As an athlete, performer or competitor, quieting that negative and destructive voice in your head can hinder your ability to perform. This is one of the major mental blocks. I operate under this principle:

Performance = Potential – Interference.
Meaning you will play, compete or perform your best when you have no interference or mental/emotional blocks.

CLEARING MENTAL BLOCK

To be able to clear this mental block, the negative mind, it is 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 this block and it is what I use for everything now to help my clients acquire mental toughness.

THE 4 STEP R.A.C.E. FORMULA

R for RELENTLESS

It means you must be relentless about your ability and desire to change these automatic thought 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 cannot give up on it and I promise you, it will go away. This video starts the process for you.

A for AWARENESS

The negative mind is a destructive (to your performance) occurrence that originates from a very useful, natural function – your problem-solving ability. Let’s call it the analytical function. Everybody has this function to some degree and it helps you figure things out. It is normally a very helpful and useful mental gift you have. Those that have this function to a high degree have to be very careful when it comes to sports and performing. What happens is that function gets corrupted, just like a virus corrupts computer programs and apps.

This mental virus, if you will, gets into your bio-operating system and then turns your analytical function against your goals and desires. It is 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 win as I’m sure you’ve noticed. This is because it is much more powerful than any willpower you have.

To fix this, most coaches and sport psychologists try to give you simple advice like the following:

“Stop overthinking!”

“Use positive self talk!”

“You just have to believe in yourself.” (that’s such garbage! Like you didn’t already know that)

“Yeah, thanks for that brilliant advice coach, I’ll just do that now since you’ve told me.” (it’s not that easy is it?)

You’ve got to go to the source of the problem and get rid of it!

C 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 the negative mind just the same. You have to clear the reason why the analytical 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.

The mental virus is otherwise known as a belief or belief structure. Once these things get embedded in your inner mind programming, you have to come up with a counter-belief that will dissolve it and then you have to get that into where the programming lives, your bio-operating system which is your body. Typical mental viruses or beliefs I help my clients destroy are:

“I’m not good enough.”

“I don’t deserve to win.”

“I’m too small.”

“I’m not fast enough Other people win, not me I can’t …(fill in the blank)”

So, to clear those kinds 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 and 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 for my clients with guided visualizations.

E for EMOTIONAL MASTERY

This is the final piece for the negative mind. Believe it or not, the negative mind actually wants you to succeed. It thinks that the best way to do that for you is to get you all pumped up and to think fast in order to foresee every possible problem and to solve them when they come up. Sometimes this can work but most of the time it doesn’t because performing your best happens when you are in the peak performance state.

Your state is comprised of 2 parts:

• How you’re thinking and;
• How you’re feeling

You have to not only master your mind and it’s programming but also your bodily feelings. For instance, what if you were to gather up all of your willpower and temporarily crowd your mind with nothing but positive thoughts and think confidence, confidence, confidence? Yet, while you’re doing that, your body is too pumped up or not pumped up enough for what you need to do to perform your best? Right! All that positive thinking is for nothing.

Thoughts lead to emotions which lead to bodily feelings which influences performance and actions:

Thoughts >> Emotions >> Feelings >> Performance/Action

If the negative mind is your challenge, the R.A.C.E. formula is designed to replace the virus with trust! 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. If you want to get a jumpstart on my programs right now, I’ve got links below. The R.A.C.E. Formula always works when you work it.

Let’s do this!

Your mental toughness toughness trainer,
Craig Sigl