Changing the Game: A Conversation with Paddy Steinfort

Photo used with permission from Paddy Steinfort

Referred to by USA Today as “the game changer behind the game changers,” Paddy Steinfort (C’15) is a former professional athlete who has served as advisor and coach to world champion sports teams and MVPs, the US Army, a top emergency-medicine program, world-renown tech and finance executives, and some of the best performers and highest achievers in the world. And yet, people are people, he reminded us in our conversation with him earlier this year. Even the very best of the best can have unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that can compromise their performance.

In this issue on mindset and performance, you’ll hear from four dynamic MAPP alumni and practitioners each straddling the worlds of performance and positive psychology. To begin, Paddy shares more of his story, about the role of mindset and toughness in peak performance, and offers suggestions to cultivate mental fitness in our lives and work.

MAPP Magazine (MM): To begin, will you please share a bit with us about yourself, your work, and how you're applying positive psychology?

Paddy Steinfort (PS): Yeah, no problem. I was a student in MAPP 10, class of 2015. A lot has happened since then, but I originally came to positive psychology trying to help performers to be well while they're doing what they do.

While I’m originally from Australia, my first job in the USA—even before I finished the capstone—was with the Philadelphia Eagles. This was where I first tried to put some of this stuff in front of elite, world’s best performers. Some of it they would ingest well, and some of it they would push back on. And so began a 10-year incubator period of testing and tweaking some of the core tenets of positive psychology among groups who may not have the stomach for touchy-feely things.

Fast forward 10 years, and I continue to work with elite performers. But [my work] has expanded from sports teams to now include military, first responders, surgeons, finance executives, tech founders, entrepreneurs... basically anyone working under pressure. And still, a lot of the same principles apply.

MM: That’s great, thank you. You mentioned that you worked with the Philadelphia Eagles. You’ve also worked with the New York Liberty, and both teams have recently won championships. That's very exciting! What’s it like to work with world-class athletes and teams?

PS: I've been in pro sports since I was drafted and signed my first contract at 17 years old. So, being behind the scenes in pro sports probably isn't as exciting for me as it might be for others. It still was quite different, though, going from Australian professional sport to American professional sports.

When you strip it all back, the most elite performers are still human beings who have thoughts and emotions that are sometimes helpful, sometimes not. They have people who are close to them that they care about. They also have worries and fears and anxieties, even though it may not look like it at times on the big stage. And so the work itself is still just the work. I'm still sitting across the table or on an airplane or in a locker room with someone who is dealing with thoughts and feelings that aren't helpful. It just so happens that they might have 50 million people watching them rather than 50. But the inner response is still the same.

I remember this community practice I was a part of, and everyone went around the table introducing themselves. Luckily I was last, because the first person was the first female chief flight officer at NASA. Then there was someone who invented the BUDS training for Navy Seals. There was a heart surgeon, and it went like that around the table. When it came to me, I was like, “I think I'm in the wrong room, because all I do is work with athletes who are a bit nervous.”

The Navy Seal person said, “I'll stop you there, Paddy, because inside, a human doesn't know any difference whether bullets are flying past your head or people are commenting on Twitter. The internal, physiological, and psychological reaction is the same. It's all relative to your world.” To me, that was a really humbling statement.

Yes, the people I work with might be famous. But in reality, they're just humans who are trying to get by in their day or do something really cool.

MM: That makes sense. Thanks so much for that. Let’s switch gears a bit. Will you please talk about the relationship between the mindset and peak performance?

PS: Yeah, it's well established with decades of research in psychology, whether it's on a test, in a lab, on a putting green, in a boardroom negotiation, or even in navigating relationship issues in long-term marriages. There is a plethora of research that shows that our thoughts and feelings and what we pay attention to impact our execution of skills.

And the more I've done this work across domains, the [more I’ve seen the] impact of mindset, which in its purest form, is the set of beliefs that we use to govern our activity. Our beliefs can really impact what we pay attention to, which then impacts our thoughts and our feelings, which then impacts whether we're able to execute.

There was a key piece in my master's thesis around [Jane Gillham], Marty Seligman, [and colleague's] seminal work on optimism and attributional styles, effectively some of the earliest mindset work. If I believe the world is going to give me more positive things, then I'm more likely to give the world a chance to give me more positive things, right? I will leave opportunities open. I will take more shots. And if we're playing by the law of averages, then I'm giving myself a chance for more wins.

There are many other examples where that belief in whether you have an optimistic or a pessimistic explanatory style sets you up for success or failure. In my instance, it was with individual football players and their ability to repeat their highest performances throughout a season. These are just a couple of examples.

MM: Thank you, Paddy. Next, we’d like to ask you the question you’ve asked to some of the highest performers and achievers in the world: What does toughness look like in action?

PS: To me there are four conditions that really create tough

environments or tough circumstances. This is taken from a fellow Penn grad. Preston Cline, from Wharton, who has done a lot of work with what are called mission-critical teams.

First, they specialize in very specific environments. They have particular demands you can't just learn at school. You have to learn from what they refer to as gray beards. You know, you can't learn to be a football player just by going to university. You have to have a coach teach you who has played football, right? Likewise, being on a Broadway stage, I can't learn by going to school. I’ve got to go and learn from people who've been on Broadway.

The second element is that there are emergent problems happening while you're trying to do that very specific thing. Like in that Broadway show, when someone forgets their lines. You didn't see that coming, and it’s not in the script. But you have to deal with it.

The third thing is that you're usually doing it in an immersive, temporally constrained environment. It means there's a clock running. So once it starts, you can't go back. Usually, you've got to deliver quickly. Otherwise the whole thing unravels. Surgery is a great example or a space flight. Kicking down a door in Afghanistan, sitting in for your final exam—these are all things that have [similar] conditions.

The last bit is very particular: The cost of failure is potentially catastrophic. For surgeons, military, or athletes who could lose 10 million dollars because of a certain game, these are clear and present dangers for them.

For you and me, it could be submitting a paper, or applying for a job, or walking up to someone to ask them out on a date. These are things that aren't necessarily life and death. But within our sphere of influence, and particularly with the identity we've built in a certain area, they can each be incredibly threatening. When combined, these four things create the basic conditions of pressure.

I'm finally coming back to your question.

Toughness, if you go back to the original definition of the word from an engineering point of view, is how much stress and pressure a material can take before it breaks. So for me, toughness is how much a human can bear those conditions I just mentioned before they break. By break, I don't mean mentally breaking, but more, break, as in they're unable to sustain the true form of themselves and give their best.

I'm not my best self when I haven't slept well, and when all these other conditions come together. I yell at my puppy instead of being patient and understanding, right? I've broken, not in a bad way, but I'm not my true self. I'm not staying to form.

MM: I appreciate that way of describing it, because it’s relatable. Few of us are facing catastrophic situations on the daily. But everyday people have best selves, challenges, and breaking points. I think that definition is super helpful.

So on that note, although each of us is unique—not only in the ways we show up in the world, but also in the challenges and pressures we face—have you identified any universal pillars of performance under pressure? What conditions tend to bring out the best in most or all of us?

PS: Yes, there are core pillars. And, ironically, those same conditions can bring out the worst and the best. Pressure can actually elevate our focus, and can create great performance if we channel it the right way.

For example, anxiety is terrible when taken to an extreme. But a little bit of anxiety can help us focus. There are a number of studies, particularly within a field called attentional control theory, that show when pressure and consequence are applied, provided we don't let the anxiety and the physiological arousal response overload us, it actually enhances performance. We perform better because we're forced to focus on exactly what needs to be done rather than how we feel. That's really the core of it.

The pillars of performance under pressure are tapping into our biology, which is made to handle those situations, if we don't let it get out of control. And tapping into our neurology. So, knowing the brain hacks that help us pay attention and focus versus trying to think positive all the time.

For readers of a positive psychology magazine, that may raise some eyebrows or run counter to beliefs. But under pressure, thinking positive doesn't help. We actually need to focus on the task and be real. In performance arenas, if we're not performing well or to the requirements, we need to know that. For example, if I’m supposed to be singing in the key of D Major (12% of songs) as opposed to the more popular C Major (16% of songs), I need to be aware—otherwise I’ll be showered in tomatoes instead of roses.

As long as we're not looking at negative or potentially aversive emotional states as problems—but instead treating them as data or signals to help us course correct—we can make adjustments and get back on track. So, when I feel nervous, I don't assume that means I'm not ready. It just means my body is preparing me for something that's very important to me, and making me aware of anything that might be relevant to my output.

When we're able to reframe how we feel our nerves, retrain how we attend to stimuli, and ignore other (temporarily) unimportant ones, then we're able to put in motion strategies that we know work most of the time.

You know, if I was to sum up what I do for people, it's really about helping people be their best, without getting in their own way.

And after 20 years working the highest levels in multiple arenas, here's what I know: If I help people let their instincts and their talents go, it'll probably work out okay—especially if they’ve been training all their life in that specific discipline.

MM: Can you say more about that? How can readers perform at their best and be better? What can we do to cultivate excellence and mental fitness in our lives and work?

PS: Well, mental fitness is really what I was trying to home in on in my master's thesis. You know, you usually don't get to the top—whether it’s academically, in business or in battle—unless at least once or twice you’ve done something that made someone say, “Oh, we need them on the team.” Right? Hopefully, you've done it a few times, but the challenge becomes doing it when you really need to and doing it reliably. That takes training and a system.

So, when I'm designing a program, whether it's for an athlete or an entrepreneur, I would break it down into three things:

Principles. Based on science, what do we know? We know that arousal or being nervous is not a problem as long as you don't think it's a problem. So, we teach things that are foundational elements of both research and science that allow people to approach threatening environments and turn down their physiological response.

Processes. If you have just two minutes, like just before your final pitch to the CEO to get a million dollars in funding for a community program, I might give someone a one-off practice, like box breathing or an attention-setting exercise that comes out of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) from Jon Kabat-Zinn. It's knowing what tools I have in my toolbelt, so that if I need to bang in a nail, I can do it. But if I need to screw in a light bulb, then it's a different tool. I know which ones I need to use, and when I will use them.

Practices. These are the same as shooting practice or writing practice. I don't just sit down, and do it once. Practice means a repeated process that helps me train that pathway. It becomes more and more efficient each time. So, mindfulness, which is probably the most popular one these days, is being able to sit down three times a week, which eventually means I’ll be able to repeat the skill so that it becomes a more natural neural pathway that gets activated when I am under stress. If I'm calm every day, I’m more likely to be calm under pressure.

So, when we're talking about being able to train mental fitness, these are the three things I put in front of people to help them understand the principles of performing under pressure, the science behind it, and how to shift long-held, but perhaps erroneous beliefs about dealing with anxiety.

We need to know these principles, have processes in place to help us turn that down or turn that up, and practices that are repeated, so we’re more likely to be skillful when we need them the most.

MM: Can you share an example of what that might look like?

PS: Yeah, so principles wise, I'll use a Major League Baseball player from the New York Mets I'm working with at the moment. He had a great season last year, but he had a significant downturn during a pretty important period. Thankfully, we corrected the ship, and he had a great playoff series. During the off season, we wanted to work on making sure that didn't happen again next year.

So, one of the principles we had to focus on was the understanding that you don't always have to feel good to play good. Yes, I want to be confident. I want to stand at the plate against some of the best pitches in the world and feel like I'm better than them. But, that's not always going to happen, because sometimes you have the best pitcher in history throwing the ball at you, right? We can't control that. So, if that's what you rely on, it becomes unreliable.

Likewise, if I'm pitching to the CEO for investment in a new arm in the business, and I need to feel confident to be able to do that, there are a lot of things that have to line up. I have to have slept well. I have to have not had a fight with my spouse. I have to have had extra time to prepare all my notes. All these things have to fall into place, and if one of them falls over, then I'm going to be terrible.

So, we need to reframe that belief that I need to feel good to play good, understanding that there are many, many instances for all of us where we haven't felt good, but we've still gone out and crushed it. I've delivered a speech when I wasn't prepared, and surprise surprise, it was probably better than one I spent two hours on.

It's nice to have that confidence, but it’s not a must-have. Usually, if we're not confident, we spend so much time trying to make ourselves feel better, we're not even attending to the task anymore, which is problematic. Whereas, if I know that I don't feel good, but that's okay, I spend less time trying to make myself feel good and more time adjusting to the weather.

If my heart rate is higher than it normally is, all I need to do is to take one or two slow breaths, and I’m readier than I was a second ago. It may not be perfect. But I'm dealing with what's happening now as opposed to what I want to happen.

And then, if we take that to the practice level, my ability to know that process, to be really, really effective at it is born out of practices like breathing and breath work or MBSR. Being able to implement a regular practice that helps me understand my relationship with anxiety, rather than try to control it, makes it way more likely that I can handle my anxiety as opposed to trying to make everything perfect.

MM: This is so good. Thank you, Paddy. Is there anything we didn't ask or you’re excited about that you’d like to share before we go?

PS: I am excited that I have signed a book deal. It’s scheduled for publication in early 2027, and it will be about dealing with pressure at the peak. I think it has longer answers to the questions you’re asking: What can everyone use when they are under pressure themselves? How do they perform at their best—even if it’s not in front of other people? The framework I present and describe in the book, I refer to as EASE, emotion, attention, strategy, and execution.

If when I’m facing the fire, I know that all I’ve got to do is make sure my emotions don't get control of me, I can accept them and work with them. My attention is on what I'm doing, not what I'm feeling and thinking. My strategies are my best bets, and if I do these things, I'm gonna be okay. My execution is just one step at a time, and it usually gives me the best chance of being at my best in those situations.

MM: As I’m listening to you, I’m putting myself back into my shoes yesterday when I was playing pickleball. I could have used so much of what you just shared! I’m not some Major League Baseball player, but when I think about that match, about my nerves, I know what you’re talking about. I’ve learned lots of tips I can take with me, so thank you for that!

PS: Oh, that's good! I love that. That's so good.

MM: I totally agree. I've been having many aha moments too. Thanks so much. So lastly, Paddy, how can our readers learn more about your work?

PS: The best way to find me is on my YouTube channel, where every week we’re going to be sharing exclusive, unseen videos from my interview series with world class performers. For those who need immediate tips, the Toughness podcast will probably be helpful. And of course the book I mentioned—it’s two years away, but that’s coming and you can get bite size previews or stay in touch by following me on personal channels on Instagram or Twitter.

MM: Great, thank you!

About the Expert. Paddy Steinfort (C’10) is a world-renowned performance expert. He has spent decades as a coach and advisor embedded with some of the biggest names in world sports, including the Boston Red Sox (MLB), Philadelphia 76ers (NBA), Toronto Blue Jays (MLB), Australia’s Olympic national soccer teams (FIFA), and the New York Liberty (WNBA). ⁠In addition, he has played an instrumental role in the coaching and development for MVPs in five of the top leagues in the world (NFL, MLB, NBA, WNBA, WSL).

As a former professional athlete who began his career at the age of 17 playing Australian Football, Steinfort received an early, immersive education in how performance pressure works—and how it can stop us from being our best when it matters most. These experiences set him on course to uncover the most effective tools and practices to thrive under pressure. In addition to his work in the global sports world, Steinfort is an expert advisor to the US Army and Stanford Emergency Medicine. He also coaches leading executives and founders in the equally high-stakes worlds of tech and finance.

Steinfort lives in Brooklyn, NY—where he recently helped bring New York City its first pro sports championship in over 15 years, with the New York Liberty (WNBA). He and his work have been covered by Sports Illustrated, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Kansas City Star. In collaboration with the human performance initiative of the US Army, Steinfort is the former host of the top-ranked Toughness interview series. Guests included Shaquille O’Neal, Lindsay Vonn, Ronny Chieng, Jen Welter, Jon Gordon, Kliff Kingsbury, among others.