Sport Psychology Consultanting
Another form of Interference-homesickness (Part 2)
Jul 13th
Homesickness has a couple of effects on our performance. First, homesickness directs our focus to what we don’t have in our lives, namely our family, friends, familiar environment etc. This unfamiliarity creates a feeling of a lack of control. Whenever we don’t feel like we have control anxiety goes up and we start to approach life with an avoidance tendency. Focusing on what not to do, playing not to lose. Motivation, takes a huge hit and we start to develop feelings of helplessness.
Once we are in this mental cycle off of the performance arena, we typically carry this attitude over to our on court/field performances. As has been discussed in previous posts, once we are focusing on what not to do, there is no way we can maximize our potential or the effort that we put in. In fact, I have witnessed and experienced tremendously poor performances when homesickness has hit.
Back when I was playing on the pro tour at the age of 18 I found myself terribly homesick and wanted to go home. I didn’t, but I found myself lost and confused. I still remember the state of mind I was in. The majority of the time I was whining and complaining to myself. I was down and feeling sorry for myself. During matches I was going through the motions, questioning why I was even there. I realize now how I was sabotaging my own performance. In practice I would work extra hard, to the point of throwing up. This was an attempt to compensate for what I was doing during match play.
What do we do to get over homesickness? First, we need to stick it out. Going home only reinforces quitting. Second, we need to stay focused on what we CAN DO. Meaning the skills required to compete, our strokes, footwork, strategy etc. We don’t need to be callus or cold, like a lot of pro athletes try to do to cope with homesickness. If we channel our energy in the right direction we can avoid this form of interference. Lastly, with the technology available, it is easier to stay in touch with loved ones. Email, Skype, text, call, use whatever works to stay connected to avoid the loneliness that is at the root of homesickness. It isn’t easy, so don’t feel like a wimp, but it CAN be overcome.
Another form of Interference-homesickness
Jul 12th
Obviously achieving high performance is not solely about just the physical components of whatever it is that we do. In fact, the interference that takes our focus away from what we need to do, what we CAN DO often comes from directions we least expect, and sometimes from bizarre directions.
He is an example, quiet a few years back I was working (teaching tennis lessons) with a talented kid. He was progressing well and wanted to give the pro tour a try at some point in the future. I had some friends still coaching and playing on the pro tennis tour at the time and asked a friend to let this kid train and tag along to see what it takes to play at that level.
I started going on about how talented this kid was, how I thought he would be able to keep up in practice and give the guys a good work out. My friend stopped me cold and said, “I don’t care about his tennis skills, playing tennis is the easy part. What sort of person is he? Is he coachable? Will he work hard? Can he learn?” And then he asked what I thought at the time was the strangest question, “is he going to get home sick?” I was surprised, I remember thinking, “what, what does that have anything to do with anything?”
All these years later, I realize how homesickness can be a huge interference factor that prevents us from maintaining the right mind set that allows to maximize our potential and the effort we put into whatever it is we do.
Continued tomorrow
Often times Closure is the reward for trusting ourselves
May 26th
Through the years of studying higher performance, I have learned that trusting your inner promptings is a key component to high performance. A great deal of the work I do involves helping individuals get out of the way of themselves, so they can hear those inner promptings and feel their way through performances rather than thinking their way through the performances. This is how individuals get in the “zone.” What is interesting to me is the times I feel prompted to do something, I do it, but the result is not always (or often for that matter) what I anticipated. I always anticipate a good result when I follow my inner promptings, however, that good result is more times than not an answer of what not to do, or closure to some unresolved thought or issue. For example, I have felt prompted for some time now to drop off one of my books, “The Fearless Mind,” to a certain individual. When I finally got around to following this prompting, the feeling afterwards was one of ”why did I do that.” This feeling was not what I expected, I wasn’t thinking about anything prior or while dropping it off so I don’t believe my mind perpetuated this feeling. I will be interested to see if I get any follow-up in the future. In closing, following your inner promptings doesn’t always lead to bigger and better. Often times it leads to knowledge of a more closure nature.
Mental Skills: Confidence, it changes the game.
Apr 1st
Confidence is a mjor part of sports, in fact it is the number component that leads to high performance, and at its simplest form, if you don’t believe you can do something you wont. If you believe you can do something then you will. A large component to developing confidence is having a previous successful experience.
Let me share a story about the building/development of confidence and how it can change the game. I have worked with an athlete his who is a pole vaulter, we will call him Chris. Chris has a lot of natural ability, he is pretty fast on the open track and he is pretty strong in the weight room, but the one thing that he lacked was belief in himself, or a little confidence. He would often times tell himself and tell other people that he had confidence and he believed that he could jump high, but where his lack of confidence became evidence was when he actually got on the runway to jump. He did not believe he was fast enough, to get on big poles and jump as high as he wanted, until something interesting happened. Chris decided he wanted to run the 100 meter dash as part of his training for one particular meet. Chris went and ran 11.02, which for a pole vaulter is pretty quick. Once Chris discovered that he was actually pretty fast, he began to improve dramatically. In practice he began running faster down the runway, and as a result of that he began to get on bigger poles. In his first outdoor competition he tied his lifetime best. That week in practice we moved him to a longer pole. The second competition he Improved on his lifetime best by 4 inches, and nearly 3 more inches on top of that. In the sport of pole vaulting inches make a big difference. Now Chris has the second highest mark in the nation.
The interesting point here is that Chris had it in him to jump this high all along, he just had to believe it. Once he had the successful previous experience that suggested that he was pretty fast, he began running faster, because he had confidence that he could run faster, and the result is that his performance when up dramatically. Physical ability is a large part of being a good athlete, but the mental skill of confidence or the mental ability is what allows for the physical ability to be effective. You never know what you maximum ability may be if you don’t learn the Mental Skills that allow you to reach your maximum ability.
Learn more about these skills in the book The Fearless Mind, begin learning these skills with a Performance Journal, this will set you up for success.
Fearless Mind: Components that make up a Fearless Mind.
Mar 29th
There are several components that make up a fearless mind, in fact as outlined in the book The Fearless Mind, written by Dr. Manning, there are 5 essential steps to high performance, ie. a Fearless Mind. I am going to out line the first concept which is confidence.
Confidence is a feeling or a thought process in one’s powers or ability to succeed. For example, I would exhibit confidence by saying “I am good at what I do.” or feeling a certain way, “I am confident in my ability to succeed.” It is easy to define confidence, but it becomes tricky when we try to define how confidence is developed.
Research shows that the number factor in the development of confidence is previous successful experiences, and the reason for this, is because we have a knowledge that a certain achievement is possible. Confidence starts with a belief in one’s ability to succeed, then is usually driven by certain motivation to achieve and then a commitment to finish out the objective. The key to successfully develop confidence is having the right objective, I talked about this in another post, the Performance Journal. (click here to recap) Having the right objective can accelerate the growth of confidence or completely destroy confidence. For example setting an objective just slightly beyond a persons capability but not out of reach is the right kind of objective. Sometimes we set goals or objectives that are way out of our reach and so when we fall short we begin to doubt our ability and lose our confidence in our selves. Just to recap, confidence is developed by previous successes, belief leads to motivation which leads to commitment which leads to action to accomplish a certain objective, once we have accomplished that objective it becomes a previous success, therefore building confidence.
Research shows that confidence is the number one aspect in the success of high performing individuals. And it all starts with believing that I can achieve anything. Once we have learned how to develop confidence we can repeat the cycle over and over until we have reached our final objective, no matter what it is.
Every athlete needs confidence to be successful, some athletes are really good at faking confidence and other have it, but the most successful know how to develop confidence and keep on developing it while at the same time removing doubt. I mentioned at the top of this post that this skill is outlined in detail how to develop confidence in the book The Fearless Mind.
Performance Journal
Mar 27th
A performance journal is a tremendous way to develop any kind of skill, a performance journal is also known as a mental skills journal. Mental Skills Journal allows individuals to channel their spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical energy towards their objective. Mental Skills Journal also helps individuals become accountable for their objective, and stay focused when interference or distractions come into our view.
Buy a Mental Skills Journal Here
Let me Just give an example of how the performance journals works. At the Beginning of every year people make New Years Resolutions, one of the most famous resolution made every year is to lose weight, Golds Gym and personal trainers make all or their money in the first month of the year because of resolutions. Lets take for example I want to lose 30 pounds. So I set my goal and I get motivated and the first week I work out every day and start eating a better diet, but I only lose 2 pounds. 2 pounds is pretty good for a none athlete, but 2 pounds is not 30 pounds so right away, people begin to think that 30 pounds is going to be harder then they originally thought. So the next week they may not be quit as diligent in the eating area or may not work out every day. Week two they may only lose 1 pound, but you can see here how their confidence begins to decrease and then motivation, belief and commitment then begin to decrease and finally they quit. By late February and early March, the folks at gold gym are just the regulars.
Now if we simple just adjust our objective a little or how we perceive our objective our results will be dramatically different. Let me explain, we will take the 30 pound weight loss example again, instead of setting our objective at 30 pounds we should set it at 2 or 3 pounds per week, then when we are super motivated and committed in week one, and we work out really hard and eat right and we lose 3 pounds in one week, we are very excited. We have succeeded in achieving our objective for week one. Now 30 pounds looks doable, our belief levels go up, our motivation goes up, and the next week work even harder and eat even better, again losing 3 or even 4 pounds. The Performance Journal helps you channel that energy the right way.
Buy a Mental Skills Journal Here
Research suggests that we should be doing mental skills training 2 to 3 times a week. The Performance Journal allows for you to do this without having to consult with someone, the performance journal is designed to help you be accountable and help you achieve what ever you desire.
Dr. Craig Manning a sports psychology consultant has developed a performance journal that is easy to use at an affordable price you can check it out here. www.visualizeone.com
Psychology of Sport
Mar 26th
Psychology of Sports is still a relatively new concept and ideology, and when I say new with in the last 30 to 40 years, and it really has only been the last two decades that people have began to study what things make athletes excel, what kind of behaviors and what kind of thought processes high performing athletes exhibit. There are two types of sports psychology, one is the theory behind sport psychology which would fall mostly in the academia world of psychology, mostly full of theories and research, then there is the applied sports psychology aspect, which in tails more of the teaching and training of specific mental skill sets that help athletes and individuals achieve greatness. These skills can include, visualization, relaxation, confidence, motivation, reducing interference, increasing assertiveness.
Here at visualizeone.com we have outlined 5 essential steps to high performance, these steps are found in a book written by Dr. Craig L Manning called the Fearless Mind.
What the main focus of sport psychology is shifting towards is less on theory and more on application, what makes the greats great. This is something that I have wondered all my life, I was an athlete and I watch sports, I noticed a number of people who were very athletically gifted, but then there were a few who were just a notch about the rest of the competition, and I could tell that it was not because they were more athletically gifted, in fact in some of these sports there were athletes that were more gifted than the greats. I always wondered what is was the made these individuals great. People like, Micheal Jordan, Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky, Pete Sampras, Nolan Ryan, more recently, Kobe Bryant, Alex Rodriguez, Peyton Manning. These athletes are a notch above the rest, turns out it is because of the mental skills that they have developed over time. These mental skills are what allow these players to out perform their competition on a daily basis. I wanted to know what these skills were. Because I was an athlete I actually sought out a sports psychologist, he was good at diagnosing and specifying what skills a high performing athlete exhibited, but he was poor at teaching me how to develop these skills.
Here at Visualizeone.com we focus on mental skills training, research has shown that there are specific skills that people do to perform at a high level. We have actually published what these skills are and how to apply them in a book called The Fearless Mind, written by Dr.Craig L. Manning, we also train people how to develop these skills.
Psychology of sport is the study of the thoughts and behaviors that are exhibited in sports by individuals associated with those sports. This can be coaches, athletes, fans, and parents. But we all can develop the skills necessary to perform at a high level, no matter what area of life we wish to apply those skills whether is it sports, family, or business.
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.