Often we feel anxiety and worry about a particular part of ourselves and/or our sport or business. Often we feel powerless to control this anxiety. In this article, we learn how to not only take back the power, but also to use the anxiety to our own advantage. From here we can start to make a huge difference to our day-to-day lives and use anxiety to our advantage.
The key here is what goes on in the mind, and is a challenge many of the sports professionals and business executives I work with have come up against.
The answer to almost every mental challenge faced by us all is hidden in the subconscious mind. This is the part of the mind that is very powerful, and is far less easy to communicate directly with than the conscious mind. With training, this becomes easier.
I advise you to be aware that anxiety is a poke from the unconscious mind that it is time to focus on what you do want.
When we take a look at what is happening when we are anxious, we find that we are focusing our thoughts on what we don’t want.
So if an athlete is anxious about his performance—guess what their subconscious mind is going to offer up? You guessed it—examples of poor performance!
Here’s the learning: use anxiety as a tool. Becoming anxious tells you categorically to change your focus to the positive.
If you have a competition or important event coming up and you feel uneasy, gently refocus on a positive outcome. Do this each and every time an anxious thought comes up for you. It will take repetition. Every new movement does. This will be you training your “memory muscle”.
It’s the same in life and work as in sport. Daily I check in with my own thoughts. Often the first sign I have that my thoughts are not optimum is when I realize I feel uncomfortable or uneasy. As soon as I realize that’s happening I know I have allowed my mind to wander to thoughts that bring me no success.
Enjoy thinking yourself into being positive, after all you train your body each day and you are an amazing individual – why not use mental training as a tool to give you your edge to win?
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