Garret Kramer's Blog, page 32

The Most Essential Discovery of Your Lifetime—and You Don’t Even Know About It

In the November 26th issue of Sports Illustrated, Michael Bamberger wrote an editorial column, “Emotional Rescue,” in which he talked about mental health issues in sports. I read it with interest. In this column, Bamberger asserts that professional athletes who are victims of panic attacks, drug addictions, alcoholism, and OCD “put a human face on mental health issues too often ignored.” He does not, however, discuss what could be done about these issues, nor does he write about the alarming fact that the number of athletes (and people, for that matter) who struggle with mental health issues appears to be growing every day.

Now, before you tell me that mental health issues in athletics and elsewhere were always prevalent, but the public just has access to more information now, consider this: Virtually every professional sports organization in the world today has trained mental coaches or sports psychologists on staff and readily available to players. And in individual sports such as golf and tennis, athletes have the same services at their beck and call. Likewise, off the field in our high schools, bullying cases are growing by leaps and bounds in spite of the fact that bullying specialists are present at nearly every high school in the United States.

The question is why? Why, with all the self-help resources on hand today (including a self-help market oversaturated with books and videos), are these psychological issues not improving, at least a little bit?

The answer has to do with the training and methodology of therapists, counselors, and self-help experts—not only today, but throughout the history of psychology. For the most part, mental coaches and psychologists are trained to examine behavior, judge behavior, and then offer ways to fix behavior: psychological techniques, hypnosis, meditative practices, exercise, motivational tools, positive thinking methods, or codes of conduct. All to no avail. Focusing on behavior (doing something), in order to improve behavior, is just not helping people find long-term peace of mind—much less help them live lives of harmony, productivity, and excellence.

So what will?

Before I answer, I want to tell you about the man considered to be the father of modern psychology, William James, and a man who James would love to have worked with, Sydney Banks.

James published his most prominent work, The Principles of Psychology in 1890. In it, he likened the 1890 state of psychology to the state of physics before Galileo came along (over 200 years earlier) and introduced or supported many of the scientific theories accepted as truth today. However, even though most people thought it groundbreaking, James considered his work in psychology to be somewhat deficient and only exploratory because, while he knew they must exist, he had not discovered the causal laws that would allow for the prediction and influence of mental life. He claimed, “Such knowledge, realized on a large scale, would be an achievement compared with which the control of the rest of physical nature would be relatively insignificant.”

To put it simply, James knew that analyzing one’s behavior, and trying to manage or change it, would ultimately not help people. To him, there had to exist universal principles (like in other scientific disciplines) that governed why human beings did what they did.

These principles are precisely what Sydney Banks was fortunate enough to discover forty years ago (see www.SydneyBanks.org or www.3pgc.org): The innate principles of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought. And Syd spent the rest of his life sharing and teaching these inherent principles.

As a result, thousands of people, including me, my clients, and my audiences, have benefited from the simple truth that each of us experiences a thought-created reality—not a circumstance-created reality. Hence, the answer to any mental health issue is not found in behavior specific to that issue. The answer is found in the degree to which a person understands the varying nature of thought, how thoughts are brought to life by one’s level of consciousness, and the inner workings of the human mind. To Syd, as it was to James, digging into the details of a specific psychological issue in order to help someone was not only irrelevant, it was also counterproductive.

To explain one’s feelings, then, Syd pointed people inward, toward how the mind functions; not outward, toward circumstances. He found, time and time again, that people led a more peaceful, successful, and loving life when they grasped that their psychological perspective was constantly changing and that this perspective determined the quality of their life experience—their life experience did not create their psychological perspective.

Yet, regrettably, the mental health establishment did not buy in, or appreciate the implications of Syd’s teachings, to a large degree. And although those of us who learned from Syd have made inroads in recent years, millions of people continue to suffer. What became clear to me as I read Bamberger’s column is that two roadblocks exist today that prevent Syd’s discovery from helping more people. Here, in brief, are those roadblocks:

1. For many in the field of therapy, and for many who need help, it is just too simple to explain one’s mental health by the depth to which a person understands the principles of Mind, Consciousness, and Thought—as opposed to delving into circumstances, one’s past, or behavior.

2. It doesn’t appear, to many self-help experts who should know better, to be commercially profitable to point people inward—toward the fact that the human mind is designed to default to tranquility on its own—as opposed to providing external strategies, mental techniques, rah-rah speeches, or quick behavioral fixes that divorce people from their innate ability to overcome. What these self-help experts continue to offer are nothing but marketable gimmicks that prey on the insecurities of those who are suffering. I’m not saying these experts are doing this intentionally; it’s just that since most experts don’t understand how the mind works themselves, they fall victim to their own errant thinking (and insecurities), just like their clients do.

In summary, to me, the turbulent state of affairs of the world we live in (Bamberger points out that sports represents a microcosm of this world) proves that William James was dead on. Until we look toward the psychological principles behind behavior—Sydney Banks’s essential discovery—and not toward behavior, we will continue to use therapeutic and cognitive strategies that are “relatively insignificant.” As James feared, people today are simply looking in the wrong place—thus, turmoil, strife, and conflict abound.

 

Author’s note:

All I ask is that you reflect on the prediction of William James and the epiphany of Sydney Banks and consider how they relate to your personal trials and tribulations. Like most people, including mental health experts, you can keep grinding, searching, and looking outside for explanations and answers. Or you can look inward and see that your experiences are all born from your thinking.

Sydney Banks made an essential—no, monumental—discovery, so consider taking full advantage of it. I encourage you to point yourself in the direction of three principles that you already own—Mind, Consciousness, and Thought—then let life take care of itself. I believe that it will, with relative ease.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Please reach out if you have any questions or want to learn more.

Garret

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his “inside-out” paradigm for performance excellence. Garret has been featured on ESPN, WFAN, FOX, and NPR; and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Sports Illustrated. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life, www.stillpower.com.

Your Never-ending (and Needless) Pursuit of “the Zone”

Are you looking for a surefire path to “the zone”? Are you frustrated with your inability to find it? Well, with apologies to the plethora of mental-performance experts who provide blueprints to help people find the zone, I’m here to tell you: You don’t have to pursue the zone in order to perform at the top of your game. Relieved? I hope so, because only when your mind is free from the burden of trying to find mental clarity, does it leaves space for insights, answers, and excellence to come pouring through.

Here’s an illustration: Let’s say you’re a pro golfer playing in the last group of the last round of a major championship. The night before, you worryingly tossed and turned, and now, on your way to the golf course, anxious thoughts and feelings abound. You’re also convinced (like most people) that anxious thoughts and feelings represent a problem; you must be in the zone in order to win a major championship. Therefore, you recall a deep-breathing/visualization technique that your sports psychologist recommended for these exact moments. You think about how you’re supposed to implement the technique: “Okay, breathe in the through the nose, out through the mouth, and picture the ball going toward the target.” But then you think, “Oh, wait, maybe it’s breathe in through the mouth, out through the nose, and picture myself holding the championship trophy. Darn, I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do. I better figure something out, and quick!”

What’s happened in this illustration is your revved-up thinking and anxiety has generated more revved-up thinking and anxiety. You’ve crammed your head with deliberate personal thought, leaving no room for fresh ideas to naturally work their way in. Said another way, you didn’t like the anxious feeling as the final round approached, and since you didn’t know that clarity of mind is guaranteed to appear on its own (which it will always do if you don’t try to fix things), you have jammed the inherent functioning of the system.

So, what’s the alternative? What should you do when, prior to “big” performances, you’re feeling unsure or anxious, i.e., you’re not in the zone?  

First, understand that you are not living in the feeling of your circumstance (the major championship). You are living in the feeling of your thinking—whose quality is constantly in flux. That’s why, even when people struggle, they still find momentary glimpses of being okay with the same circumstance that appears to be troubling them.

Second, realize that negative thoughts (actually, all thoughts) are random, neutral, and powerless—unless you, and your sports psychologist, turn them into something that must be avoided.

Last, go live your life, or, as I say to the athletes with whom I work, simply stay in the game. If you hit the golf ball in spite of your errant thinking, your state of mind is on its way to clearing up all by itself.

Here’ the bottom line on reaching the zone: People fight to find it because they are convinced that the zone is some sort of a nirvana-like source of happiness or success. The trouble, though, is no one can find clarity if they plug away from a state of confusion.

So, again, the next time the perceptual field appears a little hazy, merely step up to the ball and let it fly. You’ll be amazed at how easily your mindset will self-correct to clarify, consciousness, and freedom—if you’re not trying to get there.

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his “inside-out” paradigm for performance excellence. Garret has been featured on ESPN, WFAN, FOX, and NPR; and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Sports Illustrated. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life, www.stillpower.com.

No, I Haven’t Forgotten About Performance

As a few readers have reached out to tell me, over the past month or so, I haven’t written (directly) about improving performance. Rather, my articles have talked about “touchy-feely” sentiments like love, compassion, spirit, and concern for your fellow man. According to the same readers, these sentiments aren’t usually associated with kicking butt on or off the playing field.

So in this article, I want to set the record straight. Let’s take a close look at why I would discuss a subject matter that some of you perceive as irrelevant to success.

To me, if you want to perform your best, love, compassion, spirit, and concern for others are absolutely essential, and here’s why: They don’t require deliberate thought; they are the byproduct of consciousness. When a person uncovers a high level of consciousness (the zone, as we might say in sports), awareness expands, insights flow, and answers—including how to stay ahead of the competition—become obvious. To the contrary, when a person exists at a low level of consciousness, the intellect (a person’s thought system) gets overworked, the perceptual field narrows, and answers become elusive.

My purpose, then, in writing about these innate sentiments is this: To turn you inward toward your most natural, fluent, and potent psychological perspective, and not outward (as do virtually all self-help strategies) toward grinding it out, willpower, disrespect, or following someone else’s system or techniques—all of which divorce you from your own intuition, freedom, and imagination.

Here’s something else you might want to consider: If winning athletes are asked to describe their state of mind during their finest moments, they will almost always use words like, “No thought; I just let go; I wasn’t really trying; it came out of nowhere; or I felt free and cooperative.” Why then, when you are struggling, would you look to an external mental-performance strategy or motivational tool that requires the exact opposite: thinking, effort, control, routine, or contempt for the opposition?  The truth is that low levels of consciousness are momentary. The only reason a person stays there (in a slump) is because he or she is searching outside for the cause, and turning to outside methods for the cure.

Remember, the system (your mind) is blessed with an inherent propensity to self-correct to consciousness on its own. So the answer to enduring peace of mind and consistent achievement is always an understanding of how the system works—never the application of foreign coping mechanisms.

Once again, the reason I often talk about “touchy-feely” sentiments is twofold: to point you in the direction of your most natural, free-flowing, and powerful state of mind—and to point you away from anything that thwarts your instincts by adding thinking, or even doing, to your pursuit of excellence.

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his “inside-out” paradigm for performance excellence. Garret has been featured on ESPN, WFAN, FOX, and NPR; and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Sports Illustrated. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life, www.stillpower.com.

The Universal Rule

Are you a coach, parent, teacher, or employer? Do you set stringent rules for your organization, or even for yourself? Do you spend time frustratingly enforcing these rules, and then disciplining when they are not adhered to?

If the answer to these questions is yes, you are not alone. In fact, the majority of the athletic coaches, parents, or business leaders with whom I work have a strong sense that rules and expectations actually hinder performance, but they really don’t know why or what to do about it.

In short, the reason that rules hinder performance is because, in the majority of cases, rules thwart a person’s free will. When you take an outside standard and mix it together with someone’s own inner wisdom or instincts, what you get is a confused, cluttered, or revved-up mind-set—let alone a follower. As proof, how many of you had a childhood friend who lived in a dictatorial household and also possessed a history of aberrant behavior? And if your friend didn’t act out when you were kids, I bet that all hell broke loose when this friend got to college or left home.

But, you might ask, “Don’t we need rules for teams, households, or companies to run efficiently? What about religions? They have codes of conduct and commandments that we’re supposed to follow, don’t they?” Perhaps, yet, to me, there is only one rule that is foolproof, and it applies to every organization or religion that you can think of:

That rule is love.

No matter what you do, if your actions come from love, then act, speak, and listen. If they don’t come from love, don’t. It’s that simple.

You see, love looks beyond someone’s behavior and your own passing judgments about it. When athletes are in “the zone,” for example, they love everything—including their most bitter rival. Love is freeing, resilient, secure, and instinctual. When you love, your thinking flows fluently, excellence is effortless, and leadership is automatic.

So keep in mind, when you are stuck, unsure, or irritated (with yourself or others) and you are tempted to lay down the law—simply look within toward love instead. Love provides lasting answers to any and all issues. It’s the universal rule.

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, NFL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his revolutionary “inside-out” approach to performance excellence. Garret has been featured on WFAN, ESPN, FOX, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life, www.stillpower.com.

What Hurricane Sandy Can Teach Us about the Principle of Thought

It’s not always apparent, but your feelings are tied directly to the variable nature of your thinking; not the variable nature of the world around you.

As most of you know, I live in the New York metropolitan area. As most of you also know, our area got hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. As I write, we have no power or water at home (although we just tapped into a large generator on our street), and our property lost many old trees. But we are lucky. Like most people up and down the east coast of the US, we are physically fine and psychologically resolute. Our community and region are pulling together. In spite of our current circumstances, compassion, understanding, and determination are showing us the way.

In fact, in the wake of Sandy, I’ve been reflecting on the relatively upbeat and supportive mood around here and what it can teach us: Specifically, these questions: How come we can’t pull together like this all the time? And does it actually take a hurricane to reveal our innate ability to take swift and creative action, as well as our natural disposition of love and compassion for our fellow man?

To me, the answer to both of these questions is that collectively we have forgotten what we once knew as young children: Our free-flowing and peaceful thinking is true; our bound-up and judgmental thinking is not. When we don’t have time to overthink things (like during a disaster), human beings instinctually care and our behavior is almost always productive. When we have time to overthink, insecurity and ego creep in, we believe this thinking to be meaningful and our behavior often turns self-serving and hollow.

Just yesterday morning, for example, I almost fell into the trap. I bumped into a friend at a local diner. His family has no heat or water, and he looked tired and cold. Because my family doesn’t need our portable generator anymore, I was overwhelmed with the wonderful feeling that I should offer it to my friend. But this selfless sensation was followed by a less-giving one: “What if the large generator on our street isn’t enough and I want to power more things in my house? Maybe I shouldn’t be so generous.” Fortunate for both of us, though, I didn’t buy into my conceited (yet innocent) thoughts. I knew that my initial unforced feeling suggested the proper course of action, while the tight feeling that accompanied my conceited thoughts suggested just the opposite.

Here, then, is what Hurricane Sandy can teach us about the principle of thought: Efficiency is the byproduct of freedom and intuition; incompetence is the byproduct of acting from insecurity or arrogance since these qualities (and how these qualities feel to us) are signs of impure thinking.

No, it’s not Hurricane Sandy that brought out the best in the people of my area. What brought out our best is we haven’t had many spare moments (like I had in the diner) to think and get stuck in our own temporarily misguided heads. So our inborn love, inner wisdom, and instincts continue to provide a clear and steadfast direction. A direction, by the way, that is available to each of us at all times and under any circumstance.

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, NFL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his revolutionary “inside-out” approach to performance excellence. Garret has been featured on WFAN, ESPN, FOX, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life, www.stillpower.com.

Outside-in 101

The other day, my daughter came home from high school and told me about a time-management workshop that she was obliged to attend. The workshop started off by having the students fill out a fifteen-question survey, which, when completed and tabulated, informed the students about their time-management acumen. My daughter scored extremely low. However, the teacher told her not to worry. “You are who you are,” he said. “But we’re going to work on goal-setting, prioritization, and focus; you’ll be just fine.”

Now, my daughter isn’t perfect by any means, but she does not have time management issues. You can only imagine how thrilled I am that she now thinks that she does.

Indeed, the above is a clear-cut example of what I call “Outside-in 101.” The school (parents and coaches are guilty of this, too) institutes some form of judgmental analysis; then it labels the students with the results; then it fills the students’ heads with stratagem and thinking that has nothing to do with productivity, excellence, or, in this case, time management. It took every ounce of stillpower inside of me to not call up the school principal, at that moment, and tell him what I thought about this workshop and type of approach.

But what does determine one’s productivity, excellence, or time-management potential? If it’s not a lack of precise goals or focus, what could it possibly be?

The answer, actually, is simple. People who understand the principle of thought live at higher levels of consciousness than those who don’t. So they are the ones who handle time management—or whatever life has in store—with relative ease.

My message is that since the quality of a person’s thinking is the source of his or her outlook on life, what we should be teaching in our schools, and elsewhere, is that our life situations do not inform our senses—our thinking does. For example, when my daughter’s thinking is clear and free flowing, she is automatically absorbed, organized, and present. When her thinking is muddled or stuck, she is inattentive, confused, and unaware. Therefore, if my daughter looks inward when she struggles with punctuality (toward a momentary snag in her thinking), consciousness and efficiency rise. If she looks outward (toward her supposed lack of this quality or that quality), consciousness and efficiency trend lower.

One more thing: A hidden danger of this type of outside-in labeling is that it gives those who are labeled as poor time managers (using this example) an easy out. That is, if my daughter shows up late for her next workshop, does she now have a built-in excuse?

Not to me she doesn’t. My daughter perceives life from the inside out, and she’s had plenty of home schooling on that subject. She might be late from time to time, but when she is, it’s only because she’s looked outside to explain her temporarily rushed feelings—and that’s on her.

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, NFL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his revolutionary “inside-out” approach to performance excellence. Garret has been featured on WFAN, ESPN, FOX, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life, www.stillpower.com.

Something to Believe In

I was driving to Lafayette College to watch my son play baseball this past weekend, pondering ideas for this week’s article, when “Something to Believe In,” a song by the band Parachute, came on the radio. The melody, then the lyrics, grabbed me and got me reflecting about the things that I deeply believe in, and the best way to share one of these beliefs with you.

As I see it, my role in the grand scheme of things is to point my readers, clients, or audiences in a specific and uncompromising direction—inward. Regrettably, most of us are looking in the opposite direction: we’re searching for something to believe in—out there. We’re looking to customs or values; to our spouses, parents, or children; to our nationality; even to a specific form of a higher power at times. What we often fail to recognize, however, is that we only look for something to believe in when we are hurting or down on our luck. When our consciousness is elevated, we love and appreciate everything about our lives. And there lies the message of this article and Parachute’s discerning song.

To me, one thing that you can 100 percent believe in is the irrevocable truth that when you are suffering, the nature of your thinking and your perceptions of life—will change. They’ll shift back to the psychological perspective where looking for a sign (or something to believe in) isn’t necessary. Said another way, your struggles are not written in stone—they are the byproduct of the ever-changing nature of your thinking; they are formless, not real—an illusion.

How, you might ask, do I know this to be true? Just a quiet, yet resolute, sense that thought is a spiritual principle over which we have no control. Many years ago, my thinking was stuck. I was disconsolate and searching for answers. Did I want to think in this bound-up fashion? Did I try to conjure up feelings containing no faith? Of course not. But then one day I had a powerful insight: If I just stopped trying to fix my thoughts, ceased the searching, they might clear on their own. I followed my insight and more thinking did arrive, yet this time it was different. My circumstances had not changed, but my thoughts and ensuing feelings became calm, free-flowing, and secure. In fact, this experience was so enlightening that today when I temporarily feel low it no longer even occurs to me to manage my own thinking or outlook.

Remember, when your level of confidence, contentment, or understanding for others declines, your pain does not come from the world around you. It comes from a principle over which you have no authority—your own thinking. So regardless of what occurs on the outside (in a world of form), your perceptions of these events are formless and predetermined to change. Understand and then believe in that—your life will never be the same again.

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, NFL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his revolutionary “inside-out” approach to performance excellence. Garret has been featured on WFAN, ESPN, FOX, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life, www.stillpower.com.

Understanding vs. Implementation—An Essential Distinction

Self-help or performance strategies require implementation. A person learns the method, practices the method, and then applies the method. “The Twelve Steps to Happiness,” for instance, must be studied, absorbed, and then put into action for it to work—or so they say. Success experts who espouse positive thinking suggest that you must be aware of the difference between unconstructive and affirmative thoughts, and then replace the bad thinking with the good.

Indeed, in the performance-coaching world, practicing to make perfect and then executing precisely seem to be the norm. Several well-known self-help gurus have even crafted their own careers by insisting that implementing happiness, positivity, or mindfulness is the key to success.

Seems like a lot of hard work to me.

It doesn’t make sense to call them self-help strategies. Any method that requires implementation is, in truth, an external-help strategy.

Instead, have you ever considered that there is built-in understanding within you that doesn’t take learning? And better yet, this understanding requires no doing, trying, effort, or implementation whatsoever. That’s right, you already own the only true self-help (as opposed to external help) system available. Here’s how it works:

The nature of your thinking (free-and-easy vs. bound-up) creates your feelings. Your feelings create your mood. Your mood then perpetuates the nature of your thinking, forming a closed loop that is immune to the circumstances of the outside world.

To illustrate, when I feel bound up, I am not feeling my circumstance. I am feeling the effect of my bound-up thinking and my circumstance looks bleak. When I feel free and easy, I am not feeling my circumstance. I am feeling the effect of my free-and-easy thinking and my circumstance—the same one that looked bleak—now looks inviting.

Understanding how the mind functions, and not doing something when it appears to malfunction, is the key to a smooth journey through life.

Now, the coolest part of this inborn system is once you understand that the nature of your thinking is variable and has nothing to do with your circumstances, it will no longer make any sense (when you are struggling) to implement a strategy to try to change something that is designed to change on its own.

For example, the other day I felt pessimistic about the thought that two of my three children had gone off to college. My head was filled with negativity: “Where have the years gone?” “Am I getting old?” “What am I going to do?” But then, without doing or changing anything, I felt optimistic as insights and opportunities about my freed-up future flooded through me.

Remember, it happens to everyone: bound-up feelings, at times, crop up. And because it appears that these feelings are the result of the world around you, implementing a coping strategy might look like the answer. Strategies, however, require memorization and implementation. They will not free your mind—they will only add more clutter. On the other hand, understanding how the mind works clarifies where your feelings and moods truly originate (your thinking). It permits your innate functioning (stale thinking out; fresh thinking in) to resolve any momentary glitch.

The choice is yours—understanding vs. implementation. To me, it’s not a fair fight.

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, NFL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his revolutionary “inside-out” approach to performance excellence. Garret has been featured on WFAN, ESPN, FOX, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life; foreword by NHL and U.S. Olympic star Zach Parise, www.stillpower.com.

How Much Do You Care?

Have you ever met a prejudiced or malicious preschooler? I bet not, since caring for your fellow man is actually as innate as breathing. Simply observe two young children playing alone and this built-in propensity becomes obvious. Absent of parental hovering, direction, control, or judgment, it is virtually impossible for one youngster to put the needs of himself or herself above the other.

In fact, void of learned behavior, you own natural predisposition to care for others—acquaintances and total strangers—would flourish in the exact same fashion.

Caring for others is part of human nature—nobody is born selfish.

Simply stated, children care because at a young age their process of thought is limited—they don’t spend a lot of time tending to the thoughts (even judgmental thoughts about others) that randomly pop into their heads. However, as we grow, our intellect kicks in and we start tending to these random thoughts. Thus, our inclination to consider the needs and insecurities of others often becomes hazy.

To illustrate, last month while I was in the UK, I met a man from Israel who was having trouble ordering a copy of Stillpower. As he described his frustration, my mind was immediately flooded with a solution: “When I get home, I’m going to send him a copy of the book straight away.” But then, arbitrarily, my thinking ramped up and spun me off course, I thought: “If I do that for him, I’ll have to do it for everyone. My publisher won’t like it. Perhaps, as an author, I’m not supposed to be so approachable, etc.” Luckily for me, though, my bound-up thinking created an anxious and egotistical feeling in my gut—my sign to follow my original and instinctual sentiment of sending him a book.

We are often told that caring for others is the key to a clear mindset. Not so. Allowing your mindset to clear is the key to caring for others.

Here, then, is my message about caring for others: If not for a misunderstanding about, and belief in, your own thoughts, compassion for your fellow man would be automatic and obvious. Therefore, even when your thinking and ensuing state of mind are not generating good will, you are still capable of it.

For example, the other day my daughter was upset that her new field hockey jersey had arrived with the wrong number on it. At first she wondered, “Why me?” Then, as she sensed the wayward direction that her thoughts were taking her, she said, “You know what, if this had to happen, I’m glad it happened to me. I wouldn’t want one of my teammates to feel like this.”  Brilliant!

The bottom line is that the next time you aren’t taking into consideration the feelings of others, it’s perfectly normal and okay. Just remember, the self-centered feeling within you is actually your custom-designed reminder that it’s you that is off, not the world around you. In other words, it’s possible to care, even when you don’t want to. And when you do, your consciousness and level of productivity will rise in a flash—along with your inborn kindness, understanding, and love.

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, NFL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his revolutionary “inside-out” approach to performance excellence. Garret has been featured on WFAN, ESPN, FOX, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life; foreword by NHL and U.S. Olympic star Zach Parise, www.stillpower.com.

Sweating the Small Stuff? Overcoming is Simpler than You Think

We all overcome. In fact, our innate ability to get over things is so fluent and natural that most of the time we don’t even notice it. The other morning, for example, I arrived at my desk and realized that it was extremely hot in my office. I became upset that the air conditioning wasn’t working. But then the phone rang, and I had emails to write and people to see. Before I knew it, it was 6:00 p.m., and I became aware that I was perspiring slightly—oh, right, the air conditioning was broken, wasn’t it?

You see, it may be difficult to grasp in the midst of uneasiness, but only when a person interferes with the mind’s capacity to regulate to clarity will he or she struggle. In my case, I became distracted by the busyness of my day, and, thus, my irritated and bound-up thinking quickly flowed away. If, from my low level of consciousness, I had hunted down the building superintendent or tried to fix the AC myself (my wife is laughing as she reads this), I would have exacerbated my confusion and my day would have most likely turned out unproductive.

Coping mechanisms are not required. We all get stuck and it hurts, but getting over things is natural.

But what was it that truly allowed me to overcome my upset thinking about my hot office (after all, distractions only last so long)? Why do some people always seem to handle adversity and get on with life, while others seem to wallow?

The answer has to do with how the human mind functions. The mind is designed to take out old, stale, and churned-over thought—and bring in new, fresh, and uncontaminated thought. The degree to which a person understands this determines his or her level of resilience. Those who move gracefully through misfortune recognize that when their minds are racing or bound-up, their perceptions are distorted, so if they try to fix things (i.e., small stuff such as the broken air conditioning, a more acute life event such as a tragedy, or even their own thinking), they’ll prevent new thought—and solutions—from arriving.

In short, people who seem to not sweat the small stuff actually do sweat the small stuff. However, this tendency is usually short-lived because they also understand that fighting a wayward experience will always make matters worse.

Don’t panic. Everyone “sweats the small stuff” at times.

The bottom line is that the human mind is an energetic and powerful source of consciousness. It doesn’t care if your thoughts are negative, despondent, insecure, judgmental, or obsessive. If you simply stay out of the way when this type of psychological perspective shows up, untarnished and free-flowing thought will eventually emerge. And so will your built-in ability to get over anything that life has in store.

Actually, it gets better than that: When you allow the self-regulating function of the mind to do its job, you uncover enduring and impactful answers—and, at the same time, demonstrate to others the might of looking within.

 

 

 

Garret Kramer is the founder of Inner Sports. His clients include Olympians, NHL, NFL, MLB, and collegiate players and coaches, and he often conducts seminars about his revolutionary “inside-out” approach to performance excellence. Garret has been featured on WFAN, ESPN, FOX, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, and Forbes. He is the author of the book, Stillpower: Excellence with Ease in Sports and Life; foreword by NHL and U.S. Olympic star Zach Parise, www.stillpower.com.