Learned Excellence

Learn how to perform at your very best, from the psychologist who has advised elite military operators, Olympic medalists, big wave surfers, neurosurgeons, cliff divers, first responders, Cirque du Soleil acrobats, professional athletes and coaches, Fortune 500 business executives, and CIA analysts.

Learned Excellence is a comprehensive and practical guide to the mental disciplines of high performance, from the expert who developed the US Navy SEALs' groundbreaking mental toughness curriculum and has worked with thousands of top athletes, elite military personnel, business executives, and first responders.

These stars perform across a wide variety of fields, but they all have something in common: when they are at work they know how to think clearly, stay focused, and shrug off setbacks under very high levels of stress. They may have superb physical and intellectual traits, but it is the stuff going on above the neck and between the ears that makes them excellent. The difference between settling and achieving, between good and great, between contentment and fulfillment, is based entirely on their mental approach and mastery of key mental skills.

This approach isn’t innate; it is 100% learned. The world’s top performers aren’t born that way, they learn excellence. So can everyone else, and Dr. Eric Potterat can teach us.

One of the world’s leading performance psychologists and a retired US Navy Commander, Dr. Potterat has spent over three decades helping thousands of top performers from the military, sports, first responder, and business worlds improve. He served as the lead psychologist for the US Navy SEALs and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and has consulted with the US Women’s National Soccer team, the Miami Heat, Red Bull athletes, NASA astronauts, and dozens of Olympic medalists.

In Learned Excellence, a masterclass in performance psychology, Eric distills the insights he’s learned into five mental disciplines for high performance―Values & Goals, Mindset, Process, Adversity Tolerance, and Balance & Recovery. Illustrated with numerous stories and quotes, Learned Excellence features clear principles and practices that anyone can use to raise their game.

We are all performers, at work, at school, at home, and at life. Learned Excellence provides the roadmap to help each of us achieve peak performance.

Inside, you’ll discover the same elite mental skills used by Navy SEALs and Olympic champions, including:

• Mental Toughness Framework: Learn the five mental disciplines―Values, Mindset, Process, Adversity Tolerance, and Recovery―that form the foundation of the US Navy SEALs' approach to elite performance.
• High-Stakes Decision Making: Master the techniques used by neurosurgeons, astronauts, and first responders to maintain clarity and focus under extreme pressure.
• Resilience and Stress Management: Discover actionable strategies to tolerate adversity, shrug off setbacks, and turn high-stress situations into a competitive advantage.
• Achieving Ambitious Goals: Move beyond good intentions with a concrete process for setting goals, building an identity-based mindset, and creating a system for consistent execution.

Eric Potterat, PhD, is a clinical and performance psychologist and a leading expert in individual and organizational performance optimization. Eric retired as a commander from the US Navy after twenty years of service, during which he helped create the mental toughness curriculum used during Navy SEALs BUD/S training. Eric spent several years as the director of specialized performance for the Los Angeles Dodgers and has also worked with Red Bull athletes, the US Women’s national soccer team, the Miami Heat, and numerous Olympic athletes, first responders, business leaders, and NASA astronauts.

Alan Eagle is an author and executive communications consultant, helping leaders and companies shape and tell their stories. He spent 16 years at Google, partnering with executives to communicate the company’s story to clients, partners, employees, and the public. He is the co-author of the books How Google Works and Trillion Dollar Coach, and the author, all by himself, of seven letters-to-the-editor published in Sports Illustrated. He has never won the New Yorker Caption Contest.