What if mindfulness is not just another mental performance tool, but the foundation that makes all the other tools work? That is where my conversation with Chad McGehee begins. Chad challenges the familiar idea that mindfulness belongs on the same shelf as imagery, self-talk, goal setting, or arousal regulation: “I would disagree… that’s a kind of a misunderstanding of what mindfulness is, what mindfulness can be.” We unpack the pyramid (1) from his and his collegues work, with mindfulness underneath the traditional psychological skills, and explore three core capacities at its base: selective attention, meta-awareness, and decentering. As Chad puts it, before we ask performers to use sophisticated mental skills, we may need to ask something much more basic: “Is my attention where I want it to be?” And importantly, these are not abstract concepts. They are trainable skills—and Chad gives examples of how they can be trained in surprisingly short moments before performance.
WIN model from the article (1)
But the conversation is broader than attention. If we reduce mindfulness to three useful neurocognitive capacities, do we risk stripping away something essential? Chad uses a beautiful metaphor: contemplative practice is like “two wings of a bird.” One wing consists of awareness-based practices; the other consists of compassion and more heart-centered practices. You need both wings if you want the bird to fly.
That raises a question that may initially sound strange in elite sport, policing, or military performance: Does compassion belong in high performance? Chad’s answer takes us beyond the usual language of mental skills. And it leads to an even more uncomfortable question: if mindfulness makes us more focused, less reactive, and more effective, effective at what? Chad is remarkably clear about the danger: “We are creating tremendous risk of these skills being used in ways that are immoral and unethical.” Skill development alone is not enough. As we say in the netherlands: doe je het goed of doe je het goede?.
That tension leads us directly into the problem of turning mindfulness into a performance hack. Chad discusses what has sometimes been called “McMindfulness”: taking a small, convenient part of a much richer contemplative tradition and repackaging it for performance. Something may look and sound like mindfulness without really containing the depth of the practice. For Chad, one of the missing pieces is often the person doing the teaching. “The personal practice of the instructor is the engine that drives everything.”
We talk about why knowing a few mindfulness exercises does not necessarily make someone a mindfulness teacher and why embodiment matters. Chad describes part of this process as “nervous system to nervous system training.” His message is : “We can’t just talk about it.” If we want to teach these capacities authentically, practice has to become part of who we are, not merely another intervention in our trainer’s toolbox.
Later in the conversation, I introduce Chad to a model we often use in European sport, police, and military training: Circles of Attention. Chad had never seen the model before, which made his reaction particularly interesting. The model describes how attention can progressively move away from the task—from what is happening right now, to distractions in the immediate environment, comparisons with an ideal, and eventually thoughts about outcomes such as winning or losing.
Chad immediately connects it back to the foundation we discussed at the beginning: “In order to be able to do this, we need to have folks have the ability to know where their attention is.” That brings us back to meta-awareness, selective attention, and decentering. Perhaps the Circles of Attention tell us where our attention has gone, while mindfulness develops some of the capacities needed to notice that movement and respond to it.
Finally, we move from modern performance psychology to ideas that are much older. Coming from a martial arts background, I ask Chad about equanimity—and whether concepts found in contemplative traditions and Japanese martial arts might describe something that performance psychologists already recognize.
He offers a wonderfully practical translation: in performance, “we would call [it] poise.” From there we explore equanimity as part of the Four Brahmavihāras, alongside appreciation, kindness, and compassion, and ask what these qualities might mean not only for life but also for sport and high-stakes performance. In environments where things inevitably “go sideways,” can stability really depend on the world around us remaining stable? Or can it become something we train from within? Chad connects this to George Mumford’s image of the “eye of the hurricane”—an internal home base from which we can act when everything around us is changing. And perhaps that brings the conversation full circle: mindfulness may help us perform better, but the deeper question is what kind of performer—and what kind of human being—we are training ourselves to become.
Inspiring Words.
One wing is the awareness-based practices… and the other wing are compassion-based practices and more heart-centered sorts of practices. You need both of those.
This is an important quote for the deeper message of the podcast: attention alone is not enough. We are creating tremendous risk of these skills being used in ways that are immoral and unethical. Becoming more focused, less reactive, and more effective does not automatically mean that what you do with those capacities is good.
The personal practice of the instructor is the engine that drives everything.
Chad goes even further by describing mindfulness teaching as nervous system to nervous system training. Mindfulness is an embodied capacity that the teacher has to develop through personal practice before they can authentically help others develop it.
If someone’s sense of stability, their equanimity, is dependent on things being stable around them, then they will never experience equanimity.
It connects mindfulness, sport, policing, military performance, the eye of the hurricane, and the martial-arts idea of Fudoshin in one thought.
Reflection and Call to Action
1. Are you training attention—or just demanding it?
“Is my attention where I want it to be?” — Chad McGehee
Reflection: How often do you tell people to focus, stay present, or pay attention without actually training the underlying skills of selective attention, meta-awareness, and decentering?
Call to action: In your next training session, replace one instruction to “focus” with a 30-second exercise that actually trains attention. Make the skill you expect visible and trainable.
2. Are you training both wings?
“It’s kind of two wings of a bird, and you need both wings to, you know, have the bird fly properly.” — Chad McGehee
Reflection: Does your training mainly develop awareness, focus, and performance—or is there also deliberate space for compassion, kindness, and how those capacities are used?
Call to action: Look at your next session and identify one performance exercise. Add one question at the end: “How could I use this skill not only to perform better, but also to act better?” One question is enough to start training the second wing.
3. What are you embodying as a trainer?
“The personal practice of the instructor is the engine that drives everything.” — Chad McGehee
Reflection: Are you teaching qualities such as presence, composure, compassion, and equanimity that you are actively practicing yourself—or mainly techniques that you know how to explain?
Call to action: Choose one quality you regularly ask from your participants. For the next seven days, practice it yourself for five minutes a day. Don’t add another technique to your teaching yet. First become a little better at embodying what you already teach
1. Jha, A.P., Rooks, J., Rogers, S.L., McGehee, C. (2026). What’s Important Now: The Foundational Role of Mindfulness Training in Performance. In: Bigliassi, M., Mannino, M., Kotler, S. (eds) Performance Neuroscience. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-21528-4_9
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