3 Ways to Own Your Zone of Excellence In 2025 - Here’s How to Reduce Stress, Boost Resilience, and Win Big Without Losing Yourself
By IBCircle Member and former top 100 world ranked tennis pro, executive performance coach and speaker, Jeff Salzenstein.
As we kick off 2025, let’s pause to reflect and realign.
What if this year, instead of just setting goals, you decided to Own Your Zone of Excellence™?
By optimizing your body, mind, and soul, you can reduce stress, build resilience, and elevate your performance - all without losing yourself in the process.
Over 55% of high performers experience high or extreme levels of stress, with 62% of it tied to work.[1]
Burnout costs billions globally in lost productivity, but the solution isn’t grinding harder -it’s showing up smarter.
This year, embrace your Zone of Excellence by prioritizing rest and recovery (sleep), reframing negativity and limiting beliefs, and mastering emotional regulation.
Here’s how…
1. Sleep Deep: The Night Sets The Tone For The Day
Recovery is the foundation of success. Novak Djokovic, the greatest tennis player of all time, prioritizes rest as much as his intense workload. At 37 years old, Djokovic dominates players 10 to 15 years younger, crediting his longevity to meticulous recovery routines.
He says, “The most important part of my day is the night, the moment that my head hits the pillow.”
What if you committed to thinking, feeling, and acting more like elite athletes that have mastered the longevity game in their respective sports.
World class athletes are obsessed with rest and recovery as the foundation to achieve their performance goals.
They don’t work hard and play hard.
They work hard and recover harder.
Start by treating your evenings like a sacred ritual:
Optimize your environment: Keep your bedroom cool, dark, and tech-free.
Wind down intentionally: Swap screens for journaling, reading, or meditation.
Cut the nightcap: Alcohol disrupts REM sleep, sabotaging mental and emotional health.
Better sleep enhances energy, decision-making, and well-being.
Prioritize rest, and you’ll wake up sharper and more resilient - ready to own your Zone of Excellence™.
2. Win With Words (and Thoughts): Remove Negativity and Complaining.
Your inner dialogue shapes your reality.
Yet research shows up to 80% of daily thoughts are negative, and 90% of today’s thoughts are repeats from yesterday.[2]
And negativity is 4 to 7 times more powerful than positivity.[3]
Replaying the same mental loop leads to the same choices, behaviors, and outcomes.
High performers often weaponize negativity against themselves. Worse, speaking negative thoughts out loud makes it 40 to 70 times more likely that bad things or mistakes will happen in your life.[4]
First, start by becoming aware of negative thinking and verbal communication and then, begin the process of shifting your thoughts and words to being uplifting and empowering.
Use the power of words to encourage, inspire, and transform lives.
When you change your thoughts and words, you change how your mind works.
When you change how your mind works, you change how you see the world and others around you will feel it.
3. Sync Up the Heart: Master Emotional Regulation
When stress hits, emotional regulation is your secret weapon. According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, “Stress is the cause of at least 95% of all illness and disease.” Chronic stress depletes energy, disrupts your nervous system, and compromises immunity.[5]
The key?
Connect your heart, brain, and soul.
Your heart’s magnetic field is over 100x stronger than your brain’s, making it essential for regulating emotions.[6]
Connecting to your heart taps into your soul—your authentic self—where true resilience lives.
When you slow down your breathing and breathing in and out of your heart by focusing on renewing emotions like gratitude and appreciation your sync heart rhythms sync up with your brain which boosts energy, clarity, and well-being to have more capacity to handle life’s pressures.
Thrive Without Losing Yourself
These “Own Your Zone” fundamentals (sleep deep, win with words and thoughts, sync up the heart) aren’t just soft skills.
They’re life-changing tools for reducing stress and boosting resilience at home and at work.
This is how we play the game of business and life at the next level.
This is how we take care of yourself and inspire others to do the same.
This is how we own our zone of excellence and win big in life without losing ourselves.
About Jeff Salzenstein
Jeff Salzenstein, former top 100 world-ranked tennis player, 2-time Stanford All-American, executive performance coach, and speaker bridges sports excellence with leadership mastery. Leveraging his competitive tennis experience, Jeff addresses stress, burnout, and overwhelm in high achievers through his Zone of Excellence framework. He provides actionable strategies to turn adversity into a competitive advantage and sustain peak performance. Jeff equips leaders and teams with the practical tools and strategies needed to navigate an uncertain future. He focuses on fostering resilience, cultivating a thriving workplace culture, and achieving personal fulfillment amidst today’s rapidly evolving challenges.
He can be reached at: jeff@jeffsalzenstein.com
[1] Positive Group. Stress in Leaders: What’s Driving It and What’s the Impact? Positive Group. Accessed November 23, 2024. https://www.positivegroup.org/loop/articles/stress-in-leaders-whats-driving-it-and-whats-the-impact.
[2] Smith, John. The Psychology of Thought: Exploring the Human Mind. New York: Thought Press, 2020.
[3] Porath, Christine. Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016.
[4] Moawad, Trevor. “The Mind Trick Top Athletes Swear By.” Katie Couric Media. Accessed November 23, 2024. https://katiecouric.com/entertainment/the-mind-trick-top-athletes-swear-by.
[5] Lipton, Bruce H. The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles. 10th anniversary ed. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2015.
[6] HeartMath Institute, Science of the Heart: Exploring the Role of the Heart in Human Performance, 5th ed. (Boulder Creek, CA: HeartMath Institute, 2021), Chapter 3.