Opening Story:

As I’ve transitioned from the private practice I was working at to becoming a full-time faculty member at the University of Nevada, Reno, where I’ll now be focusing more on teaching alongside continuing to build my business, I’ve had a lot of conversations with both clients and coworkers about change. In a lot of ways, it’s tough to move on from people I’ve built relationships with. But it’s also reminded me just how ever-present change is in our lives. Literally nothing lasts forever.

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There will be many chapters in our lives, and we have to learn from what we’ve been through while also being willing to embrace the next journey that reveals itself to us. Change is interesting because, depending on what we do with it, it can make us feel weightless, as if we’re flying freer than ever, or it can feel like it’s drowning us in a sea of overwhelm.

High performers tend to learn this at some point in their journey. Sometimes they learn it early. Sometimes they learn it much later than they want to admit. Change can be one of the best things for us. It keeps us sharp. It keeps us growing. It forces us to adapt, learn, and become someone capable of handling what comes next. We have to be willing to face the discomfort of change as we continue pushing forward. Don’t be afraid of the future. Be curious enough to pursue it.

Performance Insight:

Change is a powerful tool in life, and it really comes down to what we do with it. I’ve spoken with many people who are desperately holding on to their past as it slips through their fingers. And I’ve also seen people who are genuinely excited by the mere idea of what comes next. Change naturally feels like a threat to our brain because our brain is essentially a prediction machine. It’s constantly trying to figure out what’s coming next so it can keep us safe. But when change happens, new things are coming, and there’s no way for the brain to perfectly predict what comes next.

So the alarm goes off: Danger. Look out. Something is different. The thing is, as high performers, we need to learn how to manage that alarm system. We need to feel it. We don’t suppress it. But we also don’t let it take control. Because change will help you grow, and it tends to show up when it’s time for us to grow. We just may not feel ready for it when it arrives.

So when you hear change knocking on your door, take a deep breath. Manage the fear. And courageously open that door and ask: “What do you have for me now, old friend?” Keep walking down that path of life with faith in yourself. It’s a long, winding path that only makes sense in reverse. In time, you’ll be able to look back and realize that it all made sense. You may even chuckle at some of those moments when you were completely swallowed up in panic, wondering how you were ever going to figure things out. And maybe that’s the reminder we all need. You will be okay.

The Science Behind It:

There’s actually a reason change can feel so uncomfortable, even when we know logically that it may be good for us. Your brain is constantly trying to predict what’s going to happen next. It uses your past experiences, your environment, and the information around you to create expectations about the future. That predictive ability is incredibly useful. It helps you move through the world without having to consciously think through every single thing you encounter. But change creates uncertainty.

When the environment suddenly looks different, a relationship changes, a job ends, a career shifts, or you step into something completely new, the brain has less information to work with. That uncertainty can activate our threat-detection systems and increase feelings of stress, anxiety, and vigilance. And this is where high performance becomes less about eliminating those feelings and more about learning how to regulate them. You can’t always control the alarm going off in your brain. But you can learn not to immediately obey it.

This is one of the reasons adaptability is such an important component of high performance. The goal isn’t to become someone who never feels uncomfortable with change. The goal is to become someone who can experience uncertainty without allowing that uncertainty to dictate their behavior. Over time, when we repeatedly experience change and learn that we can handle it, our brains get new information: “I’ve been here before. This feels uncomfortable, but I can handle it.” That doesn’t mean change suddenly becomes easy. It means you become more capable of navigating it. And that’s really the heart of this.

Growth often requires us to enter situations our brain hasn’t experienced before. We may feel uncertain, uncomfortable, or afraid, not because we’re doing something wrong, but because we’re stepping outside of what is familiar. The skill is learning to recognize that feeling without automatically interpreting it as a sign that you should turn around. Sometimes the alarm is telling you that you’re in danger. And sometimes it’s simply telling you that you’re somewhere new.

This Week’s Challenge:

Open the Door. This week, I want you to do something a little different. I want you to intentionally step into something that feels unfamiliar. It doesn’t have to be something huge. Maybe it’s having a conversation you’ve been avoiding. Maybe it’s trying something new. Maybe it’s changing a routine that you’ve been stuck in. Maybe it’s finally taking the next step toward something you’ve been thinking about for a long time.

The goal isn’t to eliminate the discomfort. The goal is to practice moving forward while the discomfort is there. When you notice that feeling of uncertainty or fear, pause for a moment. Take a breath. Notice what your brain is telling you. Then ask yourself: “Is this actually dangerous, or is this simply unfamiliar?”

Because those two things can feel remarkably similar. This week, practice opening the door instead of immediately backing away from whatever is on the other side. You don’t have to know exactly where the path is going. You just have to be willing to take the next step. And at the end of the week, take a few minutes to reflect:

What did I do that was uncomfortable? What did I learn about myself? What happened when I stopped treating uncertainty like a threat?

You might be surprised by what you discover. Sometimes the thing we’re most afraid to walk toward is exactly where our next chapter begins.

The Premier Mindset Podcast:

3 Key Highlights From This Week’s Podcast | Episode 77 | The Game Ends, The Lessons Don’t with Alex Boy

• The Question That Opens Everything

I ask Alex what was harder: winning the starting punting job at a D1 school… or figuring out who he was once football ended. Alex doesn’t hesitate. The second one. After bouncing around NFL camps and assuming football was the plan, the real work began: “Who am I? What am I going to do with my life?” He sat in that uncertainty for two and a half to three years before starting his career. That quiet, honest admission sets the tone for the whole episode. Most athletes never choose retirement, it just arrives. This is the conversation about what happens next.

• The Recruiting Collapse That Almost Broke Him

Senior year: San Diego State was the main offer. Then he dominates a Fresno State camp, gets offered on the spot. Days later the Fresno staff is wiped out, San Diego State pulls the scholarship, and smaller schools that once wanted him suddenly don’t. With signing day weeks away, his “life is falling apart.” He ends up at junior college, one of the best things that ever happened to him. It forced humility and reminded him he still had to earn everything. From there he chose Nevada not because it was the biggest football opportunity (Washington was on the table), but because he loved the campus, Tahoe, the outdoors, and the people. A decade later he still says he wouldn’t make a wish and ask for a redo.

• The Yips, the Quicksand, and the Mindset That Carries Over

First year as the starter, Alex has a disastrous fall camp. Full-blown yips. He looks like a guy they’d pulled off the street. He sees a sports psychologist and finally absorbs the lesson from The Replacements: the harder you try, the deeper you sink into the quicksand. Sometimes you have to stop fighting, go back to square one, and let it come. That season becomes one of his best. He carries the same approach into work: calm under pressure as a supervisor in a high-stakes oil-and-gas environment, refusing to let his team see panic even when things are going sideways. “If you see me worrying, you should be twice as worried.” Failure doesn’t define him. Neither does success. He just keeps showing up.

These three moments capture the heart of the episode, identity after the game ends, the ugly middle of the journey, and the transferable skills that turn athletes into leaders. The full conversation is packed with more of the same.

Whats coming up:

🎙️ The Premier Mindset: Episode 78 Drops Next Sunday

Next Sunday, Episode 78 of The Premier Mindset is coming out, and this one dives into a question I think is incredibly important for coaches, athletes, parents, and anyone working in high-performance environments:

Why do some athletes need to be coached hard while others completely collapse underneath it?

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We often assume that if someone needs to improve, the answer is simply to push them harder. But people respond to pressure differently. One athlete might hear, “You need to be better,” and use that as fuel. Another athlete might hear the exact same message and begin to shut down, lose confidence, or feel like they’re incapable of succeeding. So what’s the difference? Why can pressure motivate one person while overwhelming another? And what does that mean for the way we coach, lead, parent, and develop people?

That’s what we’ll be getting into in Episode 78. Because high performance isn’t just about knowing how hard to push. It’s about knowing who you’re pushing, what they need, and whether they actually have the capacity to handle it.

💃 Healthy Performers Workshop

I’m also excited to be presenting at the Healthy Performers Workshop this week, where I’ll be working with dancers, performers, and other high-performing individuals around what it actually means to build a sustainable performance lifestyle. There’s often a lot of emphasis placed on becoming better. Training harder. Performing better. Getting more disciplined. Pushing through. But there’s another question we need to ask: Can you sustain the way you’re performing? Because being able to perform at a high level for a short period of time is one thing.

Building a life and performance system that allows you to continue doing it without burning yourself into the ground is something completely different. I’ll be talking about the psychological side of performance, sustainability, managing pressure, and creating the kind of foundation that allows performers to be at their best without sacrificing their long-term well-being. That’s something I’m incredibly passionate about because high performance should not require you to destroy yourself in the process.

The goal isn’t simply to perform at your highest level. It’s to build a life that allows you to keep doing it.

Closing Thoughts:

Change is inevitable. None of us get to stay in the same chapter forever. People change. Relationships change. Careers change. Our identities change. The things we once thought we would do forever sometimes come to an end. And eventually, something new stands in front of us. We don’t always get to choose when that happens. But we do get to choose what we do with it. We can spend our energy desperately trying to hold on to what used to be, or we can acknowledge what that chapter gave us and become curious about what the next one might bring. That doesn’t mean change won’t hurt. It doesn’t mean uncertainty won’t make you uncomfortable. And it certainly doesn’t mean you won’t have moments where you question whether you’re making the right decision.

It means you learn to trust yourself through those moments. Because the goal of high performance isn’t to become someone who never experiences fear, uncertainty, pressure, or discomfort. It’s to become someone who can experience those things without allowing them to control the direction of their life. Sometimes growth feels like losing something. Sometimes it feels like starting over. Sometimes it feels like you’re completely lost. But eventually, you may look back and realize that the path was taking you somewhere all along. You just couldn’t see it yet.

So whatever change you’re facing right now, don’t be so quick to assume that discomfort means you’re on the wrong path. Maybe you’re simply standing at the beginning of a new one. Take a breath. Open the door. And keep walking. You don’t have to know exactly where it’s going. You just have to trust yourself enough to take the next step.

I’ll see you next week,

Premier Minds. Premier Results.

— Trent Mahler, LCSW
Founder, Premier Performance LLC

​https://www.premierperformancereno.com/​

P.S. I read every email, reply to this with your questions or feedback or just to update me, I would love to hear from you.

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