By Corrie Samaniego
WISE San Diego Board of Directors - Co-Director of Programming
There is a moment every high-performing woman knows. The race isn't over, the deal isn't closed, the clock hasn't expired but something inside whispers it's finished. For female athletes and corporate women alike, learning to silence that whisper, and replace it with something stronger, is often the difference between good and extraordinary.
The science of performance psychology has long confirmed what elite coaches and top executives have known intuitively: mindset is not a soft skill. It is a performance variable as measurable and trainable as speed on the field or strategic thinking in the boardroom.
What I've seen in 27 years of coaching from youth soccer fields to college programs, and now as a Mindset Performance Coach is that the mental game doesn't stay in the stadium. It follows women everywhere they go. And that is the best news possible, because the tools that build champions on the pitch build leaders in every room they walk into.
What "Positive Mindset" Actually Means
Positive mindset is frequently misunderstood as relentless optimism; a kind of emotional cheerleading that ignores adversity. That's not it.
A positive, performance-driven mindset means:
- Believing in your capacity to improve even when current results don't reflect it.
- Interpreting setbacks as information, not identity
- Directing attention toward what you can control effort, preparation, attitude.
- Sustaining confidence through doubt, not in the absence of it
This applies whether you're a 16-year-old midfielder facing a faster opponent or a 40-year-old executive walking into a room where you're the only woman at the table.
Psychologist Carol Dweck's landmark research on growth mindset found that individuals who believed their abilities could be developed through dedication consistently outperformed those who believed talent was fixed regardless of their starting ability. For women navigating systems that have historically underestimated them, in sport and in business, this reframe is not just empowering. It is essential.
The Shared Mental Landscape of Female Athletes and Corporate Women
The pressures differ in context. The internal patterns are remarkably similar.
Female athletes face performance scrutiny, comparison culture, imposter syndrome, and the fear of taking up too much space. So do women in corporate environments. Research consistently shows that girls are more likely to drop out of sport during adolescence due to self-image and fear of judgment and studies on women in the workplace show parallel patterns: women are less likely to apply for promotions unless they meet 100% of the qualifications, while men apply at 60%.
Both the athlete and the executive are managing the same core challenge: performing under pressure while navigating a world that sets a higher bar for women and offers less margin for error.
Common mental barriers women report in locker rooms and conference rooms include:
- Perfectionism and fear of failure: holding back from risk to avoid visible mistakes
- Imposter syndrome: feeling undeserving of success despite consistent results.
- Comparison culture: amplified by social media and heightened scrutiny of appearance and style.
- Internalized criticism: replaying errors in a loop long after the moment has passed.
- Shrinking: minimizing ideas, accomplishments, and presence to avoid seeming "too much"
A positive mindset doesn't erase these pressures. It equips women to move through them on any field, in any arena.
The Neuroscience Behind Belief
When you think negatively under pressure: I'm going to fail, I'm not ready, she's more qualified than me; your brain floods with cortisol. Decision-making narrows. Execution falters. The competence you've spent years building becomes inaccessible at the exact moment you need it most.
When you think positively: I've prepared for this, I trust my instincts, I can adjust; dopamine and norepinephrine support focused attention and fluid performance. You access more of what you've built.
This isn't motivational mythology. A 2019 study published in Frontiers in Psychology demonstrated that positive self-talk measurably improves endurance performance, reducing perceived exertion and increasing time to exhaustion. Separate research from the business world shows that leaders with higher optimism scores produce stronger team outcomes, navigate uncertainty more effectively, and recover from setbacks faster.
The neuroscience is the same whether the pressure is a penalty kick or a high-stakes pitch meeting. The brain doesn't distinguish between stadiums and boardrooms. But it does respond to how you speak to yourself.
Practices That Build Mental Strength -Everywhere
1. Self-Talk Scripts
The internal voice of a high-performing woman is either coaching her or undercutting her. Champions in sport and business. Don't wait for good self-talk to happen. They script it deliberately.
Before a competition or a critical meeting, identify three instructional cues and three motivational anchors. For an athlete: stay low, breathe, trust your first step / I am ready, I've done this, I belong here. For an executive: listen first, anchor to data, stay in your lane of strength / I've earned this seat, my perspective matters, I am prepared. Repeat them until they become reflexive.
2. Process Goals Over Outcome Goals
"I want to win" is an outcome goal. "I want to win this client" is too. Neither gives you anything to execute on.
"I want to stay composed and make decisive touches in the first ten minutes" is a process goal. "I want to open this presentation with a question that shifts the room's energy" is a process goal. Outcomes are influenced by factors outside your control. Process goals keep attention exactly where performance lives in the present moment, in your specific actions.
3. Visualization
Mental rehearsal activates the same neural pathways as physical execution. Simone Biles mentally performs routines hundreds of times before touching a mat. The most effective corporate leaders do the same walking through difficult conversations, board presentations, or negotiations in vivid mental detail before they happen.
Practice visualizing not just success, but how you respond to difficulty. The question you don't expect. The momentum you lose and regain. The moment you choose to stay grounded when the pressure spikes. That mental rehearsal is where real confidence is built.
4. Reframing Failure
Failure is data. A missed shot tells you about footwork. A lost deal tells you about positioning. An error under pressure reveals a pattern worth training.
The athlete who leaves the field reviewing what she can improve next week is building. The executive who dissects a missed opportunity without spiraling into self-blame is growing. When you stop treating failure as a verdict on your worth and start treating it as information, you stop fearing it and fear is the single biggest performance limiter in every field.
5. Building a Confidence Catalogue
Women athletes and executives alike are often quick to dismiss their accomplishments and slow to internalize them. The goal scored months ago fades. The project delivered under impossible constraints gets minimized. Someone else takes the credit, or you give it away.
Keep a running record, written or voice-note of moments where you performed well, led through difficulty, or surprised yourself. Return to it before high-stakes moments. Confidence is not arrogance. It is evidence-based belief, and you have more evidence than you're giving yourself credit for.
6. Defining Your "Why" Beyond Results
This practice is especially powerful for women navigating identity transitions the athlete who graduates, the executive who pivots, the woman who pauses her career for family and returns.
When your identity is tied only to your title, your record, or your role, setbacks feel existential. When you're anchored in why you compete, lead, or show up; your values, your impact, the people you're building something for and you become far more resilient. Purpose-driven performers recover faster and sustain excellence longer.
Voices from the Field and the Boardroom
Some of the most dominant women in history have been vocal about the centrality of mindset to their success.
Serena Williams, arguably the greatest tennis player of all time, has spoken at length about using affirmations and self-belief to compete through injury, loss, and public criticism and then channeling that same discipline into building a venture capital firm. "I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall."
Allyson Felix, the most decorated American track and field athlete in Olympic history, rebuilt her confidence after a traumatic childbirth and a high-profile contract dispute returning to win Olympic gold at 35 and launching her own athletic footwear company for women. Her athletic mindset did not retire when she did.
Simone Biles, after withdrawing from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to protect her mental health, returned to competition and delivered one of the greatest individual performances in gymnastics history at the 2024 Paris Games. Her message was clear: protecting your mind is not weakness. It is the foundation of everything else.
Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo, has described her success in terms that any athlete would recognize preparation, resilience, the willingness to stay in the game after a loss, and an unshakeable belief in her capacity to grow. "Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent."
The throughline in every one of these stories is not talent alone. It is a trained, deliberate, disciplined mind.
For Coaches, Managers, and the Teams Around Women
A positive mindset is not cultivated in isolation. The environment around a woman either supports or erodes it — whether that environment is a practice field or an open-plan office.
Coaches and managers who offer specific, effort-based feedback ("You stayed composed under pressure in that third quarter, that's exactly what you've been developing") build more resilient performers than those who focus exclusively on outcomes. Language matters. You are not ready lands differently than Here's what we are building toward.
Mentors and sponsors in corporate environments serve the same role as coaches on a team. They see potential the player cannot yet see in herself, and they hold that belief until she can hold it herself. Every high-performing woman I have worked with can name someone who believed in her before she fully believed in herself.
Teams that build cultures of psychological safety where mistakes are processed rather than shamed, where vulnerability is modeled by leaders, where women are interrupted less and credited more consistently outperform teams with higher individual talent but lower collective trust. This is as true in a locker room as it is in a boardroom.
The Bridge Between Sport and Career
One of the greatest underutilized assets in the professional world is the former female athlete.
She has been coached under pressure. She knows how to lose and come back. She has operated in a team environment, navigated hierarchy, managed physical and emotional exhaustion while still performing, and been told she is not good enough in ways that required her to decide whether to believe it or not.
Those are not athletic skills. Those are leadership skills and they transfer directly.
As a coach and mindset performance coach, I have seen young women graduate from sport and not realize they're carrying a toolkit most adults spend decades trying to develop. Part of my work is helping them recognize it, name it, and bring it intentionally into every arena they enter.
It is never too late to build these patterns. The practices above are trainable at any age, in any context. The mind responds to consistent, deliberate practice the same way a body does. You don't have to have been an athlete to think like one.
The Bigger Picture
Sport is a mirror. So is the boardroom. Both reflect back to women with unfiltered clarity and how they handle pressure, failure, success, doubt, leadership, and competition.
The mental patterns built in one arena transfer to the other. Resilience earned on a field shows up in a negotiation. Confidence shattered by a bad season can be rebuilt in a new professional challenge and vice versa. These experiences are not separate. They are chapters in the same story.
When a woman at 16 or 46 learns that her mind is trainable, that doubt is not a verdict, that she can choose how she responds to difficulty, she is not just becoming a better athlete or a better executive.
She is becoming someone who can navigate a world that will sometimes underestimate her with confidence, clarity, and unshakeable strength.
The field and the boardroom need the same thing from her. So does she.
About the Author: Corrie Samaniego is a 27-year soccer coach with experience developing players from youth through collegiate levels, a Mindset Performance Coach for female athletes of all ages, and a proud parent of two former athletes. She is a board member of WISE (Women in Sports and Events) and a former collegiate athlete. Corrie's coaching philosophy centers on the belief that mental performance is the foundation of every other kind and that the tools built in sport belong to women in every room they enter.
Ready to develop your mental game? Connect with Corrie Samaniego to learn more about Mindset Performance Coaching for female athletes and professional women. @the_female_athlete_collective or @corrie.samaniego