In Pursuit of Excellence
How to win in sport and life through mental training
by Terry Orlick
If we don;t change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean a giving up of familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, relationships that have lost their meaning. As Dostoevsky put it, "taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." The real fear should be of the opposite course.
Gail Sheehy
Part 1. Realising your potential
Chapter 1. Personal Meaning
We want not only to live but to have something to live for. For some people this means to pursue excellence through sport.
Exploring our Limits
The desire to do your personal best, to excel, to attain the highest stards of performance, to be supreme in your chosen field is a worthy human ambition, which can lead to increasingly high standards, personal growth, a personal meaning....demands commitment and sacrifice.
Exploring Ourselves
Personal excellence is a contest with yourself to draw on the natural reserves within your own mind and body, to develop your capabilities to the utmost. The true challenge lies in personal growth, enjoyikng the pursuit of your goals, and in living the various areas of your life.
Chapter 2. Commitment and Excellence
My greatest power in life is my power to choose. I am the final authority over me. I make me.
Each great human accomplishment begins with some kind of vision or dream. Dreams precede reality; they nourish it, perhaps even create it. Dreams of excellence, or creative accomplishments, or harmonious relationships are in themselves stimulating and fun; they provide a lift even if they do not always become absolute reality. Think about your own dreamsl let the flash through your mind, often. Go after your dreams; let them lead you. It's the only chance you have to move along your path of excellence.
Psychological Seperators
To excel in anything - a sport, a relationship, or a business - you must begin with commitment. At some point you have to say. Hey, I want to be really good at this; I want this to work; I am going to do everything I can be to be as good as I can be; I am making this a priority in my life. To be your best, you must live this commitment and regularly stretch what you perceive to be your current limits.
Personal Commitment
Your personal level of commitment is something you must work out for yourself. No one can tell you how important something is in your life; that is your decision. But it is clear that people who excel are extremely committed people.
- accept criticism
- don't be afraid to fail
- maintain composure
Elements of excellence
- constantly striving to do better
- after a mistake works hard to correct
- never gives up
- plans, evaluates and corrects
- takes advice, ask questions and listens. Wants to learn
- constantly training
- learns to perform under all levels of stress, distractions
- learns to stay motivated, even after a setback
- learns to control temper
- learns to behave in a positive way
- learns to adapt to changes in a positive way
- learns to stay cool and confident under pressure.
Reasons for failure
- not well enough practiced at overcoming distractions
- not well enough practiced at focusing totally on their task for the entire performance
- not done enough quality imagery, quality training, and competition simulation to refine the mental and physical skills required to excel in competition
- not well rested when it is time to compete
If you really want to excel, the following basic guidelines will help immensly:
- set specific daily goals so that you know what you want to accomplish every day.
- before training, take some time to prepare mentally
- commit yourself to executing your skills with the highest quality of effort.
- in training, simulate what you want to do or have to do
- in training commit yourself to focusing 100%. Be totally connected to your task.
- Do imagery every day to prepare yourself to accomplish your goals. Imagine yourself achieving your goals and successfully executing the skills you are trying to perfect.
- Approach your performance imagery as an experience involving all of your senses. Experience your performance the way you would actualy like it to occur.
- quality imagry is a way of programming your mind and body to perform more closely to perfection on a consistent basis.
- when preparing for an important event, rest well, listen to your body, and avoid overtraining so that you remain strong and healthy.
- know what focus works best for you.
- practise overcoming distractions on a daily basis. Avoid wasting energy on things beyond your control and commit yourself to remaining positive.
- prior to important events, imagine and feel yourself executing your perfect performance. This will ensure that the best performance program is fresh in your mind and body. Then close off your thinking and connect totally to your performance.
- draw the lessons out of every event. Make a note of these points and work on them so that you are even better prepared, mentally and physically, for your next challenge.
Chapter 3 Focusing
Where the mind goes, everything follows.
When you free yourself from dwelling on outside preessures or expectations, when you know that you will continue to be a valuable human being regardless of numerical outcomes, worry is less likely to intrude and disrupt your life. This is when your focus is free to flow naturally.
It is important for you to discover what focus works best for you and under what specific circumstances. To improve your focusing skills and make them more consistent.
1. Feel yourself execute a skill in your mind and body through imagery; then do the skill, letting it unfold naturally - thought free.
2. Focus on being totally connected to yur moves.
3. Practise being aware of everything that is going on around you, then totally connect to your target.
4. Allow yourself to execute your own moves and to react to the moves of other without evaluation. Free yourself to flow naturally.
5. Try to recreate the mental and physical conditions that allow you to experience the feelings and focus associated with your best performances.
6. Use reminders to enter the state of mind that allows your best focus.
7. Work on holding that focus for short periods, and try to gradually increase the time you are fully focused throughout your performance.
Hitting your Target
The body is relaxed but ready, and the mind calm but focused. Outside thought and unwanted tension are absent. The focus is centered on a specific target. Relaxed focusing is a learned skill that must be practised to be perfected.
1. Sit quietly, let yourself relax and focus on looking at something small, absorb everything about it.
2. Sit quietly, let yourself relax and focus on listening to a specific sound; then let it fade away by absorbing yourself in another sound.
3. Line up several objects, be aware of all, then narrow our focus until you are aware of only one target, then the center of that target, then the center of the center of that target. Connect.
4. Focus on a specific thought, then let your thoughts wander, then refocus on the specific thought.
5. Stand quietly, relax, think about a particular skill. Imagine and feel its perfect execution. Empty your mind, and let your body perform that skill automatically.
6. Before executing a skill, take a moment to relax and repeat the thought or image upon which you wish to focus. Execute the skill
7. Seek the fell of the movement.
8. When you are feeling stressed, see what happens when you slow everything down: talk, move, stretch, breath
9. When you are distracted, practise clearing the distractions from your mind by zeroing in on what you have to do to perform effectively.
10. after an error, immediately shift your focus to what will help you execute the skill correctly.
11. Practise relaxed focusing with other people watching.
12. practise shifting your concentration back and forth from your body to your target.
13. prepare yourself to focus on one skill at a time, disregarding past and future.
14. Use simple reminders (cue words) to keep your mind on target.
15. Enjoy
"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, the grass grows by itself."
The difference between best and worst performances lies within your thoughts and focus. In worst performances you allow negative thoughts to interfere with an effective task focus. In best performances you are able to stay in the moment, which is the only one that you can infleunce anyway. You can learn to shift your focus away from worry by focusing on something interesting, beautiful, or enjoyable or by completely absorbing yourself in executing your task.
Chapter 4 Personal Goals
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
When persuing personal excellence it is best to focus your energy on specific aspect of performance that are potentially within your control- your skills, your preperation, your execution, your routines, your time, the best you can do that day.
Avoid focusing on outcome goals that are beyond your immediate control. When you set goals that require control over elements that are beyond your control, you set yourself up for frustration and anxiety.
Daily Goals.
Think about whether the goal is important to yourself. Why? How?
Write down specific and realistic goals with projected completion dates.
Break down goals into smaller components with projected completion dates.
I get a good feeling from fulfilling my goals. Self directed achievement brings a feeling of self control. OFten this feeling is enough to keep me moving toward the next goal. Sometimes, if the goal has been difficult to meet or if I;m tired or need a lift - relax, reward yourself, treat yourself when you deserve it.
It is important that you set your own goals, rather than having someone else set them for you. Your decision increases your commitment and motivation. Shared goal setting is valuable as long as you have personally weighed the situation and feel that the goal is what you really want.
Input and feedback from other are also extremely important and can be very meaningful if they are constructive and well targeted. Still, you are a unique individual. No one else is exactly like you. If you are to be your best, you and those around you must respect your differences. It often the differences that lead to greatness.
Setting an pursuing your personalized goals helps you to know yourself better, to extend yourself farther, and to offer what you are capable of offering to yourself and to others. If you really want to explore and expand you own potential , you must set individualized goals.
Moving toward your goals.
Excellence in any field depends largely on three basic factors
1. how well you know where you want to go.
2. how much you really want to get there.
3. how strongly you believe in your ability to arrive at your desired destination.
Your performance is largely a function of your expectation for yourself. If you treat yourself as if you have something to offer/potential etc then you will behave accordingly. If you treat yourself as if you have little or nothing to offer, then this will likewise be reflected in your performance.
If you decide to pursue a goal with commitment, ask yourself these questions
1. What do you expect to gain?
2. What do you expect to lose?
3. What will be the gains for other important people in your life?
4. What will the losses for these people?
5. Do you think it's really worth the effort when there are no guareantees of outcome?
6. Why do you want to do this?
Answer in writing - for the issue to be clearer, and to be in a better position to make a decision that is right for you. Once you have recognized that you do have a choice, and you make a conscious decision in either direction, you can approach things in a more positive light.
I am being what I am. I am doing the best that I can at this moment, given the complexities of life. Goal setting does not provide all the answers, but when used properly it certainly does nudge you in the direction you want to go. To think more positively, focus more completly, or be more relaxed at a particular time, set some short term goals to work on today, tommorow and every day. Put your goals up on a wall as a reminder. You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain in terms of living closer to your potential.
Chapter 5 Changing perspectives.
The one thing over which you have absolute control is your own thoughts. It is this that puts you in a position to control your own destiny.
The key to living closer to your potential lies in developing you ability to keep matters in perspective and view things in a constructive way.
What triggers your emotional reaction to an event is the way you perceive the even, or yourself, rather than the event itself. A change in your perception about the meaning of a particular event can change your current emotional reality. Certain situation may tend to make you anxious, but you are not required to become anxious. Situations are not anxious, people are. Your first line of anxiety prevention and control lies in your way of viewing yourself and the world around you. Above all you must keep your own worth in perspective, regardless of whether or not you meet a particular goal.
Anxiety and Self-defeating beliefs.
1. the belief that you must always have love and approval from all the people you find signifigant.
2. the belief that you must always prove to be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving.
3. the belief that emotional misery comes from external pressures and that you have little ability to control or change your feelings.
4. the belief that, if something seems fearsome, you must preoccupy yourself with it and make yourself anxious about it.
5. the belief that your past remains all important and that, because something once strongly influenced your life , it has to keep determining your feelings and behavior today.
Setting goals to reduce anxiety
The best way to permenantly reduce unwatned and unproductive anxiety is to set realistic personal performance goals, to focus on doing the things that will help you meet the challenge succesfully, and to know in your heart that you remain a valued person regardless of the performance outcome.
Think about how you would prefer to respond in varius situations. Imagine yourelf in the situation, thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more consrtuctive and less anxious ways. Be aware of self imposed obstacles to positive change, such as things you say to yourself that block your own progress: I can't do this; I'm no good, stupid or slow. Sometimes relabeling or reinterpreting your physical sensations is enough to put you back in control. It is important to remember that, no matter how you viewed things in the past, you are not obligated to keep viewing them in the same light.
These positive self-suggestions cacn help you in your balanced pursuit of personal excellence.
1. I am in control of my own thinking, my own focus, my own life.
2. I am a good, valued person in my own right.
3. I control my own thoughts and emotions, and direct the whole pattern of my performance, health and life.
4. I am fully capable of achieving the goals that I set for myself today. They are within my control.
5. I learn from problems or setbacks, and throught them I see room for improvement and opportunities for personal growth.
6. My powerful mind and body are one. I free them to excel.
7. Every day in some way I am better, wiser, more adaptable, more focused, more confident, more in control.
8. I choose to excel.
Part II Paths to Excellence
Chapter 6 Self Assesment and Strategy selection
"Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life."
You know yourself better than anyone in the world.You can listen to your body and associated feelings. You can discover your best focus for meeting challenges. Take time to know yourself.
Assess focus control and commitment - test
Steps to Self Growth
1. Select an area of focus that you would like to improve.
2. Complete the self directed interview to find your strengths and weaknesses.
3. Reflect closely on wht may already have worked for you. Select some strategies that you feel may help you improve.
4. Experiment with one or more of these strategies, in different situations.
5. Keep a lg to record the strategies that are effective you fou, and make a note of what you do that makes them work.
6. Communicate with others to share strategies.
Self Directed Interview Questions
1. What is the area or foucs that you want to improve?
2. What are you doing that you don't want to do, or failing to do that you would like to do?
3. Where, when and under what circumstances does a problem usually come up?
4. How important is it for you to improve or change this situation?
5. Think about the times when you have been in this situation and your focus, response, or performance has been at its best. Analyse what you were doing right.
6. What about the times when your focus or performance seemed at its worst? Analyze what you were doing wrong.
7. Compare the differences.
8. What do you think you can do to improve the situation?
9. Have you made a strong enough commitment to regularly practise improving your focus control in this area? Are you prepared to make that commitment now?
Selecting a self growth strategy?
If at first you don't succeed try, try again. Try different options.
Chapter 7 Gaining Control
Reacting to errors
Mood Control
Chapter 8 Mental Imagery
Mental simulation of coping skills
Chapter 9 Relaxation and Activation
"You need a certain amount of tension to be able to go. On the other hand, if you are too far gone you just go off the deep end, you lose control. So it is just being able to find that little narrow comfort zone."
Learning to Relax
Relaxation for individual needs: sleep, clear the mind, calm down and conserve energy, open the mind to confidence enhancing thoughts, speed recovery and revitalize the mind and body, prepare for quality performance imagery or healing imagery.
relaxing through exertion
Chapter 10 Distraction Control
Know that you can perform to capacity even in the face of distractions.
Commit yourself to remaining positive.
Focus on doing what will help you stay positive and in control.
Get yourself into a positive frame of mind, and stay focused. Make positive thinking a way of being.
Look for advantages in every possible situation
remind yourslef that distractions do not have to bother you.
Expect conditions to be different.
Expect people to behave diferently.
practice getting back on track quickly
Chapter 11 Simulation
Emulating others
Success through simulation
Chapter 12 The Zen approach
"Man is a thining reed, but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. Childlikeness has to be restroed with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think."
D.T Suzuki
by Terry Orlick
If we don;t change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean a giving up of familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, relationships that have lost their meaning. As Dostoevsky put it, "taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." The real fear should be of the opposite course.
Gail Sheehy
Part 1. Realising your potential
Chapter 1. Personal Meaning
We want not only to live but to have something to live for. For some people this means to pursue excellence through sport.
Exploring our Limits
The desire to do your personal best, to excel, to attain the highest stards of performance, to be supreme in your chosen field is a worthy human ambition, which can lead to increasingly high standards, personal growth, a personal meaning....demands commitment and sacrifice.
Exploring Ourselves
Personal excellence is a contest with yourself to draw on the natural reserves within your own mind and body, to develop your capabilities to the utmost. The true challenge lies in personal growth, enjoyikng the pursuit of your goals, and in living the various areas of your life.
Chapter 2. Commitment and Excellence
My greatest power in life is my power to choose. I am the final authority over me. I make me.
Each great human accomplishment begins with some kind of vision or dream. Dreams precede reality; they nourish it, perhaps even create it. Dreams of excellence, or creative accomplishments, or harmonious relationships are in themselves stimulating and fun; they provide a lift even if they do not always become absolute reality. Think about your own dreamsl let the flash through your mind, often. Go after your dreams; let them lead you. It's the only chance you have to move along your path of excellence.
Psychological Seperators
To excel in anything - a sport, a relationship, or a business - you must begin with commitment. At some point you have to say. Hey, I want to be really good at this; I want this to work; I am going to do everything I can be to be as good as I can be; I am making this a priority in my life. To be your best, you must live this commitment and regularly stretch what you perceive to be your current limits.
Personal Commitment
Your personal level of commitment is something you must work out for yourself. No one can tell you how important something is in your life; that is your decision. But it is clear that people who excel are extremely committed people.
- accept criticism
- don't be afraid to fail
- maintain composure
Elements of excellence
- constantly striving to do better
- after a mistake works hard to correct
- never gives up
- plans, evaluates and corrects
- takes advice, ask questions and listens. Wants to learn
- constantly training
- learns to perform under all levels of stress, distractions
- learns to stay motivated, even after a setback
- learns to control temper
- learns to behave in a positive way
- learns to adapt to changes in a positive way
- learns to stay cool and confident under pressure.
Reasons for failure
- not well enough practiced at overcoming distractions
- not well enough practiced at focusing totally on their task for the entire performance
- not done enough quality imagery, quality training, and competition simulation to refine the mental and physical skills required to excel in competition
- not well rested when it is time to compete
If you really want to excel, the following basic guidelines will help immensly:
- set specific daily goals so that you know what you want to accomplish every day.
- before training, take some time to prepare mentally
- commit yourself to executing your skills with the highest quality of effort.
- in training, simulate what you want to do or have to do
- in training commit yourself to focusing 100%. Be totally connected to your task.
- Do imagery every day to prepare yourself to accomplish your goals. Imagine yourself achieving your goals and successfully executing the skills you are trying to perfect.
- Approach your performance imagery as an experience involving all of your senses. Experience your performance the way you would actualy like it to occur.
- quality imagry is a way of programming your mind and body to perform more closely to perfection on a consistent basis.
- when preparing for an important event, rest well, listen to your body, and avoid overtraining so that you remain strong and healthy.
- know what focus works best for you.
- practise overcoming distractions on a daily basis. Avoid wasting energy on things beyond your control and commit yourself to remaining positive.
- prior to important events, imagine and feel yourself executing your perfect performance. This will ensure that the best performance program is fresh in your mind and body. Then close off your thinking and connect totally to your performance.
- draw the lessons out of every event. Make a note of these points and work on them so that you are even better prepared, mentally and physically, for your next challenge.
Chapter 3 Focusing
Where the mind goes, everything follows.
When you free yourself from dwelling on outside preessures or expectations, when you know that you will continue to be a valuable human being regardless of numerical outcomes, worry is less likely to intrude and disrupt your life. This is when your focus is free to flow naturally.
It is important for you to discover what focus works best for you and under what specific circumstances. To improve your focusing skills and make them more consistent.
1. Feel yourself execute a skill in your mind and body through imagery; then do the skill, letting it unfold naturally - thought free.
2. Focus on being totally connected to yur moves.
3. Practise being aware of everything that is going on around you, then totally connect to your target.
4. Allow yourself to execute your own moves and to react to the moves of other without evaluation. Free yourself to flow naturally.
5. Try to recreate the mental and physical conditions that allow you to experience the feelings and focus associated with your best performances.
6. Use reminders to enter the state of mind that allows your best focus.
7. Work on holding that focus for short periods, and try to gradually increase the time you are fully focused throughout your performance.
Hitting your Target
The body is relaxed but ready, and the mind calm but focused. Outside thought and unwanted tension are absent. The focus is centered on a specific target. Relaxed focusing is a learned skill that must be practised to be perfected.
1. Sit quietly, let yourself relax and focus on looking at something small, absorb everything about it.
2. Sit quietly, let yourself relax and focus on listening to a specific sound; then let it fade away by absorbing yourself in another sound.
3. Line up several objects, be aware of all, then narrow our focus until you are aware of only one target, then the center of that target, then the center of the center of that target. Connect.
4. Focus on a specific thought, then let your thoughts wander, then refocus on the specific thought.
5. Stand quietly, relax, think about a particular skill. Imagine and feel its perfect execution. Empty your mind, and let your body perform that skill automatically.
6. Before executing a skill, take a moment to relax and repeat the thought or image upon which you wish to focus. Execute the skill
7. Seek the fell of the movement.
8. When you are feeling stressed, see what happens when you slow everything down: talk, move, stretch, breath
9. When you are distracted, practise clearing the distractions from your mind by zeroing in on what you have to do to perform effectively.
10. after an error, immediately shift your focus to what will help you execute the skill correctly.
11. Practise relaxed focusing with other people watching.
12. practise shifting your concentration back and forth from your body to your target.
13. prepare yourself to focus on one skill at a time, disregarding past and future.
14. Use simple reminders (cue words) to keep your mind on target.
15. Enjoy
"Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, the grass grows by itself."
The difference between best and worst performances lies within your thoughts and focus. In worst performances you allow negative thoughts to interfere with an effective task focus. In best performances you are able to stay in the moment, which is the only one that you can infleunce anyway. You can learn to shift your focus away from worry by focusing on something interesting, beautiful, or enjoyable or by completely absorbing yourself in executing your task.
Chapter 4 Personal Goals
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
When persuing personal excellence it is best to focus your energy on specific aspect of performance that are potentially within your control- your skills, your preperation, your execution, your routines, your time, the best you can do that day.
Avoid focusing on outcome goals that are beyond your immediate control. When you set goals that require control over elements that are beyond your control, you set yourself up for frustration and anxiety.
Daily Goals.
Think about whether the goal is important to yourself. Why? How?
Write down specific and realistic goals with projected completion dates.
Break down goals into smaller components with projected completion dates.
I get a good feeling from fulfilling my goals. Self directed achievement brings a feeling of self control. OFten this feeling is enough to keep me moving toward the next goal. Sometimes, if the goal has been difficult to meet or if I;m tired or need a lift - relax, reward yourself, treat yourself when you deserve it.
It is important that you set your own goals, rather than having someone else set them for you. Your decision increases your commitment and motivation. Shared goal setting is valuable as long as you have personally weighed the situation and feel that the goal is what you really want.
Input and feedback from other are also extremely important and can be very meaningful if they are constructive and well targeted. Still, you are a unique individual. No one else is exactly like you. If you are to be your best, you and those around you must respect your differences. It often the differences that lead to greatness.
Setting an pursuing your personalized goals helps you to know yourself better, to extend yourself farther, and to offer what you are capable of offering to yourself and to others. If you really want to explore and expand you own potential , you must set individualized goals.
Moving toward your goals.
Excellence in any field depends largely on three basic factors
1. how well you know where you want to go.
2. how much you really want to get there.
3. how strongly you believe in your ability to arrive at your desired destination.
Your performance is largely a function of your expectation for yourself. If you treat yourself as if you have something to offer/potential etc then you will behave accordingly. If you treat yourself as if you have little or nothing to offer, then this will likewise be reflected in your performance.
If you decide to pursue a goal with commitment, ask yourself these questions
1. What do you expect to gain?
2. What do you expect to lose?
3. What will be the gains for other important people in your life?
4. What will the losses for these people?
5. Do you think it's really worth the effort when there are no guareantees of outcome?
6. Why do you want to do this?
Answer in writing - for the issue to be clearer, and to be in a better position to make a decision that is right for you. Once you have recognized that you do have a choice, and you make a conscious decision in either direction, you can approach things in a more positive light.
I am being what I am. I am doing the best that I can at this moment, given the complexities of life. Goal setting does not provide all the answers, but when used properly it certainly does nudge you in the direction you want to go. To think more positively, focus more completly, or be more relaxed at a particular time, set some short term goals to work on today, tommorow and every day. Put your goals up on a wall as a reminder. You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain in terms of living closer to your potential.
Chapter 5 Changing perspectives.
The one thing over which you have absolute control is your own thoughts. It is this that puts you in a position to control your own destiny.
The key to living closer to your potential lies in developing you ability to keep matters in perspective and view things in a constructive way.
What triggers your emotional reaction to an event is the way you perceive the even, or yourself, rather than the event itself. A change in your perception about the meaning of a particular event can change your current emotional reality. Certain situation may tend to make you anxious, but you are not required to become anxious. Situations are not anxious, people are. Your first line of anxiety prevention and control lies in your way of viewing yourself and the world around you. Above all you must keep your own worth in perspective, regardless of whether or not you meet a particular goal.
Anxiety and Self-defeating beliefs.
1. the belief that you must always have love and approval from all the people you find signifigant.
2. the belief that you must always prove to be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving.
3. the belief that emotional misery comes from external pressures and that you have little ability to control or change your feelings.
4. the belief that, if something seems fearsome, you must preoccupy yourself with it and make yourself anxious about it.
5. the belief that your past remains all important and that, because something once strongly influenced your life , it has to keep determining your feelings and behavior today.
Setting goals to reduce anxiety
The best way to permenantly reduce unwatned and unproductive anxiety is to set realistic personal performance goals, to focus on doing the things that will help you meet the challenge succesfully, and to know in your heart that you remain a valued person regardless of the performance outcome.
Think about how you would prefer to respond in varius situations. Imagine yourelf in the situation, thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more consrtuctive and less anxious ways. Be aware of self imposed obstacles to positive change, such as things you say to yourself that block your own progress: I can't do this; I'm no good, stupid or slow. Sometimes relabeling or reinterpreting your physical sensations is enough to put you back in control. It is important to remember that, no matter how you viewed things in the past, you are not obligated to keep viewing them in the same light.
These positive self-suggestions cacn help you in your balanced pursuit of personal excellence.
1. I am in control of my own thinking, my own focus, my own life.
2. I am a good, valued person in my own right.
3. I control my own thoughts and emotions, and direct the whole pattern of my performance, health and life.
4. I am fully capable of achieving the goals that I set for myself today. They are within my control.
5. I learn from problems or setbacks, and throught them I see room for improvement and opportunities for personal growth.
6. My powerful mind and body are one. I free them to excel.
7. Every day in some way I am better, wiser, more adaptable, more focused, more confident, more in control.
8. I choose to excel.
Part II Paths to Excellence
Chapter 6 Self Assesment and Strategy selection
"Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life."
You know yourself better than anyone in the world.You can listen to your body and associated feelings. You can discover your best focus for meeting challenges. Take time to know yourself.
Assess focus control and commitment - test
Steps to Self Growth
1. Select an area of focus that you would like to improve.
2. Complete the self directed interview to find your strengths and weaknesses.
3. Reflect closely on wht may already have worked for you. Select some strategies that you feel may help you improve.
4. Experiment with one or more of these strategies, in different situations.
5. Keep a lg to record the strategies that are effective you fou, and make a note of what you do that makes them work.
6. Communicate with others to share strategies.
Self Directed Interview Questions
1. What is the area or foucs that you want to improve?
2. What are you doing that you don't want to do, or failing to do that you would like to do?
3. Where, when and under what circumstances does a problem usually come up?
4. How important is it for you to improve or change this situation?
5. Think about the times when you have been in this situation and your focus, response, or performance has been at its best. Analyse what you were doing right.
6. What about the times when your focus or performance seemed at its worst? Analyze what you were doing wrong.
7. Compare the differences.
8. What do you think you can do to improve the situation?
9. Have you made a strong enough commitment to regularly practise improving your focus control in this area? Are you prepared to make that commitment now?
Selecting a self growth strategy?
If at first you don't succeed try, try again. Try different options.
Chapter 7 Gaining Control
Reacting to errors
Mood Control
Chapter 8 Mental Imagery
Mental simulation of coping skills
Chapter 9 Relaxation and Activation
"You need a certain amount of tension to be able to go. On the other hand, if you are too far gone you just go off the deep end, you lose control. So it is just being able to find that little narrow comfort zone."
Learning to Relax
Relaxation for individual needs: sleep, clear the mind, calm down and conserve energy, open the mind to confidence enhancing thoughts, speed recovery and revitalize the mind and body, prepare for quality performance imagery or healing imagery.
relaxing through exertion
Chapter 10 Distraction Control
Know that you can perform to capacity even in the face of distractions.
Commit yourself to remaining positive.
Focus on doing what will help you stay positive and in control.
Get yourself into a positive frame of mind, and stay focused. Make positive thinking a way of being.
Look for advantages in every possible situation
remind yourslef that distractions do not have to bother you.
Expect conditions to be different.
Expect people to behave diferently.
practice getting back on track quickly
Chapter 11 Simulation
Emulating others
Success through simulation
Chapter 12 The Zen approach
"Man is a thining reed, but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. Childlikeness has to be restroed with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think."
D.T Suzuki
posted by Trevor at 10:40 AM
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