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March 20 - April 8, 2025
Just because the road ahead is long is no reason to slow down. Just because there is much work to be done is no reason to get discouraged. It is a reason to get started, to grow, to find new ways, to reach within yourself and discover strength, commitment, determination, discipline. The road ahead is long and difficult, and filled with opportunity at every turn. Start what needs starting. Finish what needs finishing. Get on the road. Stay on the road. Get on with the work. Right now you’re at the beginning of the journey. What a great place to be! Just imagine all the things you’ll learn, all
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how you see yourself is the self-fulfilling prophecy that determines completely how you experience life.
Within our sense of self, there are both positive and negative perceptions– areas where we believe in ourselves and others where we are less certain and have insecurities and self-doubts. The positive elements in our sense of self serve us well, as they are ultimately an expression of our own self-belief. When we believe, we are empowered. When faced with opportunities or challenges we ‘can’ and ‘do’. The negative elements, however, shape us in a much more limiting way as an inner expression of disbelief or doubt. When we don’t believe, our path is blocked and we often feel powerless to get
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One of my favourite sayings is: ‘Never be afraid to dream and to follow your dreams, but never allow the dream to become your master.’
The key lesson for me was that my greatest opponent was not on the other side of the net – it was on my side. More specifically it was in my head and in my thoughts. It was an opponent only I could conquer, but in order to conquer it I first needed to understand it.
his goal was not so much to win as to compete at Wimbledon. As a consequence, I believe he became very focused on continually improving his game to get it to the level required to play at the highest level. It was not so much a focus on winning but focusing on what was required to enable him to participate. I have repeatedly found that this is the hallmark of all great champions who are able to sustain results at the highest level – those who have an enduring career at the pinnacle of their profession.
To arrive ready to have your best chance, you need to work on improving all aspects of your game and your physical and mental abilities. If you do that better than anybody else, you give yourself the best chance of winning. If you place too much focus on the result or on the title, the chances are that you will choke under the self-imposed pressure.
As a general rule, positive emotions like feeling confident, focused, curious or determined support a wider range of behaviours and therefore more actions are available to us. Positive emotions are empowering. These positive emotions not only support us taking action, they also help us to think clearly. Our thoughts are more positive and empowering. Counter to that, if we are feeling stressed, anxious, frustrated or resigned, we will be less inclined to take appropriate action and may even find ourselves somewhat paralysed. These negative emotions limit effective action and tend to shut down
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Good example of broaden and build
What does he mean by ‘positive anger’? This is not the anger we feel when we are in an argument with someone else, the anger that sees us fume inside with rage and burn energy. This is a different sort of anger, a reflective dissatisfaction with our situation that fuels an inner resolve to fire up and fix the situation, an emotional state that actually feeds us energy and helps us to lift our performance. When accompanied by reconnecting with your belief in yourself and your abilities and taking complete ownership of your predicament, this dissatisfaction creates breakthroughs. It is
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It is also critical to recognise that you have the power to change your emotional state from negative to positive at any time. Newk was able to force out the anxiety and nerves that were inhibiting his performance. To start with, he thought about his situation and rather than accept it he started going through his rehearsed and well-practised process of turning it around.
Some of us are driven by who we think we are supposed to be and others by who we think we need to be. Who I need to be is driven from a different perspective. Whilst who I am supposed to be is driven by expectation, who I need to be is driven by negative forces. It is the need to prove that the negative views and opinions others have of me are wrong and that I am in fact much better than that, and enough. Just watch me prove it! If we have grown up in an environment where we witnessed or experienced a lot of judgement, we are more likely to be less certain of ourselves and therefore have a
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One is ultimately a need to prove that people were right and the other is the need to prove that people were wrong.
at the core of their anxieties and fears, as it did for me, is the question of whether or not they are enough. Whenever people or circumstances appeared to me to threaten my being successful or significant, my stress or level of anxiety would spike dramatically.
People who seek to prove that they are enough through any or all of these three approaches – results, approval of others and significance – spend their whole lives pursuing enough without ever finding it. It’s like looking for a great white shark in the forest. You’d be looking in the wrong place.
If the notion of failure doesn’t actually kill us, why do we have such a fear of it? Because it reconnects us with the question of whether or not we are whatever our measure of enough is.
The first step is to recognise the existence of two minds and through that to become more aware of our thoughts, their origins and their usefulness.
It would appear that Newk was not fearful of losing. While winning was clearly his desire, perhaps this was supported by the realisation that the match was not a matter of life and death. The outcome was not going to determine whether Newk was ‘enough’. It was certainly not ‘all or nothing’.
I see Newk’s great strength being his ability to stop and think about his situation. He had trained his mind through years of practice to recognise the Negative Force and he understood what he needed to do to rectify the situation. He recognised the difference between his ‘two minds’ and was able to engage the conscious mind.
Perhaps we could learn a thing or two from the world of Formula One motor racing. Consider how they treat their high-performance vehicles. These highly tuned and very sophisticated machines could be compared to the human mind. In preparation for racing, many hours are spent on the test track. Each element of the car’s performance is analysed and fine-tuned. Each element of its operation is scrutinised and opportunities for improvement are explored. We may not want to take quite such a disciplined approach to our minds but what benefits could we enjoy if we were a little more curious and
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Have you ever wondered why humans resist change, the one constant in our lives? It’s because it often represents uncertainty, a journey into unfamiliar territory.
In order to get a new result, somewhere in life we need to learn to believe something new so that we can start to engage in different actions or behaviours.
A new behaviour is what is required to produce a new result. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result! In order to change our actions or behaviours, to start doing something new, we need to learn to believe something new about ourselves and our circumstances.
The most common way for our subconscious mind to restore the balance, to help us to feel good about ourselves, is through affirmation and being right. It is the perfect expression of self-worth. Any time that I am right, I am OK. I am affirmed and I am enough. I am restoring the balance and my sense of self. I am worthy.
In my work, I have found that people who are the least certain that they are enough, those with the strongest need to prove they are enough in the face of their self-doubts and insecurities, will be those who are the most opinionated and judgemental in life. And none of it is conscious. It is the subconscious need to restore the feel-good balance that comes with being enough. However, it creates a lot of noise and not necessarily any worthwhile outcomes.
I said, ‘Sit back in your chair, try to relax your body and take a deep breath.’ Remember we only had 60 seconds on the changeover. ‘Your body is full of negative energy and we need to get rid of it. Take a very deep breath, close your eyes and as you breathe out imagine you are blowing all that negative rubbish out of your body, up above you is the clearest blue sky you have ever seen and you are now inhaling that clear air into your body which is full of powerful positive energy.’ This was all a supreme test of imagination for Lleyton, as it was wintertime and we were indoors! We had time to
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Why would we be concerned with the opinions of others? It’s because we use the opinions of others as a way to self-validate, to prove we are enough. If others like me, then I must be enough.
What Newk was able to do with Todd was to stop him thinking about the result and instead focus on breaking serve. When Todd stopped worrying about the result, something he had lost belief in, his anxiety dropped and he got his focus back. With that came the determination to break serve. Newk ‘engineered’ a change in Todd’s emotional state that in turn led to an improvement in performance. Slowly Todd got back on top of his opponent and his belief returned.
With Pat Rafter at White City, Newk’s approach was remarkably similar. Pat had ‘choked’ as a consequence of being too focused on the outcome or too focused on not being ‘enough’. Newk changed the focus from winning to a ‘war of attrition’, a real dogfight. Pat was now more focused on the fight than the result, on the fight for each and every point. He was now so much more in the present moment and not too far ahead of himself as you are when you are focused on some future-based result.
Recognise that the journey starts with one step and commit yourself to making each step the best step that you can and before you know it you are at the summit. Results are a consequence of action; it’s time to focus on improving your actions and let the results take care of themselves.
We must learn to be kinder to ourselves. None of us ever consciously set out to make bad decisions or sabotage ourselves.
We simply make the best decision we can at the time based on the knowledge we have of our circumstances and how we’re feeling at the time. Isn’t it interesting, then, to observe how often people beat themselves up about the ‘mistakes’ they have made when they set out in the first place to make the best decision they could. Beating yourself up about past decisions is the subconscious mind’s way of reinforcing the underlying sense of self that has question marks and doubt about whether we are enough. Let it go.
I once heard this concept referred to as an emotional cocktail – the process of choosing three or four emotional states that in combination would support your desired actions and endeavours.
while he clearly desired a successful result, what was more important was giving it his best. The result wasn’t all-important. It was not required for him to prove that he was enough, because his sense of self was already strong. He was now free to go on court with a clear mind, free of the anxiety associated with failure.
At the point when people start to move forward again, a performance breakthrough takes place. They simply start to believe in something new and this in turn supports a new behaviour. Think back to our MINDsense model; if we are to produce a different result (get off the plateau), then we must start to behave differently, which requires us to believe something new.
Not only has their self-definition led them to this plateau as it has underpinned their behaviour to date, but now it is holding them there. All is in order and the mind has certainty. We are fulfilling our destiny, our self-definition. We are right about who we are. As we know, our self-definition is completely self-fulfilling. Game, set and match.
Whenever there is a gap between where we are in life and where we aspire to be in terms of either the results we are producing or how our life journey feels, there is the potential for dissatisfaction.
The dissatisfaction they feel from time to time along the way is not an angry, frustrated dissatisfaction, though. It is a quiet, inner reflective dissatisfaction that often comes with a level of excitement as they consider the new possibilities, as they start to see the path. The average human being who is experiencing the frustration of being stuck in a rut (or on a plateau) doesn’t understand why their problems don’t go away, why they can’t move forward. Rather than increasing their dissatisfaction, they inadvertently lessen it and remain stuck.
As with all our validations our stories and excuses present another opportunity for us to be right, to reinforce and validate that historical, subconscious sense we have of ourselves. It’s another opportunity to prevent us from changing our sense of self, from challenging that predictability that our subconscious mind is so intent on protecting. The subconscious mind wins again.
When it comes to dissatisfaction there are two things to understand. The sooner you get dissatisfied the sooner you will resolve the challenge, get off the plateau and start moving forward again. Dissatisfaction is a very useful emotional state. Understand it and use it to your advantage.
This highlights that results are achieved by a process that involves more than developing an action plan. We need to support our plan by making sure our beliefs and our sense of ourselves are aligned with our desired outcome.
The second and more adventurous tactic was to attack and break your opponent’s strengths. It’s not something they will be expecting and if you succeed you will have shattered their self-belief and therefore their game.
On the negative side, the process of ‘choking’ in sport occurs when the mind gets in the way. We witness highly trained athletes who have put many hours into their sport and who have executed the shot or the kick or the jump many times before, only this time they cannot clear their mind of the noise of negativity. This distracting noise disrupts the flow of action.
Wake Up. It’s Time to Take Control of Your Mind Consciousness is the key. Without it you are not in control. Your subconscious mind’s agenda is about preservation and validation. That doesn’t support growth and change. Learn to engage your conscious mind and think your way to success.
Own Your Life and Be Who You Choose to Be Consciously connect with the experiences that created your current sense of yourself and let them go. Now make a choice. Define yourself, be who you want to be.
Growth and moving forward in life are a consequence of goals and aspirations. The gap between where I am now and where I want to be is where dissatisfaction ‘lives’. Use that dissatisfaction to drive action – action supported by the belief that you can.
