The Habits of High Performance: Mindfulness, Breath Work and Embracing Discomfort w Dr Jo Lukins
The Habits of High Performance: Mindfulness, Breath Work and Embracing Discomfort w Dr Jo Lukins
In this episode of Cognitive Edge, Dr Miah Hammond-Errey is joined by Dr Jo Lukins, a performance psychologist with more than 30 years of experience across elite sport, defence and corporate leadership. She is currently the mental skills coach for the Dolphins, the Queensland Women's State of Origin team and women's NBL referees. She has spent the past decade helping defence and corporate leaders perform under pressure. She is the author of 10 books, including The Elite and Belief: Building Unshakeable Confidence, and was named an Outstanding Alumni at James Cook University.
The conversation ranges across the foundations of cognitive performance, why habits are more reliable than motivation, and how elite performers manage discomfort, doubt and setbacks. Dr Jo Lukins unpacks the difference between judging performance by outcome versus process, using her recent experience coaching Queensland through a losing State of Origin series as a case study in what "winning" actually looks like. She also walks through practical, evidence-based tools, from breath work to gratitude practice to cognitive behavioural reframing. Finally, she closes with why imposter syndrome isn't real, and what to do instead with the doubt that is.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Dr Jo Lukins and her background
01:38 The foundational building blocks of cognitive health and performance
04:04 What's most surprising about how elite performers actually think
06:12 Where to start when improving cognitive performance
08:07 What to track: the "kind audit" of your own performance
10:45 Outcome vs process: why the scoreboard doesn't tell the whole story
11:19 Lessons from coaching Queensland through a losing State of Origin series
13:19 Embracing the suck: staying functional in discomfort
16:15 How feelings, not thoughts, drive our behaviour
18:43 Can discomfort tolerance be trained like a muscle?
21:55 Tiggers and Eeyores: the line between healthy optimism and glossing over
26:19 Why reframing has to start with acknowledging the real emotion
28:29 Practical tools: CBT, ACT and shifting unhelpful thoughts
33:45 Why simple mindset techniques work so well
35:24 Catching negativity bias and building a gratitude practice
40:19 Goals vs values: getting emotional states to drive the behaviour you want
44:26 Decision-making under pressure: why habits beat freezing
46:12 Breathing strategies for high-stakes and everyday moments
51:52 One pre-performance routine everyone should steal
53:00 Why imposter syndrome isn't real — and what "imposter thinking" actually is
56:13 What Jo is currently curious about and writing next
56:53 Reading recommendations
58:03 Three things everyone can do to improve cognitive performance
Resources
The Elite: Think Like an Athlete, Succeed Like a Champion by Dr Jo Lukins Belief: Building Unshakeable Confidence by Dr Jo Lukins Dr Jo Lukins. www.drjolukins.com Destination Moon: A Memoir of Fast Cars, French Pastries and Finding Purpose by Kate Reed, Sonja Lyubomirsky's gratitude and wellbeing research and Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman On Killing.
