.” Not the most helpful sentence in the English language. Because what do you actually hear when someone says that? “Put up with it. ” “Stop complaining.” “ Do nothing.” So, it’s no surprise that when I mention acceptance to sports people or business professionals, I get a look. Somewhere between sceptical and mildly irritated. Fair enough. Because what most people think acceptance means…isn’t what it means. In mindfulness
tonyskehan
Mar 302 min read
Nice Building. Shame About the Environment.
When standards live inside the group rather than being handed down from above, things tend to run considerably more smoothly. Largely because the group stops waiting to be told.
tonyskehan
Mar 164 min read
The Managers AI Will Replace First
If your leadership style involves mostly meetings, updates and PowerPoint, this may feel uncomfortably familiar. Most of the people I work with on job related problems are not struggling because they lack ability. They are struggling because they work in environments that quietly drain it out of them. Often the issue is not the workload. It is the way the work is organised, communicated and managed. Endless meetings, unclear decisions, vague feedback and a steady stream of me
tonyskehan
Mar 94 min read
Insomnia: When counting sheep just isn’t working
Insomnia isn’t just “a bad night’s sleep.” It’s a slow erosion of how you think, feel, and perform. Insomnia is an equal opportunities problem. It doesn’t care what you are doing, it will affect it. Most people talk about tiredness. That’s the smallest part of the problem. The real cost of insomnia shows up in decision-making, emotional control, confidence, and resilience—often long before someone realises sleep is the issue. The Brain Wasn’t Designed to Run Tired Sleep is no
tonyskehan
Mar 22 min read
Why Habit Change Is Hard
(And Why That's Actually Normal) A mental performance perspective on why your brain is actively working against your wish to change— and what that tells you about how change actually works. Here's the uncomfortable truth about habit change from a mental performance point of view: If it were as simple as the diagrams suggest, everyone would be doing it already . Exhibit A: A social media version of habit change. A thing of beauty. A perfectly balanced Venn diagram with p
tonyskehan
Feb 233 min read
When Being Brilliant Isn’t Enough
How not to manage There’s a long-held assumption that if you’re naturally very good at something, you’ll automatically be good at teaching it, managing it, or coaching others to do it too. This assumption is… optimistic. From a mental performance point of view, natural ability can be both a gift and a limitation. The Problem With “It Just Happens” When something comes easily, a lot of the process runs on autopilot. Skills are executed without conscious thought. Decisions are
tonyskehan
Feb 164 min read
How can we make something more difficult?
Ah yes. The yips. That charming moment when your body decides to ignore your brain in public. At their simplest, the yips are a sudden, involuntary loss of fine motor control in a well-learned skill. Most often seen in sports that rely on precision rather than brute force: golf, darts, snooker, archery, serving in tennis, throwing in cricket or baseball. At it’s worst, it develops into an extreme fear reaction with phobia like responses to a particular situation or even equip
tonyskehan
Feb 94 min read
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