Sport Psychology Consultanting
The Fearless Mind
Mar 26th
The Fearless Mind, is a book that was put together to help individuals improve their lives. Life is a performance, no matter what we are performing in, parenting, sports, business. The Fearless Mind has 5 essential steps to high performance. All of the athletes that I work with learn the skills that I teach in the fearless mind. They also use a performance journal that was put together to help people channel their energy in the right direction and not get distracted by negative feedback and interference. The fearless mind book and the performance journal go hand in hand with each other. You can learn the skill from the fearless mind and then you can apply the skills when using the performance journal and these two books are the key to high performance. Athletes that have used these books and these skills, have won national championships and finished in top five and ten in major competitions. These skills have helped athletes improve state, national and world rankings as high as number one in the world. Some athletes have even won Olympic Medals using these skills. Most recent was Jaret “speedy” Peterson who won the silver medal these last Olympics. Applying the skills found in the fearless mind can help anyone improve their lives in what ever aspect they want.
Uh-Oh Moments
Mar 25th
I would like to mention a pretty crucial aspect to high performance. I will title it the Uh-Oh moment. Sometimes when we are competing or performing, not matter what it is in life, from sports to parenting, we have Uh-Oh moments. These moments can really either make us, if we focus on the right thing, or they can break us, if we focus on the wrong thing. Let me just give an example here, lets take freestyle skiing first. in the freestyle moguls a skier must ski as fast as they can switching back and forth down a hill through moguls then they will go off a jump launching them into the air, they preform a trick and then begin skiing down another set of moguls and off another jump, performing a trick, all as fast as they can. It is important to be very assertive while you are competing in a sport like this because decisions have to be made very quickly and frequently. An uh-oh moment can happen at anytime you lose that focus for a split second, even when you are doing everything perfectly right. During the finals at the Winter Olympic Games recently in Vancouver, the finals of freestyle moguls, one athlete was skiing the best race of their life, making all the cuts necessary and hitting big air and landing a great trick on the first jump then back to skiing great, the fastest this person has ever skied, then the second jump, the skier had been launched into the air higher then ever before, the spins and flips came and for one split second while the skier was in the air, a thought crossed the mind, “uh-oh, this is big air”. The skier lost focus for one split second and was not able to adjust for the landing and missed the landing, costing possible a medal at the Olympics. Now we have to be careful how we evaluate our performance here. Because too often we focus on the mistake, “man I missed the landing.” When in reality we need to celebrate the fact that we have just skied the best, fastest and got the biggest air that we have ever done. We have just skied the best ever and we are down on ourselves because of one little tiny uh-oh. Now if we dwell on the fall or missed landing, that can spiral us into negative thinking and failure, but what high performing individuals do in this situation is celebrate the successes and then go to work trying to improve the uh-oh moments so that they don’t happen the next time. The best are always trying to improve.
Tight Basketball Game
Nov 27th
I watched a good basketball game this afternoon. The team I was cheering for lost on the last play of the game. They had a chance, just didn’t quite get over the hump. It was a close game, where the tension was high throughout the entire contest. I left with one thought that can be summed up with one word—confidence. Confidence is an interesting phenomenon. It is critical component to high performance, without it we are indecisive and hesitant. We react slowly, we make fundamental mistakes, we put ourselves in awkward situations, and we don’t have fun. With it we move without hesitation, we make the fundamental play whether it is early in the game or late in the game. We assert ourselves and play to win. With confidence the outcome is often more desirable, not always but more times than not. I thought this was the missing ingredient this afternoon. What worries me is that it takes time for confidence to build and the world we have created doesn’t always provide that time. I hope the players can see how close they are and continue on the path they are on—it is only a matter of time before they would have accumulated enough confidence to enjoy the fruits of what comes.