Is your mind often in overdrive thinking about your sport performance?

If this is true for you, I’d like you to consider 2 statements today which I’ve adapted from the short book.  Letting Everything Become Your Teacher, 100 Lessons in Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn.  I hopeful they’ll give you some food for thought on traps you may fall into.

Non-Doing

“Meditation is really non-doing.  It is the only human endeavour I know that does not involve trying to get somewhere else but, rather, emphasizes being where you already are.”

Now when you consider sport, the likelihood is people who read this will have motivated and driven personalities.  They may be all action and enjoy keeping busy.  They will set goals regularly and enjoy striving to achieve them too.  All good qualities but…

Tip 1: Be aware of this, that on occasions you may get carried away by doing, doing and doing more.  Messages from sport are often about giving maximum effort, trying your hardest, outworking your competitors.

However there is a place for non-doing too, to let go of the striving, the planning, the reacting to performances, the paralysis by analysis.  Sometimes by simply stopping to feel where you are can be a helpful act.  The doing part can be often be born from a lack of trust and become habitual.

Question 1: When was the last time you stopped and did nothing?

Just Observe

“In practising meditations, we don’t try to answer questions.  Rather we just observe the impulse to get up from the sitting, or to get caught in the thoughts that come into the mind.”

This type of practice can be very difficult for the athlete or coach who is all action and who is always thinking about how they can improve or the next match or event.  Something I note a lot from my work is that when we’re competing regularly there is a tendency to become “reactive” always trying to get ready for the next performance.  Often this can cause a degree of anxiety and is born out of poor planning.  Focusing on the process which is something us Sport Psychologists talk about a lot becomes foreign to this person. 

Tip 2: By focusing so heavily especially on outcomes, also often results in a lack of trust and you end up in your own head a lot, thinking, thinking and thinking even more. Try shifting your focus, consider the key ingredients of your performance and observe how closely you align to these behaviours.

Question: On a scale of 1-10, how much have you been thinking about results and outcomes related to your sport in the last week? (1 =Not at all, 10 = All of the time)   

BONUS TIP

Be curious and tune into my most recent Demystifying Mental Toughness podcast episode with leading performance coach, Karl Morris who has worked with many elite professional golfers and athletes where he shares one great strategy on managing your emotions so that you can get out of your head and perform better more consistently.  It’s an episode created for golfers however it relates to any sport.