As part of an ongoing student-initiated speaker series entitled Chasing Excellence, Performance Consultant Brett Ledbetter conducted a highly interactive Upper School assembly on Friday, October 20, encouraging students to unlock their full potential and become the best versions of themselves, particularly when life throws its challenges their way.

Student organizer Zoe Harmaty introduced Ledbetter and welcomed students by saying, “I am honored to say that in this room are some of the most accomplished, ambitious, and hard working women I know. We are all on a journey towards excellence, and that journey is filled with challenges, big dreams and high pressure situations. Whether it’s burning the midnight oil to ace an exam, finding the courage to audition for a play, giving it your all to make a sports team, or aiming high for the college of your dreams, we constantly find ourselves in situations that test our limits. On that note, I am pleased to introduce you to our next guest speaker who has devoted his life to unraveling the secrets behind human performance in competitive and high-pressure environments.”

Ledbetter is a three-time TEDx speaker, author of four books including “What Drives Winning,” and has collaborated with thousands of athletes and some of the most renowned college coaches, including Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, UConn’s women’s coach Geno Auriemma, UNC’s Roy Williams, and others — with the sole mission of helping individuals thrive in the face of adversity.

Ledbetter asked students to form small groups within their vicinity in the auditorium and work with an educator as a facilitator to answer a series of challenges relating to how social media affects their internal voice, how good they are at offering advice to others versus themselves, what their top five challenges were as people and athletes, and what their biggest desires were for improvement in performance and relationships.

“So, how do we alleviate stress, pressure, and anxiety?” he summarized with students. “What can we focus on? What we can control — the present. The best people I’ve been around focus on the process and the present, not results, and not something that’s happened in the past or could happen in the future.” 

Ledbetter works not only with athletes and coaches throughout the country, he applies his high-performance training within education, military, sport and business sectors. His work focuses on character development, behavior management, priority alignment, and self-awareness so that teams, organizations, and individuals can achieve more together.

The assembly perfectly aligned with Cornelia Connelly’s axiom: “Be yourself only make that self all that God wants it to be.”