Instagram story viewer> @tesscbrouwer> Posts

Tess Brouwer | Human Performance Trainer

@tesscbrouwer

1189

posts

4K

followers

1076

following

⚡️Helping you reclaim your spark w/ positive psych
☀️ Tools for work, life & everything in between
🧠 CEO • Author • Top 5% Podcast @awake_academy 👇

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

To be her… you had to be HER ☀️⁠
⁠
The version of you who didn’t know if it would work, kept showing up anyway and held it together when it felt heavy.⁠
⁠
We celebrate the outcome but we always forget what it took to get there.⁠
⁠
Resilience isn’t loud, it’s choices being made, over and over again.⁠
⁠
And here’s the part I learnt the hard way.⁠
⁠
If you don’t recognise how far you’ve come, your brain keeps chasing… and never lands. That’s how burnout happens.⁠
⁠
So today, make sure you pause, look back and name what you’ve moved through. Not only the wins but the survival! ⁠
⁠
In case no one has told you, I'm proud of you and you've got this 💛⁠
⁠
Save this for the days you forget. by @tesscbrouwer

167

14

4 months ago

I don’t just watch sport for the scoreboard.
I watch it for the psychology underneath it.

The breath before the kick.
The body language after an error.
The way teams regulate when pressure hits.

In the @nrl Grand Final, @walshyy07 showed us what mental fitness looks like in motion.

“Be Great” on his boots.
Empathy in his actions.
Composure in his words.

That’s belief as biology.
That’s what happens when you train your mind as hard as your body.

The game is always won twice - first in your mind, then on the field.

Your MoodBooster for this Monday ☀️
You become what you repeat - so choose words that lift you higher. by @tesscbrouwer

3

195

10 months ago

When I was in hospital, I told myself:
“I am broken. I am unlovable.”

And that’s all my brain showed me.

To heal, I had to train one new thought at a time. That different story rewrote my life.

Here’s what I wish I’d known sooner:
💡 You think up to 70,000 thoughts a day
💡 95% are repetitive
💡 75% lean negative
💡 Emotions only last 90 seconds (it’s your thoughts that loop them)
💡 You mirror what you consume - from TikTok to the news
💡 Your brain is your hungriest muscle, using 20% of your energy even at rest

Your brain is efficient, but also impressionable.

Feed it fear → it finds fear.
Feed it gratitude → it finds beauty.
Feed it possibility → it finds opportunity.

You can’t always control your first thought.
But you can choose your next one.

That choice is the ultimate MoodBooster ✨ Lady in hospital by @tesscbrouwer

3

16

a year ago

In 1990 the women's surfing tour paid $20k. The men's paid $100k. And when the waves turned bad, the call went out: "send the girls out."

Mattresses on the floor while the men had apartments. No vote at the table. Layne won seven world titles anyway - and spent 15 years being dismissed as "emotional" while she fought for pay equity, which landed in 2018. That's performing under a load most people never see: regulating the inner critic and the external one, and anchoring to a why bigger than the result.

Plant a seed, and water a tree you'll never sit under.

🎧 Send this to someone still being told to wait her turn, or comment SEED and I'll DM you the full conversation.

#AWakeUpCall #LayneBeachley #HumanPerformance #PayEquity #TheHumanAdvantage by @tesscbrouwer

36k

166

9 days ago

Feel the fear, resistance, discomfort and do it Anyways.
Every time I feel it, I know that growth exists at the line I have to jump or crawl over. Give yourself the permission slip to look after yourself first.
Consistency over discipline every time. by @tesscbrouwer

18

1

12 days ago

The scariest thing isn’t failing….It’s the gift you sat on because being seen felt worse.
For years, that was me. The fear of being seen kept me hiding in plain sight.
There are qualifications I thought I’d never use. So I outsourced my gift instead. I helped other people step into their spotlight and stayed safely behind the curtain of my own. It was also a very good place to hide.
Every teacher was quietly handing me a piece.

Personal training taught me about my body, the one I’d negotiated with for years, swinging from one extreme to the other.

Yoga and meditation taught me about my soul, my wounds, and that what happens on the mat happens in life.

@yale The science of well-being, taught me money doesn’t buy it.
Writing a book taught me consistency beats discipline @awake_academy
But the biggest teacher was lived experience. Hitting rock bottom. Losing my identity. Rebuilding from scratch.
So this is what it taught me about doing the thing that scares you.
Give fear a voice, not the wheel. Fear isn’t the enemy, it’s information trying to protect you.
It was only when I put all the pieces together, everything I’d studied, lived and learned, that I could step into the discomfort and do it anyway. The fear of being seen never fully left. I just stopped letting it choose for me.
Learning is great.Doing the work is where growth lives.
So say yes. Do it anyways.
Link in bio for our lessons on high fiving fear.
I’m off to buy a Yale jumper! by @tesscbrouwer

69

7

12 days ago

Every parent should be equipped with an in home recovery center. Period.

High 5 to every parent who knows this feeling. Another skill that needs its one level of recovery system. by @tesscbrouwer

12

0

13 days ago

Who’s under more pressure tonight: the players on the field, or the leaders watching from the couch?
Tonight, watch the in-between moments. Who breathes? Who huddles? Who resets the room? Who changes the energy?
That’s the edge. Win or lose.
Go the Blues. 💙
@nswblues
@nrl by @tesscbrouwer

4

0

18 days ago

Dearest @thediaryofaceopodcast - We want to wine max with you.
We hear you’re coming down under! And we’ve got an invite for you.
We want to help you clear that wine-hangover trauma with a 7x World Champion.
@laynebeachley has been saving a 1998 @penfolds Grange since she won her very first world title. (It’s basically the Australian equivalent of a Château Lafite Rothschild.)
We’ll eat the worlds best hot chippies (@chargrillcharlies ) And we’ll sit in the pool room with Layne and her husband @kirkpengilly_official from the greatest band of all time @officialinxs , surrounded by surfboards, guitars, trophies, and the kind of stories that never make it onto a podcast.
No cameras. No scripts. No stage. Just a real conversation about what success actually costs, what it gives back, and why the people who reach the top so often end up redefining what winning even means.
We can promise:
No hangover
No losing three days
A surf lesson
A lot of laughs
Honest conversation with two people who’ve stood at the very top of their worlds and found that fulfilment lives somewhere well beyond the trophy
We’ll save you a seat :) Invite in your inbox @sophiechapman87

Hands up if this is a seat you’d want to be at? by @tesscbrouwer

79

11

18 days ago

🎙️Seven Speakers. Seven perspectives. One topic that belongs on every event agenda.
Our mental health and wellbeing Speakers don't just raise awareness. They change how audiences think about themselves and each other. Swipe through to meet them.

#SaxtonSpeakers #KeynoteSpeaker #SpeakerBureau #EventProfs #MentalHealth #MentalHealthAwareness #WorkplaceWellbeing #CorporateWellbeing #PsychologicalSafety #MensHealth #WellbeingSpeaker #ConferencePlanning by @tesscbrouwer

61

5

19 days ago

Nobody warns you about the days after. The sore legs, sure. But also the strange emptiness, the dip in motivation, the quiet “what now”. That is not you being ungrateful. Your brain has been locked onto one finish line for months and now it has no target. The flatness is normal, and it passes. The Gold Medal Effect.

Recovery is not the reward for the work. It is part of the work. It is where your body actually adapts and gets stronger. The pros build it in because it is their job. The rest of us, juggling a race with work and kids and a business, sprint straight to the next goal and then wonder why we are running on empty.

So before you sign up for the next one, celebrate this one properly. Bring your people back in, they trained with you too. Sleep. Book the physio. Do something playful your watch cannot track. Give yourself the grace you would give any athlete. You were doing two or three full time jobs and you still crossed that line.

Rest, reset, recover. Then, when you are ready, go again.

I will never get to cross that finish line. So I cried watching you.

Every age, every stage, running, walking and crawling over that line. I know what it takes to get there, and watching it undoes me every time.

Congrats @hyroxanz @hyroxworld athletes, @lululemonausnz you did it!

Save this for after your next race, and tag someone who just crossed a line.

#hyrox #hyroxaustralia #recovery #humanperformance #mentalfitness @f45_training_greenhills by @tesscbrouwer

358

14

20 days ago

Does practice make perfect or progress? I’m opening up this debate...
There’s an ad on high rotation during the World Cup that will not leave me alone. Full disclosure, they are my car insurer, so this isn’t about their product. It’s how the ad makes me feel, and the impact on families and kids. Am I the only one?

A young teenager kicks goal after goal in the dark and the rain. Dad watches from the car. Her baby brother sleeps in the back. The coach’s line rings out, practice makes perfect. The battery goes flat, roadside turns up, and the guy says it again. Practice makes perfect.

What I feel... she never once looks happy. Her head hangs. She’s still out there because she hasn’t got it perfect yet. But she gets almost every goal. What’s perfect?

The science is not subtle. The pressure to be perfect has risen a third since the late 1980s, and it tracks with anxiety, burnout and depression in kids. Reward effort and progress, and they stay resilient. Chase perfect, and they burn out.
Perfect is a line no child or adult ever reaches.

I am fully subscribed to Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes progress. And I am all for teenagers winning medals for winning. It’s a blurred line right now. @michaelgervais - I’m sure you’ll help me settle this debate.

So my question...Did a single parent, child psychologist or sports psychologist see this script before it aired? Did they look at all the worlds top athletes including THE FED?? @rogerfederer Every one of them points to progress over perfection, the journey over the outcome. Not a flat battery and a kid with her head hung down because, coach said...

@suelangleyofficial @maya.mental.fitness @mitch.wallis @laynebeachley @drkristy @harry_garside would love your reads. Any parent or practitioner, gentle or spicy, meet me in the comments. Let’s debate it.
Anyway, as my kids say, it’s not that deep. But maybe it is? by @tesscbrouwer

4

2

24 days ago