Think of your absolute favorite moment in sports.
Maybe it’s a touchdown pass, a crazy comeback, a grand slam home run, or a gymnast sticking the landing.
Whatever it is, I can bet there’s one thing all these moments have in common:
Someone staying in a state of relaxation during objectively challenging circumstances.
When a basketball player nails the game-winning free throw, we’re partly seeing the technical skill they’ve cultivated over the years.
We’re also seeing their psychoemotional resilience.
That’s a capacity they’ve practiced, too.
The ability to have noise, pressure, high stakes, intensity, deadlines all around them—and to stay chill.
Relaxing under pressure is a pretty well-recognized essential skill for athletes.
But have you realized how important it is for YOUR life?
The ability to recognize and soothe your animal body’s fear response through conditions that might otherwise scare you is a game changer.
Those conditions don’t need to include a literal stadium of people with their eyes on you.
For many of us, that pressure can look much more mundane. Things like:
- Not knowing where next month’s revenue is coming from
- Needing to have a hard conversation
- Running late and there’s traffic
- Opening an email from a client
- Achieving more success than we’re used to (yes, good things can feel scary too!)
As the pro athletes (and elite warriors and surgeons) show us, it’s possible to cultivate the skill of relaxing no matter the external circumstances.
And here’s a wild idea: Making business decisions from a state of relaxation is an actual competitive advantage.
I’m so committed to this practice that my word of the year for 2026 is RELAX.
I’m constantly saying to myself, “I wonder how I could fully relax in this moment?”
It’s a dead-simple practice that takes:
- Mindfulness (to remember to ask the question)
- Body awareness (to notice what’s actually happening to my animal self)
- Nervous system skills (so I have a toolkit of things that truly relax me)
- Thought work (so I can enroll my brain in pointing to the world I want to create)
It just so happens these are exactly the tools I teach my 1:1 coaching clients, too.
That’s what helps them, and me, slowly build the habit of living from a different state of being—which creates a radically different life.
More joy. More abundance. Better relationships. More creativity. More purpose.
If you think 1:1 support might help uplevel you in 2026, hit reply and we’ll schedule a free consultation.
And in the meantime, relax.
It’s good for you.
To your full aliveness,
Rachel
PS – What’s one of your favorite relaxation tools? Hit reply and let me know. These can be big things (like a day at the spa) or tiny things (like looking out the window).
