Dear athlete.
What is it like to play beyond the boundaries of your mind?
Or is your mindset your greatest obstacle?
If so, how much effort do you put in trying to control or eliminate uncomfortable or ‘negative’ thoughts and feelings, particularly during training and competition?
How’s that working out for you?
In high performance sport, having the right ‘mindset’ is considered paramount, a ‘must be’, and is traditionally characterised as being positive, confident and motivated.
Sounds lovely but is your optimal mindset always attainable?
What if you aren’t feeling it on the day? What if you're doubting yourself - straight up scared or more nervous than usual? What if you aren’t in your ‘optimal’ head space?
Are you doomed to fail because your mind says you are?
Or do you have the skillset to be able to observe and accept a variety of thoughts as thoughts, something that need not always be acted on in some way;
to make room for the internal chaos without letting it touch you;
a space between you and the content of your thinking and feelings;
a space where YOU get to choose, where your fear & doubts don’t choose for you.
Within this space, you're replacing “I want to (insert performance goal here) but I’m thinking or feeling bad / off / scared / negative...” with, “I want to send it AND I’m feeling bad /off / scared / negative ...”.
The idea of been able to perform and execute even when you’re “not feeling it” sounds a bit backwards, I know. But there’s a great deal of research indicating that our tendency to try and control unwanted thoughts and emotions, ESPECIALLY in high performance sport and most specifically during competition (‘loaded’ or stressful situations) = bad news.
As an athlete, you need to be attentive to the task at hand while optimising challenges (i.e., recovering from a mistake, tough conditions etc..) that will inevitably come your way so that you can enter your flow, where you're performing to your potential when it matters most.
Yet when you're in a shit headspace, immersing yourself in the moment can feel almost impossible; you become absorbed in the need to control your thoughts rather than absorbed in the task-at-hand.
Perhaps it’s not your thoughts that are getting in your way, but rather your attachment to your thoughts.
Ask yourself, how can I perform out there while I’m busy trying to control what’s going on in here (in my mind)?
You just can’t.
I’ve observed this in myself, and with athletes and performers that I work with. And as with everything I deliver on this platform, this notion that poor performance is linked with the need to control and ‘fix’ unwanted thoughts and feelings has been demonstrated in research (see references below*)
So with that said,
what if your mindset didn’t matter so much? What if you could wake up on the big day with immense nerves and still ride, ski, surf, run, swim and play out of your mind?
This is where Gardner & Moore’s (2007) Mindfulness Acceptance Commitment Theory (MACT) and other acceptance based approaches (i.e., ACT) are starting to pave the way for field performance psychology.
If you’re keen to find out how this third wave approach may apply to you, get in touch for free 30 minute consultation.
Flow need not be so elusive after all.
References
Beilock, S. L., Afremow, J. A., Rabe, A. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). “Don’t miss!” The debilitating effects of suppressive imagery on golf putting performance. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 23(3), 200-221.
Beilock, S.L., Carr, T.H., MacMahon, C., & Starkes, J.L. (2002). When paying attention becomes counterproductive: Impact of divided versus skill-focused attention on novice and experienced performance of sensorimotor skills. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 616
Binsch, O., Oudejans, R. R. D., Bakker, F. C., & Savelsbergh, G. J. P. (2009). Unwanted effects in aiming actions: the relationship be- tween gaze behavior and performance in a golf putting task. Psychology ofSport & Exercise, 10, 628–635.
Janelle, C. M. (1999). Ironic mental processes in sport: Implications for sport psychologists. The Sport Psychologist, 13(2), 201-220.
Masters, R., & Maxwell, J. (2008). The theory of reinvestment. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1(2), 160-183.
Wegner, D. M., Erber, R., & Zanakos, S. (1993). Ironic processes in the mental control of mood and mood-related thought. Journal of personality and social psychology, 65(6), 1093.
