Biography

Dr.Stephen D. Ross is a licensed Performance and Clinical Psychologist with over 12 years of experience working with professional, college and elite athletes, coaches and teams.

He is the principal of OPTIM, based out of Fort Collins, Colorado. His areas of expertise include:

Mental skills/toughness training

Achieving, optimizing and sustaining optimal performance states;

Mindfulness;

Team chemistry;

Recruiting assessments;

Designing and maintaining mental training rooms.

.
Dr. Ross also specializes in working with players/athletes, coaches and support staff to foster environments that maximize motivation and trust, while decreasing fear-based learning and anxiety.

Dr. Ross utilizes a research based approach to creating and nurturing optimal team chemistry and individual mastery and confidence.

As a licensed Performance and Clinical Psychologist with over a decade of emergency training and experience, Dr. Ross is an expert in dealing with substance abuse issues, anxiety, depression, season/career ending injuries, and other major career and life transitions.

"Whatever you do or dream you can do - do it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it." ~ Johann Goethe


"Make no small plans. ... they have no magic to stir men's blood." - Daniel Burnham


David Pauley

David Pauley

Monday

Lucid Living


Lucid living is a concept that has been floating around in psychology circles for a while.  It plays off the term  lucid dreaming, the dream state where the dreamer realizes they are dreaming and is able to take control of the dream.  Lucid living is based on the idea that each of us creates our own reality.  Two people can go through the same event, but perceive it very differently.  Toward that end, our perception of a given environment informs how we will respond to it physically, intellectually, emotionally and psychologically.  Achieving  optimal performance states  then becomes a matter of optimal perception.  Lucid living means I become fully aware of my ability to enter into a performance state that I can control, unaffected by the environment over time.  The environment becomes a waking dream, and merely a backdrop for peak performance.  For athletes trained in sport psychology, crowd noise can be dialed in or dialed out as needed. Momentum shifts can provide an extra gear or can be as benign as a drop of milk on a white piece of paper. 
Posted by