Brian is a professional athlete who made it all the way to the
top of his sport. However, when he got there, he struggled to perform.
Before his competitions, he got so nervous that finally he went
to see a hypnotist, who promised to change him with no effort on his
part.
“Did it work?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I still got really nervous – probably why I didn’t get
put in the game.”
What Brian came to realize is that HE WAS ALREADY HYPNOTIZED.
What he needed was someone (namely himself) to DE-HYPNOTIZE
him. What do I mean?
The fact is that all of us are hypnotized on one level or another. That is,we walk
around fulfilling our own B.S.
– belief systems.
When someone is hypnotized on stage and able to lift amazing amounts of weight,
or become incredibly weak, nothing changed about their inherent abilities. The only
thing that was temporarily suspended was their own beliefs and expectations
of outcome.
You ALWAYS ultimately perform according to your internal image
of yourself.
That’s why everything that we do in our performance fields as mental coaches,
sports psychologists, or trainers is bent on enlarging your self-image.
Brian had experienced Performance Anxiety for so long that he
saw himself as “the guy who gets nervous.” He had a conditioned response
of dreadful expectation, even though he loves his game.
In reality, the fact that Brian got nervous countless times in the past had NOTHING
to do with whether or not he would today.
At any moment he could shift his own self-image to that of a player who is calm
and confident and totally in his element around his sport.
When he made CONFIDENCE AND DESTINY his habit, everything changed.
He went longer and longer between “anxious moments” until he could be calm
under any pressure.
Plus, he learned to diffuse the anxiety when it did come up
by breathing, tapping, and shifting to gratitude.
Here’s a step towards that for you:
1. Know that you formed this self image with no struggle on your part. You just
accepted certain ideas and they became conditioned.
2. As you learn to relax now, you can create a new mental movie of how you want
to perform under pressure.
3. Practice settling down, breathing deeply and just creating your own mental movie
every day for 15 minutes a day at least. Do this for 21 days.
Here’s some tips for your mental movie:
a. See yourself as if you were watching on a theater screen and you were in the audience.
b. Then move to the character. Become that person and see everything from that perspective.
c. Always speak in line with your image. In other words, don’t create this great movie and
then get all negative. If you do have conflicting emotions, than do our three steps that we
always talk about regarding negative emotions.
Acknowledge them, accept yourself anyway, and create an empowering choice.
Anxiety is no big deal! It DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING, accept that you have some
habitual emotion that you are ready to shift.
You are in control.
You can do this!
Now, go play – first in your mind, than in your game. Failure is not an option.
“What if I lose?” I’ll answer that next time.
Until then,
Keep playing to win and enjoy your game.
In your corner,
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