Every athlete, performer or competitor knows that there is always room for improvement. You can never completely master any sport or competition. Yes, you have those moments when you are, what I call, in the flow or zone where you are performing your best and you know it. Of course you want more of that. I’m with you and that’s what mental toughness is all about.
I teach and operate under this principle:
Performance = Potential – Interference
This means that you will play, compete or perform your best when you have no interference or mental/emotional blocks.
Boost Confidence To Overcome Anxiety In Performance
Many competitors come to me seeking confidence and feel like that is their biggest issue, being confident when it counts, in competition and it’s true. When you have confident thoughts and feel confident, you are more likely to perform your best.
However, I’m here to tell you that I’ve done a ton of confidence-building sessions and that is a big part of what I do. However, pure lack of confidence is rarely the real problem. The real problem is that interference I mentioned, the beliefs and belief programs that are stored in your memories and bodily intelligence that screw up your abilities. It usually happens more often and more pronounced in competition than in practice. It’s very common for performers to do amazing in practice but can’t bring it to high competition. Bottom line? What’s hurting or preventing confidence from showing up in competition?
The Emotion The Prevents You To Do Your Best:
It’s FEAR. Working with over 1500 clients in person and tens of thousands online, if you aren’t playing or performing like you KNOW YOU HAVE THE ABILITY, then I promise you, we are dealing with some form of fear.
Types Of Fear In Sports:
1. Fear of failure
2. Fear of success
3. Fear of physical harm
4. A combination of the above
It’s extremely helpful to understand it first and then you can take it apart. Let me explain your solution to this problem using my 4-step R.A.C.E. Formula for mental toughness which I developed from my experience working with thousands of athletes and performers over the years. This is the vehicle that will transport you to clearing your variation of the problem, whatever it is. It’s what I use for everything now to help my clients acquire mental toughness.
4-STEP R.A.C.E. FORMULA
STEP 1:
R stands for Relentless and it means you must be relentless about your ability and desire to change these automatic thought and bodily responses that seemingly are out of your control. They are not. I give you the tools to believe you can change this and to actually do it. You just can’t give up on it and I promise you, it will go away. This video starts the process for you.
STEP 2:
A stands for Awareness, so let’s go there on all fear-based mental blocks. Fear is a very useful emotion. It’s a survival mechanism, right? It keeps you alive when there’s physical danger present. We are all born with this program.
Unfortunately, like a computer, this program becomes corrupted. It’s like viruses get into your bio-operating system, your brain and body, and turn your survival mechanism against you. It’s all automatic once the virus gets inside the system and no matter how much mental willpower you try to come up with to counter it, it will always beat you in the long run as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
In other words, let me ask you this, do you perform better when you feel good, or feel bad? Which one does confidence fall under? Right. Which one does fear fall under? And what happens to your thoughts when you feel bad? You start thinking negatively, don’t you? And then you feel worse. You get stuck in this catch 22 loop and here’s why:
Thoughts > Emotions > Feelings > Behavior > Thoughts
STEP 3
C stands for Clear. You see, I believe that there is always a reason why we do everything we do and there is a reason why we respond and react like we do and that goes for things that work for us and things that don’t work for us just the same. You have to clear the reason WHY the survival function has turned against you. Here’s the kicker, you have to do it at the inner mind programming, or bodily level. You can’t just think it up here.
So, to CLEAR any kind of bodily programming, you have to have the right counter thought for YOU and you have to get it from your head to your body. How do you do that? Well, I could teach for hours on that and that principle runs through everything I do.
It is the reason why I have such a high success rate with my clients but the gist of it is this: the best way to get to your inner mind is to INTEND to do so and practice doing so. I do this, in part, for my clients with guided visualizations. Then, once you’ve cleared the mental virus, we come to the next step.
STEP 4
E stands for Emotional Mastery. This is the final piece for mental toughness. Performing your best happens when you are in the peak performance state.
Your state is comprised of 2 parts:
1. How you’re thinking and;
2. How you’re feeling
Well, fear isn’t the only emotion interfering with your performance. Frustration, anger, disappointment, inadequacy (which is lack of confidence), stress or pressure and on and on. This is the E in the RACE formula, emotions and it’s the foundation of everything I teach athletes and competitors.
Here’s something profound you might want to write down: Confidence is an emotion. It’s extremely difficult for confidence to be built in the presence of fear. All emotions get triggered based on your belief programs.
If you aren’t performing like you know you can, The R.A.C.E. formula is designed to update your software that triggers the emotions so you can perform to your potential, automatically and without trying to do so.
I’m going to send you an email tomorrow to pick up where I left off here to give you more tools for all of this. Look for it. The R.A.C.E. Formula always works when you work it.
Let’s do this!
Your mental toughness trainer,
Craig Sigl