The Thirteen Commandments

These beliefs allow us to change the way we think, feel and behave.

These beliefs can affect positive change.

These beliefs can improve our results.

The Map Is Not The Territory

If you look at a map, it does not actually consist of the territory it represents. It is merely a representation.

This is EXACTLY the same as our version of reality. The world we live in is made up of billions and billions of bits of information. This information is filtered and re-constructed by our brain. We can picture an event, we can hear it, feel it, taste it and smell it but we CANNOT represent an event exactly as it exists.

Therefore, two or more people can witness the same event and yet recall that event differently. This is a powerful concept to take on as it means that if we are not happy with what we are experiencing, we don’t have to change ‘reality’, we simply change the map!

Experience Has A Structure

Every thought or memory that we have has a structure or pattern. By changing the structure of a thought or memory it changes our whole experience.

This can be done by changing our internal representation of our experience.

If One Person Can Do Something, Anyone Can Learn To Do It

By modelling successful performance, anyone can achieve excellence. By establishing how a high achiever thinks and operates, we can replicate similar results.

People Have All The Resources They Need To Succeed

There is no such thing as non resourceful people, there are only non resourceful states.

If someone tells you they have ‘zero confidence’, the chances are that this only exists in one particular area of their life, not in everything. Therefore, confidence IS a resource available to them.

The Meaning Of A Communication Is The Response It Gets

Because we all filter information differently, we all possess a unique model of the world. For this reason, what we communicate may actually get a different response to the one we intended.

Therefore, when you get frustrated with someone for not understanding, you can alter your communication to achieve the desired result.

There Is No Failure, Only Feedback

This is a great way to see the world. It is also very useful in a sports context because if you believe there is no failure, then there can be no fear of failure, which is a massive positive when performing.

Whenever you do something, you get a result. Sometimes it’s the result you desired, sometimes it’s not. When the latter occurs, it’s so easy to say ‘I’ve failed’. People who excel do not think in terms of failure. They look at the result and look to modify it.

There is a saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. To change this, simply study your results and modify.

People Make The Best Choice They Can At The Time

As individuals we make our choices based upon the resources available to us at any particular time.

We can only make our choices from OUR OWN knowledge and experience that we possess. Only through new learnings and experiences are we able to make different choices.

The Person With The Most Flexibility Of Behaviour Will Control The System

This means that if someone has only one way of behaving or communicating in any given situation and you have several, you are the more likely to control the outcome.

Problems often continue longer when there is no degree of flexibility or options available.

A great example of this from a sporting context would be two golfers. If golfer A can only drive the ball well but golfer B can drive it, pitch it, chip it and putt it well, then there is only one winner!

You Are In Charge Of Your Mind And Therefore Your Results

It is very easy in life to attribute external factors to your problems. There are many available and some may well be valid. However, by taking control of your thought processes, you can affect positive change and create the behaviours you wish to have.

Every Behaviour Has A Positive Intention

Even the most negative or malicious behaviour has a positive intention. The key is to separate the intention from the behaviour as a person isn’t always their behaviour.

When people get angry, they often show a side that they cannot control. The positive intention is that they care about the issue at hand. The situation doesn’t necessarily define an angry ‘person’, it defines an angry ‘behaviour’.

It is always possible to choose better choices of action to achieve a positive intention in a more resourceful fashion.

The Most Important Information About A Person Is Their Behaviour

In order to gain a good understanding of a person, the best way is to study their behaviour.

For example, you may explain something to someone who in agreement says “yes” but at the same time their face looks confused. The reply may be “yes” but the behaviour says “no”.

The behaviour is a signal from the unconscious mind and tells you far more than words.

Resistance Indicates A Lack Of Rapport

Whenever you find extreme resistance from someone, this shows that you lack rapport.

There are very rarely terribly resistant people, only ineffective communicators. By gaining rapport with anyone, it is possible to break down barriers.

There are ways and means of doing this.

The Mind And Body Are Parts Of The Same System

People often discuss the mind and body as being stand alone entities, working separately from one another.

However, the mind and body cannot work independently. It is impossible to change one without affecting the other.

When we alter our physiology, it changes how we think and feel. When we think in a certain way, it changes our physiology.

A Game Changer says...

Some of the above will definitely have more resonance than others.

By referring to and using any one or several of the above principles, I have no hesitation that they will be of huge benefit, be it in your personal or family life, when around friends & colleagues, within the workplace or when practising & playing the sports you love.

Start integrating some of these principles into your daily life to notice how it can change the way you consider and view the world around you. The results will follow.

What Exactly Does A Mental Performance Coach Do?

In the great scheme of things, mental performance coaching is a fairly recent occurrence. As with all things ‘new’, questions are often asked about their true impact or success.

For many years in the world of sport, there has been a big focus on both physical conditioning and technical learning and quite rightly so. Without being in tip top shape and having as close to mastery of your sport as possible, an athlete is never going to be able to compete at the highest level.

During this period however, there was a relative ignorance and lack of understanding surrounding the vast importance of mental skills. I am pleased to say that since the turn of the millennium, this faux pas has now been and continues to be rectified.

The vast majority of highly successful sports franchises or individuals surround themselves with the very best supporting casts imaginable, from strength & conditioning coaches to dieticians and from technical to mental performance coaches. Every base is covered.

It may well be the athletes who step up on the podium to receive their trophies or medals but it takes a ‘team’ for them to get there. More often than not, there is now a sports ‘psyche’ as part of it.

When you think about the huge toll of not only reaching but also remaining at the pinnacle of a sport, there is no doubt that the top six or seven inches of the body matter just as much as the rest!

When working with an athlete, there are normally two main areas of importance. The first is mental skills training - working with the athlete to utilise psychological skills. This can require concentration, emotional balance and anxiety techniques, to list a few among the very many.

The second is more therapy work. This would typically involve past, present and future matters - perhaps an issue arising away from the athlete’s actual sport, or an athlete returning from injury.

There are so many factors that can dictate an athlete’s success or failure and one of the key things to remember is that not all those factors may revolve around their actual sport.

Being able to work with both an athlete’s conscious and unconscious minds, understanding their behavioural and neurological patterns as well as their core values and beliefs are paramount to being able to help.

For me personally though, none of the above will matter if a coach and athlete have not already developed a good rapport and trust with each other. In terms of the mind, doubt is the root of all evil.

Rapport is so important as it enables the coach to understand an athlete’s underlying core beliefs about both themselves and the world around them. This is where a mental performance coach can really make in roads and help out.

As an industry, there are many people now performing the role of mental performance coach - traditional sports psychologists, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) gurus, neuro-scientists etc.

During initial client meetings I have sometimes found there can be a stigma attached to who or what you are and precisely what you can do. Whilst I can understand this, my answer is both firm and honest.

If a person can help an athlete to perform better and as close to their optimum as possible, then this must be considered a success.

I refer to my above remark regarding Rapport. Gaining a strong rapport and building a trustworthy working relationship (at the very least) is 75% of the task. Believe me, this is not as simple as it may seem.

The other 25% (no less important) is the ability to share and transfer vital knowledge and learnings, to implement techniques and interventions as necessary. At this stage, as with any other profession in life, you either know your stuff or you don’t.

More than any profession, mental performance coaching requires true people skills. Understand this, and one will be a success, fail to and one will fail with it.

A Game Changer says…

At the end of the day, the mind must work as optimally as the body to achieve top performance.

Mental performance gurus are gaining a lot more popularity than ever before. Athletes, coaches and team directors have started to realise the importance of the role and not before time.

I can count on endless fingers the amount of times I spot an athlete with immense technical skill levels and/or physical fitness who simply is not performing to the best of their ability, certainly not with any regularity anyway.

There can be only one reason for this - mental ineptitude. With the right person beside them an athlete can become a formidable champion in the field of mental strength.

Can You Reframe Your Own Picture?

Reframing is a word that is becoming more and more utilised in every day language - but for a very different reason. What exactly is reframing and why can it be so brilliantly helpful?

The definition of to ‘reframe’ is to put a different interpretation onto a situation or event by either changing its meaning or its context.

A bad swing of a golf club may result in a player becoming quite irate in the immediate aftermath. If, however, the player was to appraise the importance of that ONE shot within the context of their whole round, the moment seems trivial.

By reframing situations or events when they occur, we can both expand our perception and horizons as well as become more resourceful. With the mind, we can use both a context reframe and/or a content reframe.

When you think about it, most behaviours are useful in some context.

Context Reframe

Rain can often be a disaster from a sporting perspective but it can mean salvation for a farmer in Africa. Therefore, rain is neither good nor bad, it is only the context in which it occurs on which a value judgement is made.

Context reframing can be used to change a person’s negative internal response to a particular behaviour or situation by realising its usefulness in another context.

Always ask, “In what context could this scenario be an advantage?”

Content Reframe

Instead of worrying about the heavy conditions due to overnight rain at the golf course, rejoice in the fact that the greens will be receptive to your approach shots.

Content Reframing involves giving a different meaning to something by changing the perspective or intent.

Always ask yourself, “What else could this mean?”, “What would I like this to mean?”, “How could this be positive?”

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One area I want to look at today is stress and how we can use reframing to turn our stress into productivity.

Stress is an everyday occurrence. It attacks everyone and can be relentless. Most of us see it as something we can’t control or worse still, something we should try and bury or ignore.

Stress affects us in different ways and at different times. One of the most common situations encountered is right before a big performance - a speech, a presentation, or playing sports.

Pre-performance stress is real and it can kill our ability to act.

Thankfully, due to new research into how our brains handle stress, this doesn’t have to be.

When our brains feel stressed, they release a chemical called noradrenaline. Noradrenalin is strange in that it is both amazing for us and terrible for us. It increases arousal and alertness, promotes vigilance, enhances retrieval of memory and focuses attention, whilst also increasing restlessness and anxiety.

We don’t function well with either too much or too little of this chemical but according to Ian Robertson, a cognitive neuroscientist at Trinity College Dublin, “there’s a sweet spot in the middle where if you have just the right amount, then the goldilocks zone of noradrenaline can act like the best brain tuner.”

All this means that so long as we find ways to control and handle stress emotionally, it can be an incredible way to boost brain function, increase creativity and ultimately make us happier, less anxious and less depressed.

So, how do we change the way we deal with stressful situations in order to use them to our advantage instead of crippling us with anxiety? This is where our reframing skills come in!

Many symptoms of stress and anxiety are the same as those of excitement. Perverse, right? Studies have found that when people are put in stressful situations such as public speaking or singing karaoke, telling yourself to calm down can actually backfire.

Instead, those who reframe the situation as exciting and a great challenge are better equipped to handle it.

When we feel anxious before a meeting, talk to someone we revere or put on a sporting display, anxiety can drain working memory, decrease self-confidence and harm our overall performance. Knowing that this is our ‘usual’ reaction makes matters even worse. The anticipation of anxiety makes us think of acting out the opposite: stay calm.

When Alison Wood Brooks, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, began looking at how we react to the idea of stress, she found that people who reframed their anxiety as excitement performed better than those who tried to bury it with calmness.

Both stress and excitement are characterised by high arousal levels and a low sense of control.

Another way to look at this is as either a ‘growth’ or ‘fixed’ mindset, which basically means that those who believe they can change, do.

With a fixed mindset, you believe that the things happening to you or the way you feel can’t be changed. This fatalistic approach holds you back from being able to change the way you see a situation.

People with a growth mindset see potential failure as a chance to learn. They’re the ones who can turn stress into excitement and find that sweet spot where stress actually enhances performance.

Consider for a moment comedians or performers who worry if they DON’T feel that ‘edge’ of anxiety before a big performance. Tiger Woods once famously said that if he doesn’t feel anxious before a tournament, then he’ll perform badly. This goes for many athletes and I’m certain that all of you sports men and women out there would attest to the same.

With the right mindset, stress can indeed be a performance enhancer.

A Game Changer says…

At some stage in our lives we’ve all felt those situations where negative and unproductive thoughts, stress and anxiety just won’t leave us alone.

Each ‘thought’ is a complex pattern of activity and neural connections in our brain. The more we have a thought, the stronger the mental connection and ‘reality’ becomes.

There is a saying, “the more you ski down a path, the easier it is to go down that path and not another.”

So, like the fixed mindset described earlier, the more you react to stress with anxiety, self-doubt and fear, the more likely you’ll be to feel the same way in a similar situation. Fortunately psychologists have found a fix. It’s called ‘cognitive reappraisal’ or in simpler terms reframing.

Cognitive reappraisal isn’t about turning off your negative thoughts because as anyone who works in the field of mental health will tell you, that’s impossible. The aim is to step back and ground your thoughts in reality. Observe yourself from the third person.

One successful way to do this, is to write down your thoughts and identify what triggered them. Challenge your assumptions. Ask those reframe questions listed earlier in this article.

Chances are that when your start to dissect the scenario/situation, you won’t have grounds to support those initial feelings.

Writing strengthens memory and the more you commit to reframing doubt into positivity, then the more positive and assured you will feel.

Another way is to take your emotional responses to the extreme. For example, if someone tells you that your performance was terrible, start telling yourself that it was the worst of all time, in fact nobody has ever been worse than you and you’re lucky they don’t lock you away!

Steve Orma, a clinical psychologist and author of Stop Worrying and Go To Sleep says, “You’re going for laughter.” The laughter will make you feel better and help highlight the absurdity of your negative thoughts.

Finally, if you want to get in shape, it takes more than one monster session in the gym. Your brain is no different. Learning to reframe how you handle situations or events and turn stress and self-doubt into Red Bull for your productivity and happiness takes time but not that much.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a 2014 study in Behavioural Research and Therapy showed that people who considered and practised cognitive reappraisal were able to significantly reduce their negative emotions in just 16 weeks. Four months to a better, happier and more productive you!

All it takes is a little perspective.