Living in the Sweet Spot: Preparing for Performance in Sport and Life

by Amy Baltzell

Living in the Sweet Preparing for Performance in Sport and Life is a fresh, inspiring guide of how to get ready for life's big performances. The author integrates the best of the new field of positive psychology with the essentials of sport psychology.Readers of this book learn how to strengthen their experience of daily fulfillment and concurrently get the most out of themselves when the big moments take place. The issues performers face when under pressure come to life through examples of top athletes, musicians and from the author's experiences as an Olympian and America's Cup sailor. Every chapter contains practical, effective reflective exercises that help readers rise to the challenge of performing their best when it counts.

326 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2011

Reviews

[Sarah McGowan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Living in the Sweet Spot presents compelling evidence that mindfulness practices (even if the author doesn't use that exact term) and a positive attitude can make or break an athlete's performance at a high level. Baltzell does acknowledge how her points can apply to musicians and others in high performance situations. I know her background is as an athlete and a sports psychologist, but I really wanted to hear more about how to apply the principle she has learned in her experience to a broader array of "performative" experiences. I was trying to apply this to my own professional work and how I approach creative writing. Sometimes I could find a correlation and other times it was more difficult.

I also have an issue with the editing in this book. Many times there were references to anecdotes that had already been shared, but the author was not building off of them. It was like they were being introduced for the first time, and the author and editor were still deciding on the order of chapters. It was distracting. Overall the points the book makes can be summed up in two words "think positively!" though of course there's more nuance. Still this is not a book I'll be keeping on my shelves to re-read.