Mental training: staying clear when the pressure rises

September 2025, I start my mental performance training.

After the introductions, we get quickly into the heart of the matter.

No motivation talk.
No big promises.

Just a simple question: what is mental training?

And what followed surprised me.

More than three hours of discussion on what mental training really is, but also, and above all, on the role it can play in our society today.

A fascinating discussion, one that touched directly on our current realities.

That is when it became very clear to me: this topic was even more impactful than I had imagined.

So today, I want to share with you what mental training really is, and why it is becoming indispensable in a world that never stops.

The real problem of our time

What came out of that discussion is not a problem specific to founders, athletes or entrepreneurs.

It is something much broader, and it goes back to our childhood.

From school onwards, we are taught:

• To learn without thinking.
• To meet expectations.
• To fit into boxes.

All of it, following a single learning model applied to everyone.

Through grades, we end up defining ourselves as: bad, average, good or very good.

The result?

• A creative student grows up feeling they must stay inside the box.
• A natural leader goes through school believing they are "average".
• A hyperactive student is labeled a troublemaker or a slacker.

All of them could grow up developing their strengths, the ones that make them unique.

Instead, we turn these differences into actual weaknesses.

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid."
Albert Einstein

Over time, the damage is often devastating:

• Loss of self-esteem
• Loss of self-confidence
• Loss of pleasure in learning

But also:

• Fear of what others think
• Fear of failure

And of course, this system persists well beyond school.

You find it in higher education, but also in companies (small and large) and in sports clubs.

The worst part is that it has been completely normalized.

Mentally, we are pushed to:

Hold on.
Deliver.
Keep going.
Silence our little inner voice.

Without complaining... until something breaks.

You know the concept of the midlife crisis?

It is the end result of this system controlling a person for 35+ years.

And whether we like it or not, this concerns all of us.

For some, it expresses itself openly; for others, the effects are deeper, less visible.

And despite what you might think, it is not a fragility problem.

It is a structural problem of our cultural and educational model.

Fortunately, there are solutions.

And they start with one indispensable step: taking back control of your inner state.

That is where mental training comes in.

What mental training actually does

The raw definition of mental training could be:

"The individualized coaching of a person to reach their goals by using their well-being as an engine of performance."

But honestly, that stays pretty vague.

That vagueness is normal.

Mental training is neither therapy, nor surface-level coaching, nor purely intellectual work.

Its role lies elsewhere: working on the inner state from which a person thinks, decides and acts.

When a decision is made under heavy stress, can we really expect it to be right?

To explain concretely, let's break down what mental training does into 3 distinct steps.

Step 1: Bring things to the surface

Contrary to what you might think, mental training does not start with exercises or techniques.

It starts with something much simpler, and much more demanding: bringing clarity inside yourself.

Before training anything, you first have to understand what is at play.

The first step is therefore to let your inner signals emerge.

• Put words on what tires you, what blocks you, what tenses you.
• Bring up what has been there for a long time, but that you learned to ignore.

Not to analyze endlessly. But to stop running on autopilot.

Step 2: Recondition your automatic patterns

Then comes an essential phase: reconditioning your automatic patterns.

That means:

• Observing your reactions under pressure.
• Identifying the patterns that repeat.
• Shedding light on the beliefs that condition your decisions.
• Observing how you act when the stakes rise, when fear appears, when control takes over.

In many founders, these automatic patterns take over in decision-making, at the very moment clarity is most needed.

The work then consists of opening a new perspective, by defining a thinking model that is more accurate, more aligned, more constructive.

A model that actually fits who we are.

For example, going from: "I have to do this." to "I want to do this."

This simple shift deeply changes the energy with which you act.

Only from there does the actual training begin.

Step 3: Train the nervous system

Mental training then aims to train the nervous system: that is, our capacity to stay stable, lucid and present, even when the environment becomes demanding.

In other words: learning to no longer be a prisoner of your inner tension when the pressure rises.

Concretely, this happens through simple but regular practices.

There is a whole range of tools you can use depending on profiles and needs.

For example:

• Breathing techniques (notably heart coherence) teach you to regulate in real time. To bring the pressure down. To exit permanent alert.
• Meditation helps train attention. To observe what is happening without clinging to it. To create space between a stimulus and a reaction.
• Mental imagery prepares the brain for demanding situations. Important decisions. Moments of tension. Emotional stakes.

Other tools, like NLP or certain focusing exercises, help reprogram automatic responses and anchor states that are more accurate, more effective.

The idea is not to do everything, nor to follow a rigid routine.

Rather, it is a progressive training, adapted to the person, their context, and the stage of life they are going through.

It is the same as going to the gym to strengthen your body. You would not work every muscle in a single session and expect immediate results.

In the same way, you do not train a nervous system once and for all. You support it over time.

And it is this regularity, more than intensity, that brings back stability, clarity and drive over the long run.

The real promise of mental training

Let's be clear: mental training does not promise a life without pressure.
Nor perfect days.
Nor an always-calm mind.

Its true promise lies elsewhere.

It lets you stay clear when everything accelerates.
Stay solid when the stakes rise.
And stay aligned when outside expectations become invasive.

It does not try to make us harder. But fairer with ourselves.

In a world that pushes us to hold on at all costs, mental training offers something else: the capacity to last without cutting yourself off from who you are.

To keep moving forward, without silencing that little inner voice so many of us learned to shut down too early.

It is not a miracle method.

It is a path to regain inner clarity, freedom in your choices, and a performance that no longer works against you, but with you.

Many discover mental training when something starts to crack.

The challenge, today, is to come to it before.

Enjoyed this letter?

In upcoming editions, I will get into what these patterns concretely produce in our decisions and behaviors.

If you have not already, do not forget to subscribe.

Thibault