Articles

It All Starts in the Mind

What can be accomplished through the powers of the mind? Perhaps most important is the development of a positive attitude, belief in yourself and confidence. Elite athletes have long acknowledged that their belief in themselves and their ability to bounce back are major factors in their success. “What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve!” Champion athletes Michael Phelps and Mary Lou Retton mentally rehearsed their perfect performances without any doubts in their mind. Their body produced what they visualized.

However, if you are like most athletes, you train and compete with a constant “what if” and self doubt running through your mind. Constantly double checking in your mind what you must and must not do. There is a point where most athletes can have a breakdown in mental strategy which they will go over in their mind endlessly. More often than not, you will go over what you should NOT be doing rather than what you should be doing. Thereby visualizing, mentally rehearsing and sending the message to your body to do the opposite of what you want. For example, if I tell you not to think of a pink elephant. What are you thinking of?

Negative thoughts pertaining to performance skills can be changed or eliminated. As your skills improve, mental peal performance coaching will take you to the point where intermittent incidents of poor performance no longer arouse irritation, anger, frustration, doubt or a negative emotional reaction. Concentration, coordination and technique, as well as awareness of proper form and posture can all improve.

Athletes face the same stumbling blocks that people have to deal with in other areas of life. The biggest of all is fear, and fear comes in many forms. Fear of failure is always restrictive and is very common in sports. Its hidden partner, fear of success, can cause anxiety from pressure and expectation of others. Another common fear is fear of humiliation. Many golfers experience near terror on the first tee where people may be watching the first drives. Competition can produce a sensation of intimidation, which will result in deterioration of skill. Anxiety is another common problem.  Anxiety before a competition can take away focus, physically weaken the body and take away desire to compete. Fortunately NLP allows us to remove both fear and anxiety very quickly and easily, by putting the control of your mind and body back into your hands.

Through the use of visualization, mental peak performance coaching is used to not only reduce or eliminate the mental obstacles, it can also take you to the next level, using abilities you may not even knew you had.  A simple example is: if you stand and raise your arm pointing straight in front of you. Without moving your legs and arm turn around as far as you can by only using your torso. Note how far you turned. Now, imagine only in your mind (close your eyes if you have to) raising your arm in front of you in the same way, and easily turning, going twice as far as you did. Imagine repeating this couple of times going further each time until you go all the way around. Now, physically do it again and see just how much further you have gone. This is an example in which the truth of what the mind can conceive, the body can achieve becomes highly evident.

For the average person, mental peak performance coaching alone cannot turn a weekend athlete into an international champion. Factors, skills and abilities other than mental are involved. However Mental Peak Performance Coaching can be used to enable an athlete to achieve his or her personal best!