ABOUT THIS EPISODE
What if chasing confidence is the very thing holding you back?
In this episode, I sit down with Dr Justin Anderson, a performance psychologist who has spent more than two decades working with elite athletes and executives, to explore why confidence is the result of training your attention, not the starting point. We talk about what happens in the brain under pressure, why our emotions are so hard to control, and what we can focus on instead.
Justin takes us through his Intentional Attention framework and shares candid stories, including NBA players who decide they “don’t have it tonight” after just three missed shots. He shows that elite performers still feel doubt, fear and frustration. What sets them apart is how quickly they bring their attention back.
Key Takeaways
- How chasing the feeling of confidence pulls your focus away from the task at hand, and why confidence is better seen as the output, not the input.
- How mapping your attention when you're at your best and at your worst reveals the cues that help you and the distractions to plan for.
- How the four controllables (energy, attitude, effort and behaviours) give you an attentional bullseye to return to, and why focusing on a behaviour often brings the feelings with it.
- How the SERR model (situation, emotion, response, result) helps you plan the response you want, not the one your emotion would choose, and why being authentic to your values matters more than being authentic to your emotions.
- How the AAA reset (awareness, acceptance, action) helps you recover from a mistake in the moment, because it's not about never drifting but about how quickly you come back.
- How renewal doesn't need big lifestyle changes: a short walk outside, time in nature and good sleep recharge your attention far more than scrolling.
- How even a performance psychologist still gets butterflies, and why attention is like a muscle that needs continued training.
About Justin
Dr Justin Anderson is a licensed sport and high-performance psychologist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with more than 20 years’ experience helping athletes, coaches, executives and business leaders perform under pressure. He leads two consulting practices, Premier Sport Psychology and Premier Performance Advising. His clients have included Hall of Famers, Olympic athletes, world champions, Fortune 500 executives, and teams across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA, MLS and NWSL. A former athlete himself, he is the author of Intentional Attention: The Science and Practice of Focus Under Pressure. He is a father of two daughters.
Connect with Justin
- Premier Sport Psychology: https://premiersportpsychology.com/
- Premier Performance Advising: https://premierperformanceadvising.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-anderson-psy-d-lp-cmpc-a33b6151/
Resources Mentioned
- Intentional Attention: The Science and Practice of Focus Under Pressure by Dr Justin Anderson: his framework for training your attention through awareness, intention, execution, reflection and renewal. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1394373791
- Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy: the four sources of belief in our own ability, which are mastery, seeing others succeed, encouragement and our physical state.
- Dr Richard Davidson and the Mind & Life Institute: the neuroscientist who called for a daily practice to train the mind, just as we exercise the body. https://www.mindandlife.org/
- Albert Bandura, the Stanford psychologist who developed the idea of self-efficacy, which is a person’s belief in their own ability to succeed at something. The belief comes from four sources: mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological feedback.
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