The Art of Mental Training - A Guide to Performance Excellence

by D.C. Gonzalez

Real champions work to develop an ability to control their anger so that it cannot hurt their performance.”

With anger, once the emotion comes up—or boils up!—real champions make a deliberate choice to use the energy, but they do not allow themselves to lose control to it or fall victim to it.”

“They ask themselves, ‘Who is in charge here? —Me? Or this fury inside myself?’

The champion knows that in order to perform well, he must stay in control. How else can he expect to control his performance?”

“It always starts with a choice to not let it control you,”

“Concentrate and use focused breathing to help manage the intensity. Use internal self-talk with suggestions like: Stay Cool, Relax, Be Calm—to help you stay in control.

All of these—worked on and practiced—will help. But there must first, always be a choice.”

Remember: If anger arises, make the decision to not let it control you. Use techniques to redirect the energy; use the energy to make your resolve stronger. Become like the smiling assassin that sees his mark.

Remember: You must choose to control anger through a decision. For if you lose control to anger—then the anger will surely control you.

So, even though we can’t always control the way things unfold, at least we can always control the way we respond to the event. Mental warriors focus on what they can control, not on the “what ifs” or the “if only.” Being able to choose how one responds to an unwelcome event is a critical skill. It has everything to do with how well we get on with our game—and even with our lives.

Mental athletes know that nobody wins all of the time. Not in life, not in sports. When things don’t go their way, they know it’s OK to be disappointed. What’s not OK is dwelling on the disappointment.

“This loss—you must let it go. True champions keep such a loss in perspective,” he said. “You must look at it long enough to learn from it—but then you must let it go.”

Learn from it—and let it go. What could be simpler, or more healing, than that?

“Remember that champions never play the blame game. They pick themselves up and start working on what’s coming up next. They hold their heads high, even when that isn’t easy to do. They push themselves to move forward. They know that this is how it has to be . . . They never forget that if you don’t fail sometimes, then you probably aren’t challenging yourself at a high enough level.”

Remember: Champions focus on what they can control. They know that while they can’t always control what takes place during an event, they can always control how they respond to an event. Within every setback lies the hidden opportunity for a great comeback.

Fearing failure is more than just a bad thing. The bottom line is that in order to be good in your sport, or whatever it is that you do, you simply can’t be afraid of failing.

Being afraid to fail actually helps create the conditions that make failure more likely!

Fear of failure causes a lot of problems. It restricts you. The wrong types of thoughts result in shortness of breath, tight muscles, and an overload of stress . . . Worse still, fear of failing can cause a competitor to start playing it safe. Instead of...

In reality, fear of failure is nothing more than a perceived psychological threat to your ego and self-esteem. What typically causes a fear of failing is the state of mind that takes hold when a competitor is afraid of looking bad, or else is such a perfectionist that he’s become overly self-critical. In either case, his internal state ends up holding him back, whether he’s aware of it or not.

He has to accept that without occasional failures he can never hope to get better. He has to understand that on the path to greatness, some failures are inevitable. And when he does lose, the mental athlete has to make a conscious decision to learn from that failure. Rather than abandoning himself to the luxury of misery, he will methodically

shut down that destructive voice of internal self-criticism in favor of looking at failure as valuable feedback.

When there is no fear of failure, one gains an important advantage. An advantage that can make all the difference.

Remember: Fear of failure is caused by not knowing how to fail constructively. The only way to accomplish anything great is to risk failing at it first. If you have a fear of failing, it’s more than just a bad thing. It can actually cripple your chances of success.

“After all, fear is a normal response to something dangerous or threatening.

“Controlling fear involves two things: a choice and a strategy. The choice is whether we truly choose to confront the fear, and then the strategy is how we go forward, having made the choice to do so.

“Fear can create tension, doubt, anxiety, loss of coordination, and loss of concentration. In the worst cases, fear can even begin effectively shutting down neuro-muscular connections!

“Fear can cause the warrior to focus on the negative. The fearful competitor can become over-cautious and decide to play it safe—instead of playing to win.

“Where is the fear? Fear happens inside your head, and thus it can be managed.

Remember this: A champion knows that fear is only as powerful as he lets it become.

it is important and necessary to take back some of the power of the emotion. The Warrior/Champion does this by bringing himself back into the present moment, and the easiest way to do that, Daniel-san, is to focus and watch your breathing. You must bring your breathing under control in order to ground yourself in the present.”

Remember: Against fear, one can always win. Confront the fear and then engage a strategy to move forward despite the fear.

a choking episode begins when a competitive situation threatens the athlete’s ego,”

“It’s a little like having a fear of failure—but choking goes beyond the fear because choking is the actual physical response that's triggered by the psychological threat to the ego.

Choking happens when performance is actually affected by the nervousness, stress, and worries about looking bad if things go wrong. It’s very different from the fear of facing a dangerous or life-threatening situat...

As an ineffective breathing pattern kicks in, his performance begins to suffer just when he needs his skills the most, just when the pressure’s really on. However, choking is actually caused by an ego that’s worried about looking bad, not by any real or perceived danger.”

What he needed to do was to start using focused breathing, thus beginning to reduce anxiety on the spot. As one uses focused breathing, one is able to begin to relax. Oxygen fills the body, reanimating the muscles and causing anxiety to subside. Suppleness returns, bringing renewed confidence with it. Feel the relaxation as you exhale; as

As soon as focused breathing begins to help, you must also take control back from the ego.”

Learn to leave your ego outside of your event, or it will always end up getting in the way.”

Remember: Performance choking is caused by an ego that is afraid of looking bad. You must learn to leave your ego outside of your event.

feeling the pressure of competition is not in itself a bad thing; it can actually help to bring out the best in you. It’s really how you deal with it that makes the difference. Whatever you may think, the truth is that all the pressure you feel really comes from inside yourself. Once you understand this, you can begin to free yourself to do what you are really capable of.

Coordination, concentration, and judgment are all affected.

Often, pressure creates tension that can push you to try and get through something quicker. Yet when you yield to this impulse to rush, you’ll actually perform worse.

The first thing you have to learn is how to stay cool. This is probably the biggest single difference between a typical competitor and a mental athlete.

The mental athlete has learned how to stay calm and task-focused under pressure. He knows that staying cool is part of his success formula. So he sets out to manage the pressure—which begins by first recognizing that it’s OK to feel the pressure. He doesn’t deny his nerves, but he doesn’t give into them either.

Learn to concentrate and use focused breathing. The athlete can bring himself back to the present moment by training himself to use his breathing to help secure control when the heat is on.

In pressure situations, make sure to let the air reach into the very bottom of your lungs. Fill every corner of your body with life-giving, life-enhancing oxygen.

Focused breathing will help reduce the pressure and keep you grounded in the present.

Be sure to learn and practice the relaxation induction technique introduced in Chapter 7,

Learning how to manage pressure can help you outperform others.

Remember: Pressure is mental. Learn to view performance pressure as a challenge that can be managed by using mental techniques and pre-game routines.