Sportspeople are wonderful to work with. They’ve already answered, to a large extent, the answer to one of the tough questions we need to ask at the beginning of every engagement:
“What exactly do you want?”
A footballer may respond with, “I want to be the best right back in my league and in two years I want to be playing in the Premiership.”
A golfer may respond with, “I want to play my way off of the Challenge Tour and on to the European Tour by the end of the next season.”
Elite athletes have completed the groundwork, put in the hours, learned their sport and acquired the technical skills. What separates those that go on to achieve great things are things like self discipline and Quality of Mind.
Quality of Mind includes things like belief in your dream, confidence, determination, resilience, unflappability, acceptance, resolve, preparedness, focus and passion. It’s the ability to approach your challenge from the Inside Out.
Inside Out means that circumstances don’t dictate your Quality of Mind – you do. You’re able to marshall and manage your thoughts so they work towards your purpose. Towards what you want.
No matter what.
IS IT MAGIC?
Of course it is. It’s the magic of a mind that understands itself: where thoughts come from, where they go, what you do with them.
It’s the magic of a body that, when left to do what it’s been practicing for years, is capable of delivering amazing results without interference from unhelpful thinking.
How do we create this magic?
We train the mind and the body to do what they’re best at: the mind decides what it wants to happen and the body executes the decision. That’s it. Simple.
Just like riding a bike. Or swimming. Or throwing and catching a ball. Or patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time.
If you try performing any of these activities by getting your brain to issue a series of complex commands to control your body parts you’re likely to end up with two things: 1) failure and 2) a lot of spectators falling about laughing.
So, using an understanding of how thought works and a range of mental exercises and perception work, we get an athlete using the mind and the body in harmony. The mind says, “I want this result to occur. You go and do it.”
The body says, “OK.”
And it happens.
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