If You’re Not Laughing, You’re Losing: The Athlete’s Guide to Using Humor as a High-Performance Mindset Tool

What if the key to competing with confidence wasn't pushing harder but laughing smarter?

If You’re Not Laughing, You’re Losing is a mental performance playbook for athletes who overthink, freeze under pressure, or take themselves a little too seriously. Written by Certified Mental Performance Consultant and international-level jiu-jitsu black belt Erin Herle, this book shows you how to use humor as a legit mental skill—not a distraction, but a weapon.

Inside, you’ll learn how to:

• Break the anxiety spiral before it wrecks your focus

• Bounce back from mistakes without falling apart

• Use humor to reset, adapt, and stay loose under pressure

• Build real confidence without becoming a motivational zombie

• Actually enjoy competing again

Whether you're a high-level athlete, a weekend warrior, or just tired of overthinking everything before a match, this book will give you the tools to compete like a human—with presence, play, and a smirk when it counts.

Includes the P.L.A.Y. Framework: a trainable system for using humor to shift perspective, loosen up, build adaptive confidence, and stay engaged when things go sideways.

You don’t need to be a comedian. You just need to stop letting stress win.