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- In Pursuit of Excellence
Whether you’re an athlete, aspiring coach, or business professional, the ultimate goal remains the same: reaching your potential.
Author Terry Orlick, an internationally acclaimed sport psychologist, has helped hundreds of Olympic and professional athletes maximize their performances and achieve their goals. In this new fifth edition, Orlick provides the most effective strategies and step-by-step plans for you to develop your personal path to excellence.
You’ll learn to focus for excellence while living and enjoying life to the fullest. You’ll gain a more positive outlook, a more focused commitment, better ways of dealing with distractions and pressures, and strategies for overcoming obstacles. You’ll also achieve greater personal and professional satisfaction and discover better ways to work with teammates, respond more effectively to coaching and guidance, and become more positive and self-directed in your thoughts and actions.
Both practical and inspirational, In Pursuit of Excellence is a guide to daily living and motivation as well as a road map to long-term achievement. Read it, use it, and win with it—personally and professionally.
Part I Discovering Excellence
Chapter 1. Choice of Excellence
Chapter 2. Wheel of Excellence
Chapter 3. Focus for Excellence
Chapter 4. Journey to Excellence
Part II Focusing for Excellence
Chapter 5. Self-Examination
Chapter 6. Intensity, Relaxation, and Recovery
Chapter 7. Distraction Control
Chapter 8. Positive Images
Chapter 9. Simulation
Chapter 10. Zen Experiences
Part III Creating Excellence
Chapter 11. Perspectives
Chapter 12. Goals
Chapter 13. Commitments
Chapter 14. Connections
Chapter 15. Challenges
Chapter 16. Actions
Part IV Living Excellence
Chapter 17. Composed
Chapter 18. Balanced
Chapter 19. Consistent
Chapter 20. Coachable
Chapter 21. Team-Oriented
Chapter 22. Self-Directed
Chapter 23. Adaptable
Chapter 24. Transition
Terry Orlick, PhD, was a professor in the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa for more than 40 years. He obtained his PhD in the psychology of sport and physical activity from the University of Alberta in 1972. He was one of the world’s leading authorities on the psychology of excellence and quality living and worked with some of the world’s top performers. His research focused on enhancing the quality of life and quality of performance with children and high-level performers in a variety of disciplines.
Orlick worked with thousands of Olympic and professional athletes and coaches; corporate leaders; astronauts; surgeons; top classical musicians; dancers, opera singers, and other performing artists; mission control professionals; and many others engaged in high-stress performance missions.
Former president of the International Society for Mental Training and Excellence, Orlick authored more than 30 highly acclaimed books, published hundreds of articles in a variety of professional journals, and was founder of the Journal of Excellence, Positive Living Skills, and the Zone of Excellence. He held distinguished service awards from numerous Olympic and education associations as well as certificates of merit from governments, universities, sport organizations, and schools for distinguished service to the community. He gave lectures on the pursuit of excellence in virtually every corner of the world.
Terry Orlick lived with his family at Meech Lake, Quebec, until his death in 2021.
“This book is for those who are not satisfied with good enough. I have known Terry for over 20 years, and his insights have provided me with the guidance I need to stay focused on the things that really matter to achieve my goals. I regularly use the strategies he shares in Pursuit of Excellence in my work with coaches around the world, from youth sport to the world’s best Olympic and national team coaches.”
—Wade Gilbert, PhD, Professor, Department of Kinesiology California State University–Fresno
Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
Learn more about In Pursuit of Excellence, Fifth Edition.
Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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Flowing Through Stress
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it.
Something is stressful only if you view it as stressful, accept it as stressful, and experience it as stressful. Otherwise, it is just something that happens during your day, week, or life. You can choose to feel stressed about it or choose to not feel stressed about it. Choosing to not feel stressed about things that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is within your potential control. You are not required to feel stressed before going into major events, competitions, tests, games, or performances. The best way to avoid feeling stressed in situations that previously resulted in you feeling stressed is to remind yourself that you are not required to be stressed in this situation. Remind yourself to keep things in perspective and then focus on following a positive preperformance focus plan that keeps you focused on you and what you are capable of doing in this context or performance. Focus on slow, relaxed breathing and remind yourself to relax as you breathe out in the lead-up time to your performance, test, game, or competition. Slow, relaxed breathing is always a good thing to focus on to relax or turn down the intensity in potentially stressful circumstances or contexts.
Changing channels is another effective way to reduce stress or regain control quickly on-site in performance contexts or other potentially stressful situations. Think of it as changing channels on your TV. If you are on a mental channel you don't like or don't want to be on at this time, a channel that is not helping you, simply press your thumb hard against your first or second finger and change channels mentally. As you press your thumb hard against your finger, think to yourself change channels, change channels from stressed to relaxed, from negative to positive, from distracted to fully connected. By choosing to make positive shifts in your focus, you can enhance your positive perspective; make your focus stronger, better, more consistent, or more complete; eliminate doubts or fears; and relax your breathing. All of this can help you channel your positive energy and fully connected focus into the step-by-step process of executing your performance to the best of your ability.
Another effective refocusing strategy I have used with high-performance athletes and other high-level performers is called flowing stream. If you are feeling stressed or distracted before a performance or while you are performing, you simply imagine yourself flowing like a little mountain stream. If you watch water flowing down a mountain stream, you will see that it always finds a path even when there are obstacles like rocks, stones, branches, or tree trunks along the way. The water doesn't get stressed out or stop flowing; it just finds its own path and keeps on flowing to its desired destination. Sometimes it is helpful to remind yourself to flow through challenges, obstacles, or uncertainty in your day or life like a flowing stream.
I have devoted much of my life to creating simple, positive, effective focusing and refocusing strategies to help children, youth, athletes, students, performers, and everyday people reduce stress, enhance relaxation, achieve their goals, and live their lives more fully and joyfully. If you are interested in learning additional simple, effective focusing, refocusing, and relaxation strategies, see chapter 10, "Focusing Activities," and chapter 11, "Relaxation and Joyful Living," in my book Positive Living Skills: Joy and Focus for Everyone (Orlick, 2011).
Your first line of stress prevention, stress reduction, and positive focus control lies in focusing on the good things in your life and accepting that your value as a human being remains intact regardless of whether you meet your performance expectations or the expectations of others. You can reduce unnecessary stress in your life by setting realistic performance goals, focusing fully on executing your task, and knowing in your heart and soul that you remain a good and valued person regardless of your performance outcome in any context on any given day. Choose to enter potentially stress-provoking situations with a positive and fully connected focus, and you will greatly enhance your chances of performing well. You may feel your heart thumping or a rush of adrenaline flowing through your body because you are excited and you need a certain level of positive intensity to perform your best in this situation. That's usually a good thing because your body and mind are telling you that you are ready to rise to this challenge.
In some contexts, you may feel more of an adrenaline rush than you would like. If this happens, take a little time-out to breathe in and out slowly and remind yourself to relax every time you breathe out. If you are feeling negative or stressed, ask yourself, Why am I feeling negative? Why am I feeling stressed out? What am I thinking or saying to myself about this situation that is making me feel negative or stressed? Do I have to feel this way? No, you definitely do not have to feel this way! Do I have to think this way? No, you don't have to think that way! Do I have to get stressed out over this? No, you don't! Is worrying or being stressed going to help me in this situation? No, it isn't going to help you! Is it really worth continuing to be stressed or negative about this? Definitely not! If being stressed or negative is not going to help you, then why not change channels or shift your focus to something positive that will free you to take control and focus fully on performing your best? Set a personal goal to stop focusing on the negatives and start focusing on the positives.
- Focus on why you can achieve your goal.
- Focus on how you will achieve your goal.
- Act on your positive intentions every day simply by focusing on what you know works best for you. Continue to look for good reasons to believe in yourself and your capacity to meet or overcome the challenges you are facing, whatever they may be. You are fully capable of focusing through these challenges and growing from them.
- Remind yourself of your strengths. Write them down!
- Remind yourself to focus fully on the step, move, stroke, or stride in front of you and nothing else.
- Remind yourself of the amazing power of your fully connected focus.
- Remember that you are fully capable of achieving your goals.
- Remember that you are fully capable of carrying a positive and fully connected focus for the duration of your performance.
- Choose to think and act in positive ways that will free you to focus fully on executing your mission or performance - nothing more, nothing less.
Deciding to be positive and fully focused before you enter your performance context will help you make the positive changes you are seeking. Think about how you would prefer to respond to various situations in your performance arena and other arenas of your life. See yourself responding effectively to situations that may have distracted or upset you unnecessarily in the past. Imagine yourself in future performance situations - thinking, focusing, believing, and acting in more positive and fully connected ways. Focus on bringing this more positive vision of yourself to life in your real-world performance contexts.
Often a simple shift in focus from negative to positive or from disconnected to fully connected leads to a major change in the way you view a situation, your performance, and yourself. As soon as you start to believe that you really do have the potential to do what you really want to do in this performance context, everything changes: Hey, I'm ready to do this; I can do this; I want to do this; I own my best focus; I control my actions and reactions; just focus, focus, focus, and execute my game plan.
Continue to act on drawing out the focusing lessons from your best performances and the less than best parts of your performances. Whenever you are able to make a positive change in your focus, perspective, or performance, think about what you did, focused on, or said to yourself to make this happen. Embrace those positive lessons and act on them in your future performances. Try to become aware of self-imposed obstacles to positive change, such as focusing on the negatives, dwelling on distractions, or saying things to yourself that block your own progress, for example, things like I don't feel ready; this will never work; I can't do this; I'm not good enough to do this; I'll probably mess it up.
What are you saying to yourself right now about your capacity to improve your focus and make the positive changes you need to make to consistently perform to your capacity? This is a good place to start establishing and nurturing a powerful, positive, fully connected focus. Docide right now to move forward each day with a powerful, positive, and fully connected focus.
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Fostering Team Harmony
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly.
One of the most satisfying experiences in sport or any other domain is being a member of a team that gets along well and works as a cohesive, collaborative unit. When you live, work, and play together in harmony, the chances of enjoying the journey and achieving mutually beneficial goals increase significantly. By committing yourself to interact in simple, positive ways that make teammates feel valued, appreciated, respected, and supported, you go a long way toward improving team spirit, harmony, and performance. Team spirit grows when all team members feel that they have a meaningful role to play, are challenged to be what they can be, and experience something positive and have some fun in the process of getting where they want to go. Help your teammates to believe in each other and genuinely encourage each other to become whatever you have the potential to be, individually and as a team. Working and playing together can create a positive atmosphere, a feeling of acceptance, and a sense of unity. Direct your individual and collective focus toward helping each other to accomplish your collective mission. This will help you to have better practices or workout sessions and consistently move you toward higher-quality performances.
Rugby is just one example of many team sports where having a strong team spirit and sense of unity can help the team perform better as a team.
Bob Martin/BPI/DPPI/Icon Sportswire
Harmony grows when you look for the good qualities in teammates and they look for yours, when you take the time to listen to others and they listen to you, when you respect their feelings and contributions and they respect yours, when you accept their differences and they accept yours, and when you choose to help them and they choose to help you. Harmony and improved team performance are rooted in positive focus, a commitment to excellence, and ongoing mutual trust and respect.
When you know that someone needs you, cares about you, appreciates you, respects you, believes in you, values you, and accepts you - with all your imperfections - trust, harmony, and best performances are nurtured. When you help others and they help you, you begin to appreciate and respect each other. When you move beyond the surface and begin to understand other athletes' or performers' problems, feelings, challenges, or perspectives in a more intimate way, you begin to feel closer or more connected to them. Opening the door to real feelings, as difficult as this may be for some people to do, creates more intimate or real connections.
When Olympic and professional team performance enhancement consultant Cal Botterill studied the link between mood and performance in highly skilled team athletes, he discovered that team harmony was a key factor in performance. Each athlete's mood had a direct effect on his or her performance, and athletes on the road often cited positive interaction with their coaches, roommates, and teammates as having a positive influence on their mood and performance.
Some of the Olympic and professional teams I have worked with have had more than their fair share of disharmony and interpersonal conflicts. Some team members felt ignored or left out, some athletes believed that the coach did not respect them or believe in them, some athletes refused to room with others, and some team members withdrew emotionally or physically from the group. In one case, I witnessed firsthand two Olympic athletes physically fighting on-site just before an important international competition. Fortunately we were able to help them refocus to get back on a positive track in time for their event. Rarely do teammates or coaches intentionally try to create conflict or resentment or set out to hurt their teammates' feelings or performance before races or competitions. No one gains from that process. Both parties go through unnecessary and unpleasant turmoil and experience stress and distractions that can ultimately hinder their focus and team performance. The root of many interpersonal conflicts within team contexts is a lack of commitment to the overriding team mission, a lack of awareness of other people's feelings, or sometimes a misinterpretation of the actions or intentions of a teammate, colleague, or coach.
Merely being together at meetings, work, practices, training camps, games, competitions, or team parties does not necessarily increase mutual liking or performance harmony among team members. For a genuine positive team spirit to develop and grow, individuals must commit to a common mission or goal and be linked in some positive interdependent way so they know that they have to rely on and help one another to have a chance of achieving their individual and collective goals.
Harmony or compatibility sometimes flows or grows naturally among members of a team. When this ideal circumstance is not present, it is important to discuss the commitment required from everyone on the team to put the bigger mission above any conflict or disharmony so that everyone gives his or her best and supports one another to achieve a worthy, higher-level goal. When all team members make a decision to be supportive, remain flexible, be their best, find good qualities in their teammates, and work together to accomplish mutually beneficial goals, collectively they put their team on the path to harmony and excellence.
Open communication is an important step in preventing and solving conflicts or problems among team members. Respecting another person's needs, feelings, and perspective is difficult when you do not know or understand what they are. It is never too early or too late to move along a more positive path, turn a negative into a positive, transform a wrong into a right, or turn an error into a positive lesson. The best time to begin this performance- and life-enhancing process is right now.
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Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
Transitioning Out of High-Performance Pursuits: Kerrin Lee-Gartner
Many high-performance athletes and performers in other meaningful high-performance pursuits experience challenges or difficulties when transitioning out of their high-performance pursuit. I asked Kerrin Lee-Gartner, an Olympic gold medalist athlete with whom I had the pleasure of working over the course of her entire career, if she would update me on her life since winning her Olympic gold medal in downhill skiing at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. She sent me the following update in July 2014.
When I reflect back and share moments and lessons learned on my journey, it is clear just how important my belief and mental strength was to my success. As a shy little girl, I always dreamed I would win at the Olympics. It was wished for on every birthday as I blew out the candles and on every falling star. I would shake the Magic 8 Ball until it gave me the answer I was searching for. I was relentless.
As it turns out, the dreaming was the easy part for me. I could dream big, it was the first step, but I had no idea what I could do with my giant imagination.
I was extremely fortunate to work with Terry Orlick. Terry taught me the next step, the methods and importance of mental training and imagery. He gave my imagination focus. He taught me to learn, and he taught me how to apply the lessons learned, which ultimately unlocked my true potential.
My commitment to the sport and to my dream was always automatic for me; it never wavered. But with that said, my confidence was fleeting; one moment I had complete faith in my abilities while the next moment was filled with undeniable doubt.
I learned to counter this negativity and doubt with positive images and positive self-talk. I nurtured the positives in any situation. My imagery, mental readiness, and fully focused connection became precise, accurate, and reliable, and my mind became one of my greatest strengths. My confidence grew as I developed the mental attributes needed to win and to overcome adversity.
I retired from racing in 1994 and started work as a sports commentator and motivational speaker as well as my favorite full-time job of being a mom. Now, more than 20 years later, my confidence is stronger than it has ever been, but it remains somewhat fragile. It wavers at work and at play, as a woman and as a mother. At these moments when my doubts creep in, I am thankful for the "athlete trained" automatic positive refocusing that takes place!
Learning to overcome my fear of failure as a racer has helped me in business and in my daily life. When those doubts and nerves present themselves before a speech or a live broadcast, I feel all my "prerace" positive self-talk taking over. I accept the feelings for what they are and refocus on the task at hand. Whether in a boardroom, on air, or on a tee box, when I know I am prepared and have done my homework, I can trust myself to give my best effort.
As I age, I am still learning. I have learned how empowering self-awareness is, knowing my strengths and nurturing them. At the same time, I am keenly aware of my weaknesses and how they affect me. The importance of being kinder to myself has been a blessing, and when I make a mistake I am more forgiving, but this is most definitely an ongoing battle!
At the age of 40, I finally gave myself a break and realized that it is fine if I am not always confident or strong or don't do a perfect job. This milestone has allowed me to recognize all my little successes instead of letting them go unnoticed.Looking back at my time working with Terry, I am thankful for learning such valuable life lessons. Belief in myself grew because I learned how to focus on the right things; this works in everyday life. Seeing the positives isn't about blind faith or about wearing blinders. It is about owning the skill to see something good in an otherwise negative or stressful situation.
I am happy to still be working with my husband, Max. We both remain passionate about high-performance sports and are sharing our insights for business success and athlete mentorship through our company Gold Mettle.Our two daughters have been raised with many lessons from the sports world and have been encouraged to dream big, imagine, and believe.
Thank you, Terry, for focusing my imagination, for teaching me the strength of a positive mind, and for building my belief system.
Most importantly, thank you for teaching me to learn.
Focusing Through Transitions
Life is full of transitions, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life and everywhere in between. The better you become at focusing in positive and life-enhancing ways, the happier and more fulfilling your life will be. Every day you make choices and move through a variety of transitions. Some of your choices are positive and some perhaps not so positive. When you wake up every morning, do you focus on thinking about something positive you are going to do, or are you thinking about something negative you have to do? If you are thinking about something negative, the best thing you can do is shift your focus to something positive.
From the time we wake in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night we are usually focused on something - some thought, feeling, experience, hope, regret, memory, wish, dream, or worry - negative or positive. Your thoughts and focus lead your reality, for better or for worse, so my advice to you is to focus on the positive and the positive possibilities!
Positive performances, positive transitions, and ongoing positive living and learning become possible when you find a way to remain positive and fully connected through the many challenges, opportunities, performances, and transitions you experience or have the potential to experience every day of your life. When you choose to fully embrace simple opportunities every day and continue to find, share, and embrace simple joys that live within each of those opportunities every day, your life and the lives of your loved ones become infinitely more joyful.
Take a few minutes to think about the following questions and write down your answers.
- What do you love most about your life?
- What makes you feel most fully alive?
- What do you feel you are missing in your life right now, if anything, that could make your life feel more complete or more joyful?
- What is it you are doing or not doing, or feeling or not feeling, that you would like to do or feel more often or more fully?
- What are you doing that you don't want to do? Why are you doing what you don't want to do?
- What do you wish was in your life right now that you do not have in your life right now?
- What can you do or change in your life or your focus right now to live the life you really want to live?
The circumstances of your transition out of high-performance sport or any other high-performance pursuit, or out of a relationship, can determine how challenging it is. For example, if your transition out of your sport, performance domain, or relationship is something you want and are looking forward to, it will be easier than transitioning out of a sport, performance domain, or relationship that you do not want to end.
When you are contemplating a transition in any part of your life, it is helpful to think about the positives and negatives - the potential benefits and probable drawbacks - of staying or leaving. Think about your reasons for wanting to transition out of your sport or high-performance domain. Maybe you are tired of the same old routine or feel like you have been doing this your whole life; maybe you would like to try something new or different; or maybe your performance is declining, your body is hurting, and your injuries are increasing. Or maybe you are tired of being on the road all the time or have financial concerns or relationship issues at home. Maybe you are just ready for a change.
One of the primary reasons high-performance athletes and performers in other demanding high-performance pursuits begin to think about transitioning out of their performance domain is that their performance begins to decline. At some point in your life as a high-performance athlete or high-level performer in any demanding pursuit, you have to transition out of something you excelled at to something else. One advantage in making a transition is that it can lead to a new positive challenge, and you might finally have some time to do other things you have not been able to do because of your complete commitment to your high-performance pursuit. Having time to explore other positive opportunities or find other interesting or positive things to do or pursue might be joyful and challenging in ongoing positive and life-enhancing ways.
Many high-performance athletes who leave their sport initially experience a sense of loss of purpose, value, or personal meaning. The athlete might think, I have been a high-performance athlete and a member of this team for most of my life, so what am I now? However, with time that initial sense of loss can be turned into a golden opportunity to learn or experience something new or different about yourself or find something new that is challenging in positive and life-enhancing ways.
When you are transitioning out of high-performance sport or other performance domains, it is OK to feel disappointed or even a sense of loss, but I can assure you it isn't the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you are a worthless or less valued person. It has nothing to do with your overall value as a human being. Choose to keep things in perspective and learn from your ongoing experiences (good ones and not-so-good ones) by looking for positive lessons in each of those experiences.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What have I learned about myself from my sport or performance experiences?
- What have I learned about my best and less than best performance focus?
- What did I learn from my coaches, teammates, and the people around me?
- What did I learn about how to perform my best in important competitions, challenges, or events that could be applied to other learning or performance pursuits?
- What did I learn in my sport or performance experiences that can help me feel better, connect more fully, or focus in more positive ways in my future performance pursuits or ongoing life challenges?
By reflecting on and applying your best focus to new and exciting challenges, you will move forward quickly in whatever pursuit you choose to fully embrace. When you bring a positive perspective and fully connected focus to any future work or performance pursuit, you will contribute more and gain something of real value from each experience, especially when you continue to draw out and act on the ongoing lessons learned.
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Docide
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
From what you have already read in this book, it has probably become clear to you that the doing side of deciding has the greatest positive effect on your performance and your life. Three critical steps are present in dociding.
- First, decide what you want to improve, change, or act on and why you want to do it.
- Second, decide to do the things you believe will help you make positive changes and ongoing improvements.
- Third, actually do what you decide to do. Doing the good things you decide to do is what will bring meaningful positive change and feelings of success and joy to your life.
Some great examples of the power of dociding have already been presented in this book. Olympic champion Beckie Scott, in the last cross-country race of her World Cup career, docided to focus beyond the extreme fatigue and exhaustion she was feeling and focused all her energy on the step or stride in front of her to win her final World Cup race. Thomas Grandi, after 12 years of competing on the World Cup circuit, docided to focus fully on his first World Cup victory, and then "docided" to do the same thing in his next race for consecutive World Cup wins.
Space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield docided to become an astronaut by taking every step required to become one, even though at the time it was considered an impossible dream because there was no astronaut program in his home country of Canada and there were no opportunities for non-U.S. citizens to be accepted for training to become an astronaut in the United States.
A final example of dociding is the story of my father's docision that saved his life. I took one of my graduate students from China and her family to visit my father on his farm in Maryland when he was 82 years old. My student was an expert in qigong, one of the ancient martial arts. Shortly after her arrival, she led us through some basic qigong exercises, which combined deep abdominal breathing (breathing through the diaphragm) and slow synchronized arm movements. This way of breathing allows a person to get more air into the bottom part of the lungs. Many classical singers, musicians, and endurance athletes use similar breathing techniques. We stood out there by the cornfield, feeling the warmth and freshness of the morning air, and did these qigong breathing exercises for about half an hour.
Six months later, my mother called to tell me that my dad had been in a bad car accident and was in the intensive care unit at the hospital. He had collapsed lungs and a broken sternum. I jumped on the first plane I could get, flew to the nearest airport in Washington, DC, rented a car, and drove to the hospital. By the time I reached his room, he was coherent and I was able to speak with him. He told me what happened.
He was driving down a two-lane country road to pick up some supplies. As he came over a hill and started down the other side, a car in the wrong lane was speeding straight at him. The two vehicles collided head-on. The impact drove the steering wheel and dashboard into my father's chest. At that point he could not breathe, no matter how hard he tried. His first thought was that he was going to die because the pressure of the steering wheel on his chest prevented him from getting any air into his lungs.
In the heat of that moment, when his life was hanging in the balance, he remembered the breathing exercises we had done together next to the cornfield - qigong. He instantly focused on trying to breathe with his lower abdomen, which was not being crushed by the steering wheel. He focused on breathing in slowly and feeling his stomach rise and extend. He was able to get some air into the lower part of his lungs, which kept him alive until the emergency medical team arrived on the scene and was able to extract him from the car and rush him to the hospital.
His dociding to do the abdominal breathing saved his life and gave him another 10 years to live, love, learn, and grow. He worked vigorously on his rehabilitation and paid special attention to strengthening and expanding his breathing capacity through breathing exercises. During his recovery he had every part of his wheel of excellence working for him - focus, commitment, mental readiness, positive images, confidence, distraction control, and ongoing learning. And it worked wonders for him.
These examples show the power of dociding to act on your positive decisions when it really counts - the power of putting the do into your decisions. My father probably would have died within minutes right there in that car if he had not docided to take that one deep abdominal breath, the next one, and then the next. We can extract a positive lesson from his decision: one deliberate breath, one deliberate positive action, one positive step forward can change the course of your life. In my father's case, taking one positive breath and then another and another literally gave him the gift of another 10 years to do the things he loved to do, to reconnect with family, to meet grandchildren he would never have met, and to embrace the simple joys in his life.
The same is true for Thomas Grandi when he won his first back-to-back World Cup alpine skiing races, for Beckie Scott when she won her Olympic gold medal and then World Cup medal in cross-country skiing when she was sick and completely exhausted, and for space shuttle commander Chris Hadfield when a farm boy from Ontario became one of the most highly respected astronauts in the history of the NASA space program. Without the help of a deliberate and sustained positive focus and without dociding to pursue their goals and live their dreams, they never would have arrived at their desired destinations. This is the power of focus!
I know that you or someone close to you probably has or will have a story about the power of his or her own fully connected focus and positive docisions. If you feel so inclined, e-mail me one of those happy docision stories at excel@zoneofexcellence.ca. I know I will learn from it, and perhaps I will be able to share it with others who can also learn or grow from it.
- Docide to pursue your dreams.
- Docide to make the improvements that you are seeking.
- Docide to become the best person and performer you can be and have the potential to be.
- Docide to fully live your gift of life and embrace the simple joys to the fullest every day.
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