learning

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I had a bad dream last night. One of the reasons that I am so invested in looking after other people’s mindsets is that I was, once, pretty beset by anxiety dreams. One returned last night. I now know what to do; how to deal with the subsequent feelings and thoughts I experience. Within a few moments, it was gone, dwindling like a match to its charred end.

The imagery is crucial here. Thoughts are very much like matches. If they are used in certain ways, they can start fires. Incredible, powerful, life-changing fires. Every great idea in the world started as a thought. These thoughts can propel you to achieve almost anything; feats of endurance, strength, ingenuity, passion, love and peace, all owe their existence to thought.

The flip side is the same as the match. A single match can be deadly. It can light a fire that spreads, engulfing almost everything in its way. A bad thought infects others, twisting your mindset into negativity and if unchecked, leads you down a desperate and destructive path.

Life’s challenge is about choosing which thoughts (or matches) to use as a catalyst and which to let burn out. Notice the idea of choice here though. You are in control of these things. That’s probably something to bear in mind.

“A person with great dreams can achieve great things.” Dr Bob Rotella

Notice also that my words are interchangeable. I started talking about ‘dreams’ and now it’s ‘thoughts’. That’s on purpose. They are exactly the same thing, originating from the same source: your mind. And yet, curiously, we dismiss bad dreams with more ease. We wake, perhaps startled, our heart racing, our brow moist, and try to catch a moment. In a few seconds, we realise that it wasn’t real; it was ‘just a dream’, and will often soothe ourselves back to safety. Later that day you may even struggle to remember what the bad dream was about. We are so good at releasing them.

But a thought? We can carry around bad thoughts for days, weeks, months, even years! A bad thought stays with us, we burden ourselves with it, ruminating on it, often deliberately, and it can be returned to and enhanced at will.

We convince ourselves that our thoughts are not in our control, that they are something we are given and have to deal with, despite the undeniable truth that we are responsible for them. We choose to think about certain things. We are not some passenger exposed to whatever the mind thinks, we are the one thinking it. We are driving and where we want to go is down to us.

“People, by and large, become what they think about themselves.” William James

It seems so ridiculously simple, almost fatuous: if you want to change how you feel, you must change your thinking; change what you think about and your feelings will follow. Because feelings only come from thoughts.

Let me try and explain what I mean. Imagine being in a queue for lunch. You know that lasagne is being served and it’s your favourite. It’s a very good dish and always delicious. When you reach the front of the queue, all of the lasagne is gone and you are handed a tuna salad. You take your seat crestfallen, the thought of being without has you feeling very disappointed. It is really not fair that you’ve missed out. You then think back to other times this has happened in your life; it seems to happen to you a lot and you fall further into your mood: disappointment moves to sadness and a feeling of victimisation. Your physiology is representing these feelings: your head is down, your shoulders are slouched, and your facial expression is not welcoming. Someone approaches the table to sit next to you and sees how despondent you look. Not wanting to get involved, they move elsewhere and sit down next to someone else. You see this happen out of the corner of your eye and it generates a further thought of rejection and loneliness. A greater sense of melancholy is achieved. One thought has spread like a fire and caused a fair amount of damage.

Now, imagine being in the same queue and the same thing happens. But you’re able to quickly extinguish that initial thought of disappointment and you sit and eat your salad, comfortable in the reflection that a bit of protein, fibre and plant-based goodness will be better for you today. Your physiology mirrors this and when someone approaches your table, they are happy to sit down next to someone that looks content and relaxed. They strike up a conversation with you and reveal that they aren’t able to go to the football match tonight and offer you the tickets they have. You take them up on their offer and visit the stadium with your son and have a wonderful evening.

It sounds like ‘sliding doors’, like a happenstance due to serendipity or chance. But it’s not. It’s down to mindset, and in particular, your ability to let thoughts go.

We cannot control what life hands us. But we can control how we respond. Most importantly, we can control the way we think about things. And in a way, as the ‘lasagne’ example shows, that affects how people behave towards us. We can see bad, unhelpful thoughts arriving. And, like the lit match, we can choose what we do with it. In this case, in the first instance, the thought of ‘no lasagne’ leads to a fire spreading and causing greater issue. But in the second, the match is extinguished and the danger is prevented.

“Winners and losers are self determined. But only the winners are willing to admit to it.” John Wooden, 9-time National Basketball Champion at UCLA

‘This is all very well and good,’ I can hear you thinking, ‘but in the busyness of our daily routines, it can be very difficult to step back and see things this rationally.’ Well, yes, it is. But it’s not impossible. And the only way we get better at something is to practice and the first thing to do in order to start practising is to spot it when it happens. Most of my work with people is about getting them to think about their thinking. Once you have that, a lot of the other stuff follows.

The next time it happens, see if you can intercept a bad thought. That’s the first step to owning a better, stronger mind. Intercept it and let it burn out. Metaphorically, even literally if you are using your good deep breaths, gently blow it out. Over time, you’ll get better and better at seeing them coming: better and better at letting them dwindle to their charred end. And in time, everything will just be better.

(The quotes in this piece are all from Dr. Bob Rotella’s book ‘Golf Is Not A Game Of Perfect’. Dr. Rotella is the best-known golf psychologist in the world. Since 1984, golfers coached by Doc have won more than 300 Tournaments and 74 Majors! And one of the first thing he does with them all is what I’ve done with you here: he gets them to think about their thinking.)

Dr. Bob Rotella (left) with Open Champion Padraig Harrington

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The Sky Sports Commentary team are waxing lyrical about Joe Root; England’s premier batter is showing his class once more. He has notched up his 10,000th run, in what seems like record time, and, relieved of the captaincy and under the new test match stewardship of Ben Stokes and Brendan McCullum, appears to be playing some of his best cricket.

Joe Root celebrating another century knock

But then something is said in commentary that really piques my interest: “Joe Root always seems to play well at this ground. And that’s definitely ‘a thing’: you turn up at a ground and you just know you’re going to play well.”

The ground in question is Trent Bridge. The scene of Root’s most recent test match century, against New Zealand in the June of 2022. And while this is an idea that is not new or unusual, whatever sport you are playing, it is worth examining more closely.

Is this an actual thing? Does Trent Bridge have some sort of inherent power over Joe Root’s batting ability? For a mind coach working with the performance of sportspeople, the answer is simple and complex; it is ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.

Let’s deal with the most logical and obvious answer: ‘No’. Of course it doesn’t; that is preposterous. Trent Bridge, like any other international cricket ground in the world, has no inherent power at all. It’s an inanimate venue with no magic or mysticism ingrained in any part of it. Trent Bridge has no idea whom Joe Root is because Trent Bridge doesn’t have the capability of thought, cognisance or basic recognition of anything. It is a passive entity. It is powerless.

And yet, and yet, many of you will have read those comments from the commentary box, or heard them at the time, and nodded to yourself. Many of us have played sport, some of us may well have played sport to a very good level, and all of us will have recognised the concept that is being put forward. In a way, Trent Bridge does have a power, because Joe Root feels good playing at that ground, and when he feels good, he plays well. But, and this is the most crucial part, the power does not exist at Trent Bridge, it exists in Joe Root’s mind.

Joe Root is a brilliant batter. Capable of scoring lots of runs at any cricket ground in the world. But on some days, at some venues, he bats better. And understanding why (or how) is the nirvana all sportspeople are trying to work out the route to.

The problem with sport is that it’s not easy. And the reason it’s not easy is that most sports have tricky technical aspects, which require many layers of skill and judgement. Sportspeople practice for years before getting to the levels we see on TV: Malcolm Gladwell in his seminal book ‘Outliers’ put forward the idea of 10,000 hours of practice before expertise is achieved in a particular skill. Many sports have numerous skills within them, and being professionally good at any sport takes a great deal of applied effort and time. Rising to international level, the skill level is almost incomprehensible.

Through years of practice, once you have conquered these particular skills, you are looking to ingrain that skill into your body so that you can perform them ‘under pressure’. Now, pressure is an interesting concept because, as we were alluding to earlier, pressure only exists in the mind. It is an internal force: yes, it is definitely a thing capable of ruining performances, but is only produced by the mind of the person attempting the skill.

But let’s park that particular idea and return to the idea of your body being so practised to do something, it can produce it on demand. In Joe Root’s case, hitting a bowled cricket ball through the covers for four. He needs to be able to recognise the delivery from the bowler, move all the different parts of his body (feet, body, legs, arms, hands) in coordination with each other to get into position, at exactly the right moment, to allow the centre of his bat to meet the moving cricket ball; with the perfect angle and timing, so that maximum energy is transferred into the ball to exert it, at speed, through the gap in the field, with enough momentum to cross the boundary rope 85 yards away. To do all this, is, without question, a physiological masterstroke. And to complete this, he needs his mind to be completely in tune. In fact, he probably needs his mind to get out of the way; allow the right physiological neurons to fire and let his body do what he has ingrained into the ‘memory’ of every muscle he possesses.

We need to agree something before we go any further: we perform at our best when we are free of internal tension. When I talk to musicians, dancers, sportspeople, speakers, business executives, parents, school children, they all agree that they are at their best when they aren’t tense. They achieve their potential when they move freely, almost without thought. A tense, braced, strained body will not move as quickly, as fluidly, as purposefully as a relaxed body. This is why we see athletes shaking their bodies down ahead of a race or event. They are trying to stay loose. So that they can react to any and all eventualities.

Tension in the body comes from thought. Pretty much every physiological response we have comes from a thought in the mind. Danger signals emanate from the amygdala and trigger a physiological reply. The only way around this issue is to not have those thoughts. And one of the best places to be to avoid those thoughts is in a place of comfort and confidence. Trent Bridge has become, in Root’s mind, a place of comfort and confidence. In opposition, another ground may hold for him a memory of a bad dismissal or poor shot and so, danger is present in the mind of Joe Root; it interferes with his body by producing unwanted tension, and he doesn’t play as well, adding substance to the idea that that ground holds some sort of inherent power over his ability.

Don Macpherson’s background in Formula One would see this phenomenon at particular circuits. “This is my favourite track,” the driver would say, “I always perform well round here.” And of course, they invariably would. Free from any tension, their body, trained over years of expert practice, would perform at its peak, allowing the fallacy to continue.

In conclusion, I can understand why commentators, sportspeople and members of the watching public believe this is a thing: that there are certain spaces, venues, stadia, courses, grounds where you perform better. But it’s not a power inherent in something else. It exists in your mind. The trick is identifying the concept, removing the thought, and recognising that your skill or technical prowess is yours to control. That your talent is performed best when you get your mind and its invasive thoughts out of the way. You are brilliant and can be brilliant wherever and whenever you need to be, you just have to recognise that it is all in your control.

You have the power, don’t give it to the powerless.

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I am always looking to the world of sport for lessons in mind coaching and teaching. I’m constantly learning from all sport and I love to read about the way that various coaches and managers get better performances from their players.

There’s a coach at the moment who is making waves in football. Not for his overt management of a few multi-million-pound-a-year footballers, but for how he quietly goes about getting the best out of every player in his team. In fact, his club are becoming well-known for their ability to create very good players – taking players that other clubs aren’t drawn to, and making them a lot better.