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Transcript:
Like a race car is designed to drive, your mind is designed to think. When coaches and others give you well-intentioned advice to “stop over thinking,” they don’t realize how futile this directive is. How do you stop over thinking? I guess you could go to the Himalayas and meditate with some Buddhist monks for a few years and you might learn it. Don’t get me wrong, meditation is a good thing and I practice it regularly but it’s still very difficult for me to slow or stop over thinking…and that’s not even necessary for you to perform well!
When you are under pressure in sports, the mind likes to think even faster! It is just activating an old survival mechanism mental program to consider all the things that could go wrong so that maybe you can prevent them. It’s part of the FEAR response.
Unfortunately, this is not usually useful in sports. It ends up causing nervousness & tension which interferes with your abilities.
A very powerful solution to counter this is to keep yourself in the present moment with your thinking.
You hear all sorts of mental coaches and sports psychologists advise athletes to “stay present” or “play in the present moment”
and yes, this is good advice, however, most athletes don’t have a clue WHY this is useful and even less of clue as to HOW to do it. It goes right over their head when they hear it and because they don’t see any benefit, they don’t practice it and the advice is useless.
So here’s the WHY and HOW to perform in the present moment so you can perform brilliantly under pressure.
The reason WHY this really is such a powerful tool for performing under pressure is because feelings of pressure come from a perception of FEAR. That’s mostly, fear of failure…making a mistake, choking, not coming through. Right? It’s FEAR that’s the real problem. We sometimes call that “pressure.”
Well get this: FEAR cannot exist in the present moment.
That’s right. Think about this for a minute… whenever you are in fear, you are remembering something bad that happened in the past or worrying about something bad that might happen in the future… even if the future is only a few minutes or even a few seconds away.
The only exception to this rule is if you are facing physical danger to your body in the present moment like if you were being attacked by a wild animal.
Therefore, when you truly get present, FEAR goes away.
Now, yes, there are some sports that have an element of physical danger inherent in performing such as gymnastics, boxing, wrestling, etc. However, I promise you, even in those sports, that is only a tiny slice of the fear when under pressure to perform. I have other ways of dealing with physical fear as well.
Next, HOW do you practice playing in the present moment to eliminate fear?
Follow me and I’ll teach you right now. Right now, use your eyes to look around the room you’re in and focus on all the things you see, notice details, patterns, colors. Now close your eyes and take your attention and direct it to what you hear. You hear my voice… what else do you hear right now? Switch your mind over to what you feel in your body right now. Hands? Feet? Clothes? Temperature?
Now direct your mind to what your sense of smell is doing. Even if there’s not much, put your mind there…switch over to thinking about what your taste buds are doing…
Now go back and forth between all 5 senses…all at once or one at a time.
You are now present.
Connect your thinking to what your senses are taking in right now. Fear/Pressure, cannot exist in the present.
Don’t wait until the next time you have pressure to use this tip. Practice it everywhere in your life.
Let’s do this,
I’m Craig Sigl, mental toughness trainer