You are a Team!

Enabling change, improvement, and smoothing the everyday experiences in lives. These are amongst some of the things I do when I work with people.

Now with these folk it can be in the context of the sporting part of their lives, or the learning part of their lives, or the helping-them-deal-with what life throws at them part of their lives, or the part of their lives where they throw stuff at themselves.

Now there’s a distinct parallel between the team I work with in a sporting context, and – let’s say – the lady shopworker who I see regularly (when shopping of course) who wants to give up smoking. And it is this – They are BOTH a team.

Success

Part of what I’d really like to see for both my sportsmen and the shop lady – is success. Not just short term success such as, “I haven’t had a fag for a week,” or “We had our first win last Saturday,” but something more substantial like winning the League, or not smoking for a year.
The thing is - if she smokes on Day 8 or we cannot raise a side for this week’s away match - then there’s something really wrong, something really dysfunctional, about our TEAM, and the benefits of embedded longer-term success will never accrue to our game.

Unlike my sportsmen who I’ll see again, win or lose (until we part company) - if I see someone for smoking cessation and they make all the changes they want, then I’ll never see them again! Success = no further business. And who is the owner of that success? Exactly!

Failure

The thing about failure is responsibility and not ownership – who is the responsible party? Whose fault is it? Do we ever own failure? (No, don’t answer that!)

One of things about the dieting and slimming industry is that when their products fail – it is their customers, their clients, who feel guilty and blame themselves. Those in the industry, their methodologies and their products, are seemingly immune from criticism, because they’ve shifted the entire burden of responsibility. And the greatest irony of all is that when diets or products fail in the slimming industry – their clients KEEP coming back.  

On the other hand, when working with teams, different perceptions abound when things fail. For the failed smoker it is that “Hypnotherapy doesn’t work,” or more pointedly, “He couldn’t put me under,” which is one I always chuckle at. With the “unsuccessful” sports team the judgement is usually levelled at the coach, or his methods, and his weaknesses. It is never about the team, with individuals or collectives.

Control

Now as an ‘agent of change’ or therapist or coach, there are a certain number of things I will have more control over than others, when viewing my clients’ successes and failures.

Now because of this sliding scale of control, how I deal with that slider decides the way my client’s overall success is going to be built.

I like to start with their perceptions, their view of the world. This way I’ll find out how their “team” functions and where I can make the best impact to start the momentum, how they are going to build their success. For once there is momentum, change is taking place.

Next I’ll look at the make-up of the team – how the parts interact and communicate with each other – which part is more dominant or submissive – and all the “I” issues about those parts.

“I can understand that in a sporting context, Pete – but what about a single person? How can they be a team?” You may well ask.

Well look at the times you beat yourself up, or criticise yourself, have a go at yourself, tell yourself how stupid you are, or when you hear that voice in your ear that is nagging away at you. (And we’ve all experienced those moments!) Tell me who is the ‘self’ ‘you’ are having a go at? When ‘I’ realises it’s all about ‘me’, or ‘I’ said to ‘myself’ – just who are all these people? They have a habit of turning up quite regularly as you will see!

We’ll often – when we’re caught in two minds – say, “You know, I think part of me wants this to happen, and it seems like another part of me doesn’t and it feels like I’m working against myself.”

In the therapeutic process called parts integration, we can re-unite with ourselves, re-integrate ourselves if you like, so that all parts of our persona understand and appreciate the other, and the overall WE can move forward to a better place, as a team.

Breakdown

I worked with a lady whose “I” wanted to work on her core control but her motivation was dysfunctional because another part of her persona (her “self” let's say), had a perceived age of 3. The “self” part of her team was causing breakdown of her “I” bodily wishes simply because anyone, any persona, aged 3 would have no desire to sign up to working on core control, whatever that may be when we’re 3!

Similarly, if my sports team has certain key members who can only play home games – or if a number of others cannot come to the training nights – then the functionality of the team begins to slide. Immediately, due to this scenario, the long term success of the team, in spite of their individual and collective desires to win the league, will never happen.

So, in terms of control and my smoking lady, I have no overall control at present because her dominant persona has the final say in her giving up or not. Until I can work with that part of her persona in terms of change then she will continue to smoke. And for as long as she continues to smoke, the other parts of her persona will react accordingly by feeling bad about themselves in terms of guilt, annoyance, frustration, loss of confidence, lowering of self-esteem etc. These will eventually filter through to her entire integral self.

Similarly, with the sports team, the more ‘dedicated’ members will also feel a lot of those similar emotions. The less functional players are then perceived as ... well, you name it!

Facilitating Success

How a coach or manager, therapist or change worker, can facilitate success has been and is the subject of many books, studies, programmes, courses, methodologies, schools of thought, workshops, etc.

For some there is success at a price, for others there is bought in success. There is success through basic and honest hard work, success through thoughtful and careful application of proven sound principles. There is even the best success, where some success isn’t as good! I could go on – but there is one over-riding factor in all this.

We are ALL human, and within the human condition lies everything from fortitude to frailty, dedication to dabbling, knowledge to ignorance – all filtered through minds that are either integrated, fragmented, open or closed. Plus, everything here is on a sliding scale for each and every one of us. Little wonder then that trying to control THAT vehicle is arguably one of the hardest jobs on earth!

“What’s your success rate?” I’ve been asked many times.
“Is he a good coach? – Well, I can’t say I’m impressed by his list of successes.” Is something I know that’s been said about me, also.

Ok, I can bring about some changes for you – with your compliance, of course – but the success is yours, whether as an individual or as a team. I can work – with your compliance, of course – on helping to integrate your “Team”. For an integrated, functional and dynamic team will create more chances to succeed, a more fertile ground for success to grow – but whether it’s as part of sports team, or a YOU team, there needs to be compliance.

You can lead a horse to water ...

Seeing it as BIG as a Football!

Advertisers often make creative use of imagery to get the points across about their products. Currently there is one where two guys are playing table tennis with giant bats, and there are a group of men playing golf and one either a) uses a giant club so he cannot miss and also hit his drive a long way or b) the hole on the putting green is enormous so, again, he cannot miss.

This brings to mind one of those well-known metaphorical phrases in cricket when the batsman says, “I was seeing it as big as a football.” Of course what he means is that his perception of it (the ball) is so altered that it appears larger than life and that he cannot fail to hit it. There is also a pre-supposition here that every shot is played with optimum precision and requisite power. In other words, when he’s seeing it as big as a football everything flows in an ideal way – and he is invincible; he is in The Zone.

Needless to say this is purely a metaphor regarding seeing the ball – focus – extra awareness as the ball looms large in his visual field. It pays no attention to the actual quality of whatever shot is played per se, as anyone who has ever hit a football with a cricket bat surely knows.
 

Watch The Ball!

I’ve written on many occasions about the level of focussed attention players bring to the area of the visual field in their particular sports. I’ve always held the view that whether striking an object, catching an object, and aiming or throwing at a target, there is always the need for the best quality of visual data gathering for the player to achieve optimal execution of the task.
I also believe that the visual focus is very much enhanced by turning down the attention input of data gathered from other senses, and also by players muting or silencing their internal dialogue. Without distrative ‘interference’ a player perceives a clearer vision and a better awareness.

Visualisation

I ran an experiment a few years ago, with players each throwing a ball at a target with their eyes shut, after first committing the target to visual memory, and then visualising hitting the target with their throw.
Now here you might consider – on the face of it – that I was perhaps looking to debunk my own quality data theory, in the moment!
“Eyes shut eh, Pete – so where’s the data then?”  – I can hear you ask.

The thing is – with visualisation we can make the data whatever we want, and we can make the volume of data contain much more than just visual information too!
(Check with yourself by thinking of a lemon; describe the lemon; imagine you have cut it in half with a knife and describe that; now imagine you’ve put one of the halves in your mouth, and describe that. Loads of data – yes? Is it real data? Although that’s for you to decide – it is as real as you have made it up, of course!)

Now, part of my ‘blind throwers’ visualisation exercise involved making the target physically bigger, or perhaps bringing it nearer, so that hitting it (in imagination) would become very much easier. This is akin to those advertisers’ video clips from the golf course.
Memorised spatial co-ordinates of targets can be easily manipulated with visualisation.
Make it bigger – brighter – bolder!

The players imagined throwing a ball at the target – and they were also asked to notice, to feel, the movements of their bodies as they threw. What they felt as kinaesthetic feedback from the visualisation was also important data.

The rest involved the process of committing the visualisation to short term memory. Within that commitment there is no auditory data or – interestingly – any internal dialogue or self talk.

Incidentally, one other ‘angle’ about the Eyes-Shut throwing at targets experiment – what also lies behind it – is that the players’ assembly and delivery of good technical skills, beyond conscious attention and interference, was of a remarkably high quality. But I digress!

Gathering Data

Now, in terms of conscious – and eyes open - visual data gathering by players, I’ve always been at pains to point out certain enhancements that they can bring to this focussing process. It isn’t so much about what they are watching, but is more about how they are watching and for how long.
For instance, with an approaching ball in flight which they are judging when and how to strike or catch, it is vital they watch the ball ALL THE WAY to the moment of striking or catching. The last couple of metres are crucial, and yet most of us commit this bit to guesswork!
If we compare this bit of concentration technique with seeing it as big as a football, my next questions are, “How are you seeing that football? Does it grow in perceived size as it gets nearer, or is it just big all through the flight path? And is there anything else about that football?”
Delving behind the football metaphor really then starts to open up the HOW of watching the ball, or the target, or indeed anything upon which our attentive focus is laid.

 

Broadening our Focus

My friend James Tripp has recently introduced me to the book “The Open Focus Brain” by Dr Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins. It was whilst reading this fascinating study on the nature of narrow focussed attention and Open-Focussed attention, a number of connective light bulbs went on for me.

I have always approached my coaching of players from the perspective of watching the target – whether that is a ball, shuttlecock, goal, stumps, hole, pocket, dart board, hoop, jaw, or whatever. It has always been either by taking dead-aim, or closely watching.

It might also be said that closely watching an approaching ball (say) is the same as taking dead-aim at a moving target.

As part of our decision-making process, of making a judgement, I mention that we need to examine the desired or optimal flight path of the projectile we are throwing, hitting, kicking, catching etc. However, although I often talk about the attributes of the medium between the player and the target when doing visualisation, I hardly ever mention it when dealing with a “real” live situation.

Now I don’t mean here what is particularly going on with atmospheric conditions such as wind and humidity, the height above sea level, etc., or the physical attributes (spin, rotation etc) of the projectile as it travels through the atmosphere – important as  these all might be when factored into the decision-making process!
I am talking with particular regard to the spatial dimensions of the medium, our perceptions of those dimensions, AND (now I have read Les Fehmi’s work) how we can alter the nature of our perceptions through the type of focus we are applying at any one time.

 

Proofing

Part of the process of Proof Reading involves changing our focus. We require our R.A.S (reticular activating system; the brain’s perceptive filter) to shift focus from the inherent meaning of the text to typographical correctness, or to syntax, etc.

Years ago I bought and sold second hand LPs and the price I would charge was dependent upon the condition of the disc itself – scratches and other wear being part of the consideration. I needed therefore to grade the ‘playing’ condition of the discs I bought in, rather than the musical content or recording quality. This involved the Proof Listening of all incoming discs.

Wine tasters actually go through a process of Proof Tasting – where the process of drinking wine changes focus in a sampling way. Tasters who fail to properly step into the ‘Proof Frame’ and all that entails, tend to end up regularly inebriated!

All these proofing functions involve directing the R.A.S and the best proofers become really adept at changing the nature of their particular focus, from moment to moment. Proof readers switch off the internal voice that tends to accompany most of us when we are just reading. My proof listening meant I wasn’t listening to music, but only sound. And wine tasters never (or shouldn’t) swallow!

Now I’d like to draw Proofing, in the sense I’ve just described, into the context of the way we need to focus in whatever sport we are playing, and whatever varying actions and processes we are performing within that sport. The reason being this:–

We all tend to focus and concentrate primarily in the visual field. Paying attention in this field is about noticing as much as we can in a narrow focus perspective. I believe that when we set out to try and up the ante, concentrate better, or focus more, that we are – as a rule – not pointing ourselves in the right direction. The way we usually set out to do the process continues to be from a conscious, narrow-focussed perspective – where “Pay more attention,” simply gets translated as do more detailed data gathering.

However, if we were to take the instruction as being “Pay attention in a different way,” – as all Proofers do - then we’ll notice a lot of different things and, as a result, gather more data! Logical, isn’t it!

Plus - something else interesting will be going on for us – we will have stopped trying. And, amazingly, one of the by-products of stopping our trying will be a reduction of tension, a relaxing, a feeling of being more grounded, a more stable equilibrium between unconscious skills and conscious decision making.

Alignment

So what brings about someone’s occasional capability to see the ball as big as a football? It might seem they have just casually stumbled across some magical facility or attribute – but there are a number of factors that have come into conjunction or alignment for that person to have such an experience.

Rather like eclipses take place when celestial bodies come into alignment, the big football effect results from another kind of alignment, a perceptual alignment.
The difference is - in the moment, eclipses diminish the light around us, whereas with our perceptions aligned the lights get very much brighter, everything seems to be in HD – or what we might even call 3D+.

The aligning factors, I believe, are these:-
·         A predisposed or arrived at state of emotional equilibrium
·         A change in the nature of our focus
·         Brainwaves associated with our various processes are ‘in sync’ at lower frequencies

In my opinion there is a clear connection between all these factors; a connection that is an essential part of all Mind-Body Links not just within sport, but also in our daily lives.
In The Open Focus Brain, Dr Fehmi examines the connective link between brainwave frequencies and the nature of our focus. In Mind How You Play I examine the connective link between emotional equilibrium and thought.

“So, if I want to see it as big as a football every time, Pete, what do I need to do to improve the odds of it happening?”
This might well be your next question!

Your emotional equilibrium, and the nature of your focus, will certainly be reflected in the frequency of your brainwaves. Your performance, the balance of your skills, decision making and tactics, will be better enabled by all three.

Certainly, without emotional equilibrium the odds will be considerably lengthened. You may have struck a run of good form, but form is elusive at best without emotional equilibrium.

You can also tinker and experiment with brainwave entrainment, but our brainwaves are actually a reflection of what is happening and what has already happened for us on the inside – so we can only go there in a proactive sense by using a “vehicle” that facilitates brainwave changes. Trying to change the speed of your car by moving the needle on the speedometer won’t work, whereas the brakes and accelerator are what facilitate speed changes. Interestingly there are a whole range of things available to us to brake or accelerate brainwave activity – many of which fall under the banner of thought! And with thought, we get back to equilibrium.

But, my friend, since we are just talking here about the seeing of the metaphorical football, then changing the nature of your focus is a very good way of narrowing the odds.

I’ve talked many times about the importance of The Breath in the performance of our lives – and how we can unlearn the bad breathing habits we have become very familiar with as we have grown up. Good breathing, habitually breathing well, gives us many wellbeing benefits including a number already mentioned in this article!
Similarly with our Focus, we can unlearn the perpetual gravitation towards running our lives in the one-track habit of narrow focus. Once we broaden our perspective on everything, things begin to shift on many levels both on the outside AND on the inside. There are times when a narrow focus is totally appropriate of course, but running a broader and more open focus as a default setting is certainly going to enhance the wellbeing our lives.

Essentially, with a broader focus you will EXPERIENCE MORE and BOTHER LESS. Now I’m not talking about care here when I use the word bother. Broad focussed people can care about something or someone as well as the next person – however, they don’t get drawn into wasting their attention on everything under their microscope.

So – big as a football experiences in our sport are going to happen more regularly for the open-focussed folk amongst us. If you take to the field of play (and practice) in a perpetually wound-up state, then it will never happen for you. If you want something better in any part of your life then you have to change the way you’ve been doing it up to now.

Focus your eyes at infinity

Have you ever laid on your back and stared up at the sky, looking way beyond the clouds. That’s rather like focussing at infinity. What do you notice happened when you did that? Did you find your eyes blinking more, less or the same? Did you find the 4^th or 5th blinks being much longer – and was it hard to keep your eyes open after blink number 4-5? Did you find as your eyes stayed closed that your breathing got deeper, your thoughts seemed to ‘slow down’, your attention seemed to float, and your neck and shoulders relaxed and became warmer.
And when you opened your eyes again, still looking skywards, did you get an embodied feeling that things felt different, somehow – and yet you couldn’t exactly pinpoint any particular difference?

Have you ever looked up at the sky on a starry night? Did you notice what happened when you tried to focus on a particular star – how it seemed to grow dimmer, and yet all the ones round about it seemed to become much clearer.
Curiously, if you pointed a telescope at that same star, this effect wouldn’t happen. It is only in our perceptions, however, where these differences seem to take place.

Part of Dr Fehmi’s approach to opening the focus is to engage the imagination in terms of how we perceive the geography of the inner spaces of our bodies.
Apropos of this, a while ago I can remember reading about an interesting study involving the following graphic representation:-

It involved a person visualising a whiteboard, onto which they were to draw first a circle, and then inside the circle draw a square; then inside the square to draw a triangle; then inside the triangle to draw an X.

Next they were to visualise putting down the marker and then taking up an eraser. With the eraser they were to first remove the X; and next the triangle; and next the square; then finally the circle.

Finally they were to put down the eraser and visualise the empty space on the whiteboard.

I have shown people this visualisation process to help them with insomnia, or to reduce their internal dialogue to a degree so that their mind is “disengaged” from thought processing.
It is a clear example of changing and broadening focus, and certainly the effects, for those I’ve told about it, are most beneficial.

There are some enhancements I’ve used with it also.

Allow your eyes to follow each drawing sequence in ‘forward and reverse’ modes. So with the circle, for instance, allow your eyes to rotate clockwise for 360° and then anticlockwise back to the start. You can repeat if you wish. Do this for each element in the graphic.
You can do this with eyes open or closed, and remember to focus at infinity after you have completed the erasure sequence.

Conclusion

I can thoroughly recommend the book, The Open Focus Brain by Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins. There are some downloadable audio files of guided exercises you can undertake, and these are also within the text of the book. 

I also suggest you see what differences you notice when you use the graphic in the way I have described. Give yourself about a week of twice daily use to allow changes to start to integrate, and just notice what is becoming different for you.

And if you should see it as big as a football, then hit, catch or kick that football and remember exactly what there is about it that made you want to continue to make changes in your sport and your life.

 

This article is one of a trio of articles concerning the elements described in the paragraph headed Alignment.

Pre-Match Nerves

Handling our nerves and maintaining equilibrium during performance is one thing, but what about that other perennial comment I encounter, couched usually in terms like this.

“Pete, I get really bad nerves before a match. How can I deal with them?”

In my book Mind How You Play, I explore Equilibrium and where and how the balance of our performance is arrived at, or how it is in being.

Of course, if we could just sail through our pre-match build-up then starting out in a state of equilibrium would be just a matter of getting the motor running, heading out on the competition highway and looking for adventure. And, to be honest, a lot of the pre-match work with teams I am involved with on game days is about just that. Getting their motors purring through not over revving-up, and feeling grounded in Mind through being not wound up.

We are all prone to, and most of us get pre-match nerves to some degree, but here’s the thing - Some of what we are feeling is emotionally draining, scrambles our brain and is physically debilitating, and some is just plain excitement and anticipation of the contest.
And if we only got the thrill, the anticipatory tingle, the frissant of electricity that flashes around the body, then we would never describe any of that as bad nerves.

No, in the mix of all the stuff that’s going on for us there is good and bad – some more useful and some less useful. It is the bad nerves that do nothing positive for us at all - which is why it makes sense for us to want to deal with them!

Getting started

It starts with Equilibrium. Once we have an understanding of Equilibrium, then we’ll realise that there needs to be zero nerves – both good AND bad! Since nerves are a manifestation of our thinking, then - in an ideal world - there needs to be a state of zero thinking.

So, after the philosophical angle, the understanding, what is the next step?

To put it simply, there are two approaches to dealing with Bad Nerves – you can either
DO SOMETHING or DO NOTHING.
The do something approach requires a strategy, while the do nothing approach merely requires an understanding.

A strategy you will have to learn and carry out – while an understanding is just a felt sense of knowing; what we might call wisdom.

Now, don’t get me wrong – they both work!

And in all honesty I coached the strategic approach for years, after first applying to self to judge how straightforward and beneficial things would be.

Strategies

Some players do visualization, some play music on headphones, some set up an inner calm place beforehand and go there, some meditate. All these strategies for pre-match nerves are designed to bring about one thing in common – a state of reduced thinking, of feeling calm and grounded.
And these are, on the face of it, quite sensible things to do!

Whichever strategy we have, it's designed to take us from our present state (nerves) to our desired state (grounded calm) and we use these vehicles, these means of transport, to get us there.

Now I'll come back to feeling - for feeling, in this regard, is the operative word.
Bad nerves – feeling bad – happens when there is an apparent overload of Kinaesthetic experiences going on in the foreground. And the more the overload, the worse the badness of feeling gets.

However, I’d like you to notice how these strategies are all geared to turning down the Kinaesthetic experience by overloading more Visual and Auditory sensual experience into the foreground. The trouble is we’re using other overloads to deal with the first overload, and you know what – the first overload is not actually reduced, it is just masked.

The headache

We don’t take paracetamol for a headache, we take it to mask the kinaesthetic perception of headache pain. The cause of the headache is still there causing pain, yet we’ve changed the balance of chemicals in the brain to ‘trick’ our perceptions. Of course we are knowing and willing partners in this act of ‘trickery’, without really knowing the precise details of what is going on for us – on the inside!

We can also take this subterfuge further, and ‘trick’ our perceptions, when a placebo is substituted for the paracetamol. It is important we don’t know it’s a placebo however, for obvious reasons – but we need to know what is going on in our heads when the headache goes this time. In this instance the masking of the pain is done by releasing some of our own neuro-chemicals, and the perceptual trigger for this ‘trick’ was that we THOUGHT we were taking paracetamol! And because we “know” that paracetamol deals with headache then the end result of our thinking is ... no headache!

For some people there are certain “drugs of choice” for nerves, from narcotics and alcohol across to beta-blockers. They all deal with the feelings, the kinaesthetics, of the nerves and not the causes of those feelings. I know some players who even use stimulating drinks to help them deal with their nerves, which has to be about as bizarre as eating toothpaste to combat gum disease!

Do you follow, are you with me here? Are the mists clearing yet? Is the mask slipping – for you?

Understanding

What is it that lies behind ALL our feelings? Thought.

We see a wonderful sunset, or hear a great song, and the way we feel about those experiences has been generated by our perceptive powers, our thought processes. How easy is it to imagine how exciting some upcoming event is going to be? It is SO easy that we can experience a felt sense of how it will be well in advance. Similarly, our perception of a headache is driven by thought. And our bad nerves, too, are driven by our own thinking.

Just consider what thoughts are going on behind your feelings of bad nerves.

“I’m worried about my performance; I’m worried whether I’ll play well or whether I’m good enough; I don’t want to let others down so I’m worried about that; I’m worried I’m carrying an injury; I always worry because I want to do things right; What will people think of me if I don’t do well?;If I wasn’t worried one particular day I’d probably be worried about that too.”

There are many issues going on in that montage of reasons – all sewn together by the word “I”!
Logically, your intellect tells you that all this worry is a bit pointless – but your body is telling you something else. “I’ve still got the jitters, the butterflies, a tight, wrenching knot in my gut,” you’ll be saying, as your heartbeat pounds fast, your breathing gets shallow and faster, your mind seems to race or be spinning out of control, your palms get sweaty and your mouth goes bone dry.

Get familiar with those feelings - whereabouts do you feel them? Acknowledge them – because you remember what happened all the other times you tried to make them go away by denying them, or overloading them, or by ingesting something to mask them, or by just wishing and hoping.
Notice what is different this time, for out of the noticing will come your understanding.

Are the feelings in your body or in your head? The answer, curiously, is a particular pointer as to where you are ‘living your life’.

It is as if those bad nerves, for each and every one of us, have a sixth sense as to where we are most vulnerable!

Feelings noticed in the body are more straightforward for you to combat – while if you feel the nerves in your head, it’s because you are living your life in your head, driven by a logical perspective from your intellect.
‘In the head’ people don’t want to feel grounded, they want to feel in control – and the control they want to feel in control of is – at the end of the day - their thinking!

Once you acknowledge your nerves AND have the understanding of what is behind them, driving them, then you have made that first shift towards the non-strategic approach – the do nothing approach. The realisation, in the moment, that your nerves are a result of your reactions to your thinking, is the quickest, surest and best long-term way of every future dealing that you’ll have to make.

 

Kick Me!

When you were at school, did anyone ever stick a note on the back of your jacket saying “Kick Me”? It’s a very ‘old style’ practical joke!

Now imagine someone had, and first of all you were blissfully unaware of being kicked –

Until, that is, you began to wonder why you had a sore backside. You’d be sat on that bruised posterior contemplating the source of the discomfort, racking your brain for reasons why and yet never knowing!

Until, that is, the day you noticed someone in the act of kicking you there.
“Please don’t kick me there,” you’d say. “It’s very sore for some reason or other. I think I must have something wrong with me. Guess I need to visit the doctor." Even then, you still wouldn’t realise they were actually just carrying out the instructions from the note on your back.

Until, that is, the day you went to the doctor and told him the story. "Take off your jacket," says the doctor and then he shows you the note pinned there. “People have been kicking me – that explains everything,” you’d then say.

Of course you’d still need to act upon the knowledge, the realisation you’ve just encountered – for if you left the note pinned to the jacket, people would still kick you. You'd then know WHY you had a sore behind, however you WOULDN'T yet have actually taken any steps to change anything!

The choice about getting to grips with Bad Nerves is entirely yours, of course. You have all the ways and means of making your performance a great one. However, if there is anything you’ve overlooked or left behind - you may just feel something in that left behind!

Then you’ll realise why and you’ll Kick Yourself!

 

 

"Pre-Match Nerves" is a shortened version of the same-named chapter from Mind How You Play, which is now available in eVersion on Kindle here:-  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-How-You-Play-ebook/dp/B00E82Q0KA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375170216&sr=8-2&keywords=mind+how+you+play

Mind How You Play

Sport offers us many gateways in life, and the entire range of sports in the world are a reflection of man's almost endless ingenuity in creating a field for Play.

Now sport can be both a love and a frustration and, to be fair,

we aren't all like Forrest Gump was with ping pong.

There are issues that are faced both by international champions and beginners alike - they (and we) all suffer from things that aren't coming easy to us in the moment. And these complications make our game much harder to play at times.

Pre-match nerves, scoreboard pressure, choking at crucial moments, talking ourselves down, tensing up and degrading our motor skills, making poor decisions - are just a number that spring to mind. And it is very much in the mind where these complications come along to plague us.

Performance in sport isn't all about being technically accomplished - it is more about becoming masters of our inner selves.

In my latest book "Mind How You Play - Enhancing your Sporting Performance from the inner perspective", the approach is not so much about providing you with a bag of tools to apply when the going gets tough - it is about enabling you to change your way of being in your game, and through that helping you discover greater and more enduring pleasures and rewards from it.

"Excellence in Sport has no beginning and no end;

it IS merely about developing.

No one can ever know it all, yet we can always progress.

There is no such thing as the ultimate victory;

everything is just a step along the way."

When I coined this quote a few years ago, part of my understanding about developing excellence was well ahead of its time - and other parts of my understanding were well behind, playing catch-up. A lot of my philosophical beliefs, ideas and approaches crystallized during this time of catch-up and I gained an understanding that performance is about being and not doing. I also discovered that understanding is much more than just knowledge or expertise - there's a big difference. 

Knowledge can be the currency of wisdom, but is like money - we can earn it, put it in our memory banks, and then just leave it there. Like other currencies, knowledge is worthless if left lying in our vaults, because there it earns no interest, and serves no purpose.
So we need to SPEND it, and spend it wisely. Only by spending our knowledge do we start to discover its value; its value in helping us see the path to true purpose; its value in giving us a deeper understanding about the sporting life we desire, the one that we are striving for.

"There's gold in them thar' hills!"

Mastering our Inner Game is rather like prospecting for gold. We can take the well-worn path to the stream of uncertainty, and spend years panning for few nuggets and little reward ...

Or we can tread the less ordinary path along the river of understanding, discovering rich seams along the way. At the end of the day the hills certainly are full of gold - and the more you Mind How You Play the more you'll get the success you deserve!

Mind How You Play (paperback) is currently available from Lulu Marketplace and AMAZON. You can access the LULU link by clicking on the link on the right hand side of the page. 
The eVersion on Kindle is available here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-How-You-Play-ebook/dp/B00E82Q0KA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375438972&sr=8-2&keywords=mind+how+you+play
plus if you want to buy the paperback at Amazon, then you can transfer to the paperback edition page from the Kindle edition page.