Cultivate a mindset that stands up in moments that matter.
Quality Work
Grounded in best practice evidence-based science and psychological research to deliver practical solutions for elite athletes competing in high stakes environments.
Achieving Potential
Commit to cultivating a mind that will help you in emotionally charged moments. The mind can be the catalyst for finally realising your talent and dedication.
The Extra Edge
Become confident that mentally you can rise to the demands of your environment. Let go of struggling to perform and learn to thrive in the moments that matter.
“The ability to shift attention to what matters, in the presence of pressure, stress, and opportunity is the most valuable skill an athlete can have.”
Who You Are
Elite Athlete
If you’re an elite or professional athlete, you may need targeted, bespoke, psychological strategies to realise your potential. Given the fast-paced, uncertain, and ever-changing landscape of top-level sport, we offer solutions to meet these demands. We will work together to:
See a full, clear picture of your goal(s)
Build a workable understanding of the challenges you face
Create an effective plan to move towards your goals
Execute
Medical and Business Professionals
The importance of performance isn’t just limited to athletes. If you’re a medical or business professional looking to overcome stressors, remove self-limiting beliefs, and create positive behaviour change then please contact me here.
Examples of how performance psychology can help you:
Passing clinical and specialist exams
Improved surgical performance
Improved public speaking and sales performance
Greater connection and clarity with purpose and values
Improved distress tolerance with uncertain environments
Amateur/Aspiring Juniors
We offer tailored psychology and performance psychology services for amateur and aspiring juniors. We have four experienced performance psychologists ready to help overcome psychological barriers and provide expertise in the pursuit of you goals.
Please visit the Performance and Sport Psychology Clinic website at pspc.com.au for more information.
Services
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Individual performance psychology starts with understanding you as a human in the context of performing and striving to achieve your goals. From here we work together to understand your strengths, your barriers and challenges and create a psychological strategy that fits your profile. We will use evidence-based principles that are practical and clear to move you towards what matters.
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Team performance psychology starts with understanding who you are as individuals when entering an environment that requires cohesion. A high performing team must be greater than the sum of its parts. Just because you all want to win, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll all be pulling in the same direction. Every team member will have their own ways of approaching winning. Once we understand your profiles, we bring this together to honour difference, and create links and a shared vision. This process includes highlighting strengths, mitigating weaknesses, and skills to enhance team psychological flexibility.
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When it comes to performing in the moments that matter, at the highest level, a comprehensive understanding of your psychological makeup is needed.
The pressure of top-level performance can often inhibit the ability to execute skills required for sustained success. It’s common when the stakes are high that athletes become rigid, repeat mistakes, or don’t quite fully realise potential when it matters. The purpose of this comprehensive performance assessment is to help you leverage your strengths and develop the flexibility need to perform, not just under pressure, but consistently.
Building on foundations of psychological flexibility, combining personality and cognitive profiles will give you unique insights for improving performance. These insights can:
Deepen your understanding of strengths from both personality and cognitive perspectives.
Show how strengths can turn into weaknesses under pressure and how to manage this to your advantage.
Provide insights into what makes you tick.
Offer methods to enhance your flexibility when it matters most.
Enable effective performance conversations with your team to enhance their ability to train, coach, and support you on your athlete journey.
To achieve your potential you have to challenge your status quo.
Expertise on your journey is necessary.
About Daniel
MAPS MAppPsych BA(hons) BSc(hons)
“A mindset that not just holds up, but holds up well in moments that matter, will be the difference between success and failure.”
As one of Australia’s most progressive performance psychologists, Daniel is committed in assisting athletes to fulfil their potential through cultivating a performance mindset that stands up to the rigours of elite sport.
Daniel works in performance everyday, and understands the pressures and opportunities that occur in these intense, unique environments. He is well positioned to help athletes perform in moments that matter; bringing their attention, energy, and commitment to actions inline with performance.
Daniel combines up-to-date neuroscience and psychology with performance strategies used by the most successful athletes and coaches and delivers this in an energetic, creative and easily digestible way.
Some of Daniel's success with his clients have included: Olympic qualifications, World Championship medals, WTA tour titles, world records, national titles and executive/high performance job attainment.
Daniel received both his honours in psychology and postgraduate Masters in Applied Psychology (sport) from the University of Queensland, Australia. He also holds an honours degree in Sport Science from Exeter in the UK.
Daniel is currently:
Director of The Performance and Sport Psychology Clinic (2011-current)
Performance Psychology Manager at the Victorian Institute of Sport (2020-current)
Shooting Australia Psychologist (2020-current)
Golf Australia Psychologist (2019-current)
He also consults to elite tennis players, Olympians, pro boxers, professional footballers, AFL players, coaches, executives and medical professionals. He also conducts workshops on leadership, mindfulness, performance, and engagement to a number of multinational companies.
Current Partnerships
Frequently Asked Questions
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Length of time is dependent on the individual, although it’s not unusual to see radical change. Sense making can be a powerful tool for clients to shift perspective and gain clarity of task. Often, sense making can happen rapidly in psychology.
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Mental health issues can be perpetuated by the rigours, scrutiny, and pressures of performance. A performance psychologist can help you manage your struggles while working within the demands of your sport.
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While I don’t know if that can be measured, performance is unlikely to be 90% mental, it’s probably a lot less than that. Yet improvements you make to your mindset and psychological approach, can create huge gains for your performance.
Psychology
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There are tangible and intangible benefits. Tangible benefits are an offshoot of improved performance; improved contracts, greater prize money, greater exposure, and of course increased probability of achieving goals. From an intangible perspective, your well-being, relationships, ability to play your sport with freedom are just a few of the potential gains from working with a performance or sport psychologist.
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The key differences lie in the intense commitment to behaviour change in emotionally charged, high stakes environments. For example, in pressurised environments, the ability to let go of the desire to think or feel a certain way can be crucial to perform well. A good performance psychologist will help you attain these types of skills.
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Look at performance psychology as adding to the probability of doing so. Just like dedication to training and nutrition will increase the probability of success, so to will commitment to cultivating a mindset that is suited for you and your sport. The key to quality performance psychology is helping clients deal with setbacks, stay committed to actions inline with goals, stay on top when things are going well, and continue to explore the boundaries of their potential. None of these things are easy, especially in high pressure situations, where mistakes matter.
The Outcomes
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I operate using a retainer structure to give the most flexibility for my clients and it enables me to give more time observing and working at training and at competitions, if necessary. For more information regarding pricing, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
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Being a performance psychologist requires flexibility. If you can’t come to me, we can hold online calls, and I can travel interstate or internationally if required. Some of our work may also be conducted at training or around competition time, or even out in the world - so absolutely, flexibility is key.
How I Work
Consulting with athletes around the world.
Head office in Melbourne. Consulting internationally.