About Dr. Kirsten Peterson - Dr Kirsten Peterson

DR KIRSTEN PETERSON

KIRSTEN PETERSON PHD

Experienced. Credentialled. Effective.

Key high-performance experience:

Team psychologist at 7 Olympic Games. Over 20 years of international experience working “behind the scenes” with Olympic athletes, coaches, and teams.
Performance psychology expert in high-performance, high-stress domains such as defence, medicine, legal, and corporate.

What I learned along the way:

I understand how high performance works. And, as importantly, what doesn’t work.
I have seen both high and low performing team and organisational cultures, know what differentiates them, and know how to transform them.
I take the time to understand what is unique about your performance world, while sharing with you what is true and enduring across every domain.
Sustainable high performance is both easier and harder to achieve than it might seem. Easier in the sense that sometimes the difficulty is something we are unintentionally doing that makes things harder. I teach you how to stop doing that. Harder in the sense that it can mean lifestyle changes and new practices that take patience and effort. I partner with you on that journey.

Enduring truths about human high performance:

We are all humans. Not machines. Not commodities. Performance is personal, not one-size-fits-all, with mechanisms that are so often misunderstood.
Being human comes with serious performance advantages over all other species. But it also comes with limitations of brain, mind, and body. We can fight this…or work with it.
It’s easy to see the physical side of performance: outcomes, gritty efforts, long hours spent training or working.
It’s much harder to comprehend the mental side of performance. Because it’s invisible. As a result, there is an unhelpful tendency to underestimate, overlook, belittle, or even stigmatize it. I help performers to decode and collaborate with their inner worlds for better outcomes with less effort.
Every human wants to perform at their best, to live with meaning, and to be happy. Tap into that energy, and performance magic happens.

My Approach

I strive first to understand your unique performance demands and partner with you to craft strategies to enhance your performance and well-being in your work and personal life. You will learn about your brain, your mind, and your body and how to work intelligently with each domain to achieve more than you thought possible. As success in life is also an interpersonal endeavour, our work may also focus on understanding your own emotions, how others are feeling, and how to optimise that knowledge in relationships.

Areas of Expertise