Conveys the importance of being volitional with your mental attitude and self-concept, as well as conveying the importance of being "mindful about your mindfulness"--cultivating the ability to observe and adjust your mental attitude. The context here is (obviously) sports, but the book's ideas can be applied to all life domains.
It could be better organized and certain chapters could be better structured, but these are minor criticisms of useful book that is a genuine gift from the author. I thank her for writing this book and for sharing her thoughts.
Notes:
1) "The philosophy behind this work is that for athletes to control and channel physical energy most effectively, they must be aware of their thoughts and intentions. Your thoughts are your reality. Your intentions are your goals--the reality you wish to achieve in your sport participation and your life. What are your goals? What are your intentions for the day, the week, the month, and the season?"
2) "The pictures in your mind have real power; you create your own reality with your mental images--how you "see" yourself and your abilities, whether positively or negatively."
3) "In this program, you will learn, practice, and apply mental skills through:
* Setting short and long-term goals
* Changing negative thought patterns and perceptions into positive thought patterns and belief systems (reframing)
* Writing affirmations about and in support of your athletic performance
* Performing progressive relaxation techniques
* Using visualization and imagery of your sport
* Concentrating and focusing
* Coping mentally with injury and pain
4) You have to be ready to change. Make change a priority. Be willing to take risks. Do something new and let go of worries about looking or feeling stupid.Take action. Write these ideas down and really think about what you were doing mentally when you play and practice.
What do I trust most and least about my athletic performance?
[e.g.: Most: that I never double fault, that I can do what I want with my forehand, that I can hit clean overheads and see the ball well at the times I wish to, that I'm quick and mobile around the court, that I'm strong]
[Least: That my backhand will break down under pressure, then I'll get tense at the moment that I need to strike an aggressive ball, that I don't believe in myself, that I'm frail or my body does not respond well to training, that I cannot win]
5) Training yourself to be willing to do the following:
* Take risks
* Feel what is going on for you, especially in competition
* Be in the present moment and let go of the past
* Breathe when you are tense or scared
* Have fun and enjoy yourself
* Trust yourself and the process
* Participate 100% without fear of failure
6) Five simple tools:
1) mental log keeping
2) effective goal setting
3) positive self talk
4) relaxation techniques
5) visualization or imagery
7) Daily mental practice to prepare you for all possibilities and help you cope positively with the unexpected.
8) Phil Jackson from Sacred Hoops: On being brave, but also being compassionate toward yourself, your teammates, and your opponents.
9) Mental skills evaluation
Items where I scored low, actions I can take to improve these areas
Mental log keeping
Effective goal setting
Positive self talk
10) "Just as you keep track of your physical training and conditioning, so should you keep track of your mental training." Most of the time you are not aware of what your thoughts are or how they help her hinder you, thus keeping a written log to monitor and analyze your thoughts and responses will help you become more aware of your mental processes. "As you progress you will eventually have more control over your patterns of thought and your beliefs, and therefore more control over your performance."
Mental training log to keep after workouts, events, etc., where you document your inner thoughts, pictures, fears, emotional strengths. This tells you how you think, react, process and supports your physical performance and competence.
11) What is happening in your head? Are you breathing? How does your body feel? Relaxed, or tense? What is your reaction to this physical state? What is your inner voice saying?
After 3 or 4 weeks of training, go back to the beginning of the log and read through your mental process. Do you notice any patterns? What do you do in your mind that helps you perform at your peak? Become aware of the times you feel the most powerful and the times you feel powerless, frustrated, and out of control.
Your log entries will help you form your goals and find the places you need affirmations and visualizations to assist you. The patterns you see are important in creating your working goals.
12) Goal setting as a cumulative, directional system.
30 day, 60 day and 1 year goals
Free associating all goals you'd like, then tightening then to action steps you can take towards them.
Goal:
Action step 1
Action step 2
Action step 3
"It is important for all people, whether they are athletes or not, to have dreams and visions for the future, and who is to say what is realistic and what is not?"
13) On "letting go" of a goal. Learning to surrender with style and grace. Letting go is not the same as giving up. It is simply moving on, setting new goals and visions, interesting the process of your own personal path.
Applying the same discipline, training, goal setting, to become a peak performer in other fields.
Training down: rather than stopping cold turkey from a sport, the athlete gives himself time physically and emotionally to let go of his goals.
Make a list of all that you've gained from a sport, the competition, all your successes, all the positives.
Make a list of all your regrets, developing a process for acknowledging your feelings. Let go by burning the list as a small ritual.
Write affirmations about letting go of this cycle of your life.
14) On writing verbal and written affirmations:
* "I am" statements,
* in the present,
* as if they are true,
* what you WANT to be true,
* and as IF they are true, even if they may not be right now.
They are meant to change your psychology on a subconscious level. "Positive, present tense, and personal." The subconscious doesn't take in negatives. They are positive in order to change negative thoughts. E.g.: "My future is filled with abundance and prosperity.""I am graceful and quick on the tennis court""I have powerful, consistent groundstrokes that I hit confidently." "I am fit, fast and strong""I can beat anyone I play" "I enjoy the present" "I am grateful when I play tennis"... and so on.
Review and make these affirmations in the morning and evening, make them a habit.
Also match affirmative statements to your goals: short-term, medium-term and long term.
Transforming negative thoughts into positive affirmations.
15) Chapter 5: on relaxation states and balance
Balance between training and rest, work and play, relaxation and readiness. "How do you find balance and harmony within yourself so that you are in a relaxed state? Step one is to become aware of the activities, the people, and the places that give you joy, peace, support, learning, and growth. People seem to be very good at knowing all the things, situations, people, and so on that make them feel insecure, angry, or frustrated with themselves. To be an effective and successful athlete, you should know who and what promote your centeredness, confidence, relaxation, and your ability to have fun."
Finding balance through relaxation
* Breathing deeply, diaphragmatic breathing. * Meditating
* Tai chi
* Massage
* Yoga
* Flotation/sensory deprivation tanks
Relaxing progressively: tensing and relaxing each of the major muscle groups of the body one at a time.
Tensing muscles and then relaxing them across your body progressively, with deep breathing. Including your face, neck shoulders up and down your arms, legs etc.
16) Chapter 6: Visualization
Seeing "from within," inside your mind from the perspective of your own eyes, versus:
Seeing "from without," mentally visualizing/watching yourself perform an athletic task.
Also visualizing with feelings, physical responses or the sounds or words or experiences you have rather than a visual experience in a mental picture.
You want to be able to do all these modalities of visualization!
17) Learning styles: visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. Thus with your visualization technique, can you use all three: visual, auditory and kinesthetic imagery.
Visualizing yourself performing perfectly and achieving exactly what you want.
Vividly experienced imagery that is both seen and felt.
18) "Once you have established one of your goals and written supporting affirmations, you are ready to begin creating the content of a specific visualization. When you were first learning to create visualizations, you should write them down as you go along. This will help you incorporate as many senses as possible and enable you to read them several times before you start using them."
Visualizing yourself as strong, relaxed, smooth, centered, quick, etc. Remember your feelings of confidence, fitness, and mental toughness.
19) See attached photo for 10 steps to writing your own visualization. Break it into three basic parts: the beginning (before you compete), the middle (the competition itself), and the end (your victory lap, your warm down, you return to the locker room, etc).
20) 30 pages here (p72-105) of different visualization texts: for reaching a goal, achieving power, for various sports, etc.
Some creative examples here, like:
* visualizing a poster if you achieving some success and then (mentally) shrinking that poster down to a small credit card size card that you can take out and look at it anytime you like
* Arriving at the tennis courts, feeling the air and the environment, hearing the sounds of balls and rackets, visualizing yourself enjoying anticipating the match, visualizing the feeling in your stomach and in your body, a little nervousness, visualizing yourself being motivated by these feelings,
* visualizing yourself embracing adversity, fighting at certain key points in the match, visualizing yourself believing in yourself, being confident, relaxed, visualizing yourself using these mantras while playing, while facing adversity. Really meta!
21) Using a "cue word" ("relax," "see," etc) to bring you two in affirmative state and free you from negative thought patterns in the moment.
More verbal affirmation/visualization examples: "I'm quick. I'm fast. When the time is right, I go for it! I'm mentally tough."
"This chapter has given you all the tools you need to write your own visualizations. You can use the specific visualizations for your sport, or change them, or write something entirely new for yourself." Record yourself saying the words of the visualization, listen to it once per day during the week before your competition.
22) Chapter 7: focusing, refocusing, overcoming burnout
Keeping your motivation high while training hard. Peak performance.
Use of concentration techniques."What are you paying attention to? What is your focus? If you are paying attention to your negative self-talk, you will play poorly. If you are focused on your technique, your breathing, your body, the ball, or the person you regarding, you will have the opportunity to play your best."
"You must be conscious of your process of thinking and have the ability to change it if it is not working for you."
"An important part of focusing comes when you have made a mistake. You must be able to regain your focus and make the best of the situation you're in. Stopping negative self-talk, forgiving yourself, and resolving to do better in the next play go a long way toward enabling you to play your best."
23) Techniques for focusing/refocusing:
* Keep eye control. Notice where you are looking, make sure you are looking at the ball.
* Control your mind and body, using words such as "calm," "breathe," or "focus." These help you pay attention and direct your attention.
* Use mini visualizations, of you doing what you want to do in certain situations.
* Blink your eyes 4-5 times, squeeze your eyes shut and then open wide 4-5 times, the take three deep breaths, then move your eyes side to side, from far left to far right. Then refocus on what you are doing.
* Remember to breathe
* Meditate
On burnout: ask yourself why am I playing this sport?
On slumps: "focus on things you can control, keep a long-term perspective on your performance, and revert to the positive mental mechanics you exhibited when you were playing well."
24) Maintaining motivation:
Get enough sleep
Cross train
Spend time in nature
Meditate
Listen to music
Energy psychology therapies, like EFT (the emotional freedom technique) or EMDR.
25) Chapter 8: troubleshooting performance blocks
The Yerkes-Dodson law: if a little is good, a whole lot is not necessarily better.
Most blocks athletes experience come from negative self talk and negative belief systems about themselves.
"People spend too much time seeking approval from others, when the most important approval must come from themselves."
26) Difficult affirmations that are worth using:
I am aggressive!
I am patient
I belong here
I let go of any upset when rejected
I learn from my mistakes
I let go with ease and grace
I get over mistakes easily
I find it easy to let go of self-criticism
I am important
I am worthy of respect
I am proud of myself and my accomplishments
It is easy for me to ask for what I want
I am centered and relaxed
I am strong, powerful and centered
I listen easily
I breathe fully and deeply
I acknowledge my successes
This is fun!
I welcome abundance and prosperity into my life
etc.
27) Dealing with fears:
If you are concerned about your fears you are focusing outside yourself. Refocus on yourself, your breathing, etc.
28) How I look at success:
How does succeeding feel to you?
What do you say to yourself and others when you are succeeding or when you feel successful?
What do you look like when you are succeeding?
List out:
My fears of success are:
Four affirmations to counter my fears
29) Risk taking:
Leaders and peak performers see risk as taking a chance and trying something new and different. Risking failure, losing face, etc. Going towards your fear.
The anxiety that comes from avoidance is much worse than the action you can take that you're afraid to take.
30) Preventing choking
* Maintaining technique under pressure
* Breathing through a block. ("Breathe!" "What? Of course I breathe." Notice the pushback that people will give to the seemingly too-simple idea of breathing).
* "It will help you to begin noticing in any tense situation, either athletic or in your personal or work life, whether or not you are holding your breath or breathing shallowly."
31) Managing anger
Just like managing fear, use these same steps:
1) Acknowledge your anger and feelings
2) Breathe to calm yourself
3) Relax your shoulders neck and abdomen
4) Say and write affirmations for controlling anger
5) Visualize feeling relaxed and in control [example visualization/affirmation: I forgive myself for missing a point. I encourage and support myself with my talk. I let go of mistakes and focus on the next shot. Between points, I let go of the last point and think about the next shot. I play aggressively and well, especially if I'm behind. I think positively during a match. I am mentally tough in each match I play. When I'm ahead, I play even more aggressively. I love playing well, and I have fun playing. I am calm, cool, and collected on the court. I have a positive attitude.]
Most visualizations in the book ask you to come up with a single word to represent the specific thoughts and feelings you're working on in the visualization, and to use that word as a technique to bring back the thoughts and feelings that you want to have during a given circumstance.
32) Chapter 9: mental training for specific needs
* Coping with an injury: resisting the pain or the fact of the injury itself empowers the injury/pain.
* Resistance is similar to negative self-talk because it creates negativity and a negative power.
* Contrast this with acceptance and acknowledgment. This is not giving up, this is nearly deciding to stop fighting the pain or the injury.
* Look at it as a learning experience, acknowledge it.
Resisting or being angry at the injury or the part of your body that is in pain is just like negative self-talk, it creates negativity and brings negative power. Instead you want to bring the pain or the injury into your heart literally let go of the fear and anger connected with your pain. This allows you to work with it in a constructive manner. This is acceptance and acknowledgment, and it creates an internal climate for healing. It is not giving up. It is merely to stop fighting against the pain or injury.
33) People are taught to run from their pain, especially psychological pain. See Steven Levine's book Healing Into Life and Death (1987). You must be tenacious and focusing on healing, and you must be hopeful about the outcome. Setting goals, finding reasons to take joy in the process.
Many people see the experience of an injury is a disaster, others see it as an opportunity to display courage and resilience.
34) Affirmation examples:
* I am becoming stronger and healthier every day.
* I am healing my body.
* My body heals quickly and well.
Couple these affirmations with a visualization program, literally visually visualizing the healing process, visualizing your progress, and the result. See yourself whole and with a healthy body. Imagine yourself performing exactly as you want to perform, without pain or weakness.
Keep a training log for tracking the injury and your recovery from it.
Ask the injury what is its purpose, what is it asking of you?
35) Mental training for life:
* What I have always wanted
* Roadblocks for why I can't have this.
* How I can overcome these roadblocks (action plan).. this third step helps you understand and clarify what you consider your limits.
* Keep a mental training log for life goals.
36) "Successful people, successful leaders, and successful athletes have the following in common: they have a total belief in themselves and their abilities; they have absolute and total concentration and focus; they do visualization or imagery of their performance for days or weeks before an event; they analyze any losses in order to improve performance, techniques, and strategy; they have the ability to let go of losses and failures easily and look forward to new challenges and future events; and they never see themselves as losers, even after losing a competition or experiencing failure. Successful people see failures as feedback, and they see losses as opportunities to do something different."