Ski Racing: Next Season Starts…NOW!
Note: This article is an encore presentation of an article I wrote at the end of last season. The race season is finally over. After a long and demanding winter, you’re probably tired of skiing (regardless of whether the season was a triumph or a disappointment). It’s time to hang up your skis, pack away […]
Read MorePersonal Growth: Do You Have ‘Complete Freedom’ in Your Life?
My series of posts on “life inertia” has been exploring the role that it plays in where your life has been, where it is now, and where it is heading. As you consider ways to change your life inertia, it’s helpful to have a vision of the direction you want your life to go. This […]
Read MoreSki Racing: Ski Racing Imagery: Your Most Powerful Mental Tool
If you do anything to work on the mental side of your ski racing during this off season, it better be mental imagery. Why, you ask. Because there is no more powerful mental tool than mental imagery and it can have a huge impact on your ski racing. I say this with such conviction because […]
Read MoreLatest News: Interviewed for article on “Parental Temper Tantrums”
Furthermore, says Marin parenting expert Jim Taylor, Ph. D., “yelling is threatening. It creates fear.” “Yelling and fear can induce temporary behavior change, but generally not long-lasting behavior change. When the fear isn’t present, when the threat – you – are not present, they have no inducement for engaging in whatever behavior you were yelling […]
Read MorePersonal Growth: Blame Your Parents for Your Problems!
In my last post, I described the differences between needs, which ensure your psychological and emotional survival and growth, and NEEDS!, which arise from the neuroses, pathologies, and just plain whims of your parents and the environment and culture in which you are raised and have likely caused you considerable unhappiness and dysfunction in your […]
Read MorePersonal Growth: Do You Have Needs or NEEDS!
Just as your basic physical needs (e.g., food, water, shelter) must be met to ensure your physical survival and growth, another set of needs must also be satisfied to guarantee your psychological and emotional survival and growth. These needs include: Feeling loved (“I’m worthwhile”), Allaying insecurity (“I’m safe”), Feeling competent (“I’m capable”), Feeling in control […]
Read MorePersonal Growth: Changing Your Life “Inertia” Takes Courage
In a previous post, I first introduced you to my law of life inertia: “The tendency of people, having once established a life trajectory, to continue on that course unless acted on by a greater force.” I followed that post with another in which I described the four forces that drive your life inertia: needs, […]
Read MoreCycling: Prime Cycling Attitude
In my last post, I introduced you to Prime Cycling which I defined as riding at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions. Before you can begin developing the essential mental skills that help you experience Prime Cycling, you need to establish the right attitude toward your cycling. This attitude focuses on two areas. […]
Read MoreBusiness: Crisis: Emotional Threat or Challenge
Emotions lie at the heart of how you respond to crises. They are the starting point for all of the reactions that we have toward a crisis. They are also be the first obstacle to establishing a positive response to a crisis. That is why it is essential to understand the role that emotions play in how we react with the goal being to gain control of and use our emotions in constructive ways when confronted by crises.
Emotions when confronted with a crisis are the initial reaction from the fight-or-flight response which has been wired into us since we first became homo sapiens (and, in fact, long before we began to walk upright). These feelings have served as the first alert and first responder to people and situations that humans perceived as being a threat to their survival. These emotions were experienced by our ancestors, as they are by us now, as a wake-up call that danger lurks close by.
We experience crisis emotions in ways that guarantee that we pay attention to them and heed their warning. Crisis emotions are immediate. Any delays in recognizing or acting on these feelings could have meant certain death for our ancestors. Crisis emotions are visceral, meaning we feel them in every cell of our physical being. They are overwhelming because our bodies want to ensure that our minds don’t miss or confuse the messages they are sending us. And crisis emotions are always negative. Why, you ask? Think of it this way. Positive emotions aren’t in a hurry; there is no need to feel joy or love or pride immediately. But there is a definite urgency to negative emotions; they are communicating to us that we are in danger and we need to know now. If we don’t get negative emotions fast, we’re dead (or so some primitive part of the brain believes)!
How you respond emotionally to a crisis starts with how you look at it. I have found that a simple distinction lies at the heart of whether you react positively or negatively: Do you perceive the crisis as a threat or a challenge? Whether you view crises as a threat or a challenge sets into motion a diametrically opposed cascade of emotions, thoughts, and behavior that result in either a constructive or harmful response to crises.
Read MoreSports: Inside the Minds of the World’s Best Athletes
In my last post, I described some competitive lessons you must learn from the world’s best athletes to play your best in Prime Time, which I defined as being the biggest game of your life against the toughest field under the most difficult conditions. This week, I will delve into the minds of some of the world’s best athletes and uncover the mental lessons you must also learn to play your best and achieve your goals. These mental lessons are especially important as you head into the most important games of the season, such as March Madness.
1. Believe in your ability. One thing that separates the best athletes in the world from the rest of us is that they have a deep and resilient belief in their ability to play their best. Even when they’re not playing well, instead of going to the “dark side” (i.e., going from being their best ally to their worst enemy) they never lose faith in themselves and continue to be on their own side.
For everyone else, developing confidence in your ability is one of the biggest challenges you face. Many athletes don’t have that deeply ingrained belief in their capabilities. I see this often in games. For example, a basketball player misses a few shots early in a game. He then begins to doubt himself and, instead of taking the open shot, passes the ball to a teammate.
It’s a mistake for the player in the last example to give up just because he hasn’t started the game well. The mental lesson you can learn from world’s best athletes is that no matter how you start off or how many mistakes you make, you can still get back in the game (literally and metaphorically) and have a good game, but only if you stay positive stay motivated to play your best the remainder of the game.
Building confidence in your game is no different than for the world’s best athletes. It takes thousands of hits, shots, spikes, runs, and rides, a positive attitude, meticulous preparation, support from others, and, of course, success. But, for every athlete, from the bottom to the top, it starts with a commitment to believe in yourself no matter how bad it gets.
This belief will serve you especially well in Prime Time. You may believe that you can play well under normal circumstances. You have probably put in a lot of time at practice that supports your belief. But the question is whether you can play that well in the most important game of your life against the toughest field of competitors you have ever faced? The lesson you can learn from the best athletes in the world is to develop such a belief in your play that you truly know that you can play your best when you absolutely need to. This belief in your play gives you the confidence to go for it in Prime Time.
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