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.
The Barry Zito article (Part 2)
Jul 9th
Barry then said “I was trying to control things that I couldn’t control—like what the batter would do. It was frustrating, to say the least. Now I know I can control only how I prepare for a game and how I throw the baseball. However hitters react to it, I have to just forget and focus on the next pitch.”
Control is an interesting word. It is a word that we would pass over without really ever noticing. But after reading this post my guess is you will have a greater appreciation for this simple little word. Control or a lack of it is at the root of many psychological issues. When we don’t feel like we have control anxiety goes up. When anxiety goes up focus or concentration goes out the wind. When our focus is all over the place confidence takes a massive hit and it becomes increasingly difficult to make good decisions hence our over all performance is far below where it could be.
In all my years of observing, studying, and analyzing high performance—understanding what we have control over and what don’t have control over is possibly the single most significant factor that leads to high performance. Those that channel all their resources into what they have control over, what they CAN DO and learn not to waste their precious resources on what they can’t do achieve incredibly high levels of productivity.
Here is an example from another baseball player, Albert Pujols. Albert is considered be many to be the best player in baseball. This is what he said a few years ago when he had won the MVP award for the National League. The reporter asked him how do you perform so well, so consistently? Albert’s response “I just DO everything I can to help my team win.”
You may think this simple response doesn’t reveal much. But lets break it down. First, he says “do”, which shows that he doesn’t over analyze, he is not over thinking and allowing his mind to get in the way of his performance. Second, he says “everything I can” which tells us he is focusing his energy on what he is doing and is not concerned with what others are or are not doing. Meaning he is taking responsibility for himself and not wasting energy judging others. Lastly, although his mindset is very much attuned to the process of what he needs to be doing, his efforts are directed towards winning. He is playing to win in contrast to many to play not to lose. Further, he is not playing for us own stats, for his own ego. His energy is directed towards the task at hand. Every great athlete I have studied always focus on the task and not their ego.
I told you it would take a while to get through this article. If you listen carefully to what people both verbally and non-verbally (body language) say we can tell a lot about what they are thinking.
Learning from the best
Jul 8th
In the June 11th issue of Sporting News magazine there is an article about Barry Zito, a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants in major league baseball. The article is the perfect example of what happens to our performance when we start thinking the wrong way. Meaning what happens when we allow interference to enter our mindset.
I love these sorts of articles because I believe it is best to learn from the best. Yes, research is important and if you read any of my stuff you will hear me often say “research says. . .” But real life experiences, real individuals, real athletes DOING IT triumphs research for me. I will probably take a few days of posting to get through this article as I break down the psychological factors that are attributing to Barry’s performance.
First, Barry Zito signed a seven year, $126 million contract with the Giants back in December 2006. Coming from the Oakland Athletics Barry had been a star with a significant winning record and a Cy Young award (the top award for a pitcher in major league baseball). But through the first three years with the Giants he struggled terribly with mediocrity posting a 31-43 record.
This is what he described as the root of his poor performance. “I signed a big contract and put pressure on myself to deliver for the fans. It turned out to be too results oriented.” When you try to get results instead of going through the process, results don’t usually happen.” Absolutely results don’t come. When we start thinking about the outcome (results) we open the door for fear to come in. Fear only exists in the future, it doe not exist in the moment. In the moment there is only action. When we direct our attention/focus to the moment we rid ourselves of fear and anxiety. Anxiety is a watered down version of fear, and anxiety is never going to help us perform better. Anxiety alerts us to danger, but it is not helpful in allowing us to execute and perform the way we know we can.
When we allow anxiety to get a hold of us, we take our focus off of what we need to do right now and performance immediately takes a hit. Think about how much extra baggage we carry in our performances/lives when we allow ourselves to worry about all of the could’ve, should’ve in our lives. But these could’ve and should’ve are not reality, they have never happen, so why waste energy contemplating them? Our energy is better served getting busy making a difference in the present. If we can improve upon the present we will hopefully make the future a better place.
Fatigue is toxic to maintaining high levels of performance
Jul 7th
I had another post ready to go today, or at least I was close to having it ready to go when I felt prompted to go in another direction. I think the post today follows nicely off of yesterdays.
Fatigue messes with our performance no matter how disciplined/high performing we become. Researchers have spent large amounts time looking into the reasons why plane crashes occur. What they have found is not what movies portray, the dramatic, catastrophe, were the engine blows up and the plane takes a massive nose dive. This is not the cause of planes crashing on a consistent basis. Nor are crashes the result of negligent individuals that have a history of poor performance. What they have found across multiple crashes is that fatigue is at the root of the problem.
Fatigue undermines the normally high performing into making mistakes, and not just one mistake, but, several mistakes that all come together to cause an accident. At times fatigued pilots failed to noticed warnings ten to fifteen times. The same appears to try across the board in our lives. When we are worn out we do dumb things, we say dumb things. I can attest to this.
Just yesterday I had one of those days where I was scheduled to the minute it felt like. One delay and I was going to be behind and that is not good when you are giving talks and you have a whole camp of over a hundred kids and coaching waiting for you. Simply, I couldn’t be late. One of the tasks I needed to get done was drop packages off at the post office. While I was at the post office I grabbed a diet coke (clear sign I was running low). But in my fatigued state, feeling run down, I grabbed a 500 ml bottle for $1:50 instead of the 2 litre bottle for $1:00. Not that .50 cents is that big of a deal but I dislike (hate) making bad decisions on any level. It took me about ten minutes to put this lesson behind me.
Bye the way the lesson was to SLOW DOWN and think. When we are fatigued we tend to worry rather than think. When are not thinking we make bad decisions. Simply, when fatigue sets in we do dopey things.
Observation of High Performing Individuals
Jul 6th
High performance individuals spend their energy focusing on what they CAN DO. They spend very little if any time on putting others down. The reason I say very little, even the highest performing amongst us at times will “stick it” to there greatest rivals or adversaries at times. This lapse in focus from high performing individuals seems to happen when fatigue sets in. None of us are perfect but those who are always putting others down, looking for things to criticize in others are only attempting to cover up their own insecurities. Yes, we need to critic others to learn and grow. But criticism is one of the four horseman of toxic and corrosive behavior. Simply, stay focused on what we CAN DO.
Note: The three other horseman of toxic and corrosive behavior are defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt.
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 Training: Avoid choking under pressure.
Apr 14th
I read an interesting study that was done by James Dimmock, psychologists at the University of Western Australia. He took 20 golfers and had them play a round focusing on cue words. Some focused on outcome cues, some focused on irrelevant cues and some focused on positive adjectives cues. There was not much difference between the players focusing on the words, but what they did find is that those golfers who were able to reduce anxiety with their words performed the best. Reducing anxiety during practice or a competition can set you up for the best results.
I spoke with a pole vaulter the other day who has graduated. Just some background here, this athlete was a very good jumper, top 5 in the NCAA, and two years in a row he no height-ed in the first round of the NCAA championships, (no height means, he did not make the height) He was ranked so high and was so talented that all he had to do in the first round was make one height and he would advance. I asked him what was going through his mind during both of these competitions. He told me that he was fixating on “all I have to do is make one bar, I have to make one height.” When he focused on these words his anxiety went through the roof and he said that he did not make good decisions. There is a direct relationship between anxiety, confidence, focus, and decision making, as anxiety rises, confidence, focus and decision making all decline. The same happens in reverse, as anxiety declines, confidence, focus and decision making all rise, which results in a great performance. This particular athlete was focused so much on the outcome of the event, that he almost forgot how to jump, he stopped executing specific skills that help him make the height.
The way that you can avoid choking in pressure situations is to reduce anxiety, by focusing on specific skills that will allow you to be successful, for pole vaulting it could be have a tall take off or run relaxed. Focusing on skills takes your mind away from focusing on the outcome. In tennis if you focus on playing the entire match hitting the ball out front, and executing that skill on every shot will give you the best chance for success. So again just to reaffirm what will help you avoid choking under pressure is, focusing on specific skills will and not the outcome will lower anxiety, thus raising confidence, focus, and decision making, allowing for a great performance.
There is one more key component here, it helps a great deal to ad a reassuring phrase to your game. One that is popular is “I can do this!” or “I got this!” I have also heard “Today is my day!” These phrase when said just before performing really help to build confidence, concentration, and decision making.
I recommend that when you are doing mental skills training you use a performance journal, or a mental skills journal, to log the skills you will focus on and to write down your reassuring phrase. When you write it down it becomes more powerful and real.
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.
Utilizing our mental skills to overcome doubts
Mar 4th
I am increasingly moving further and further aways from what I would consider being in shape. Over the last couple of months I have regressed to the point to were I am only doing pushups every other day to maintain some level of fitness. Last Monday I got down and started to do some pushups. I have my goal of what I want to get to (my objective) and I usually focus on techique (process) to achieve my goal. After the first couple of pushups the thought popped into my mind “ohh….I am tired and heavy to today…” I quickly stopped what I would deem to be a mild doubt as to whether I could reach my goal or the day. It didn’t take alot of mental toughness to override the doubt so I continued on my way, getting into a rythm and knocking out some sets. About 2/3 of the way through a stronger doubt popped into my mind “I am really tired today you should probably stop.” This time I had to lift my level of mental toughness to again override the doubt. This took more energy than prior but nothing extra ordinary. Again, I continued to go through some sets. About 5 pushups short of my goal number a strong doubt popped into my mind, “you are sick, it’s okay to stop today, you have done enough, just stop.” This time the doubt was intense, so I had to lift my level of mental toughness, “I got this, I can do this” to the point I was almost yelling to myself, inside my head of course not externally. I was able to complete my desired number of pushups and it felt great. Not because I was possibly physically stronger but the feeling of overcoming doubt, the feeling of being able to achieve what you what is empowering. It feels like you can do anything when you overcome doubt. I know it is just pushups but I believe this applies across varies fields of life.