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Rituals and Routines to Keep You Present in your Performances – Part 3 in the Learning How to Win Series

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In Part 2 of this series I discussed the creation of a Performance Evaluation System, a way to compare a current performance to an ideal performance from the past using Visualization. This comparison allows you to determine, quickly, whether or not you are on the right track to your best performances every day. As an example, if you know what your ideal energy state is for performing your best, and you do a quick system check before you start your match by comparing how you feel in this current moment to what you felt like when you performed your best, you can quickly determine what your next move is – either maintain, pump up or calm down.

Being in the constant state of awareness is a practiced skill until it becomes automatic. So, how can you get to a place where you are, more often than not, right here in the present, simple, rituals and routines. For the purposes of this discussion, I will define a ritual as an action that is taken repetitively. To illustrate this, make a short list right now of things you do in the morning to get ready for work, school or play. My list looks something like this – turn off the alarm, brush my teeth, get dressed, have breakfast, pack my lunch, etc. Well, there it is a list of rituals. So then, what is a routine? A routine, as I define it, is the linking of several rituals in a specific order that is repeated over and over. That’s it. Once you look at it like this you will quickly realize that you have many such rituals and routines that get you through your daily life.

The key to establishing performance rituals and routines is first to identify what you are currently doing and determine if that is effectively and consistently helping you achieve your best performances every day – if it is, great, keep doing it. If you don’t currently have a specific performance routine here are a couple of ideas to get you started.

First, identify the two distinct time periods that you need to manage during point play – live play (while actively engaged in playing the point) and what you do after the end of one point and the beginning of the next. Next, have you ever looked at what you do between points? You should. Start there. List out what you do from the time one point ends and the next begins. You have 25 seconds between each point, how do you use each second? This is the first step to creating a successful routine.

Now that you have a list of rituals that you do between points, determine the order in which the rituals occur most consistently. What you do not know yet, is whether or not you have the right rituals and whether or not they are in the right order. This is the fun part, you get to use the Experimental Method described in Part 1 of this series to determine, by trial and error, what works best for you.

For more ideas you should go online and look up some of the best players in the world and see what they do. Just because a particular ritual works for a professional player doesn’t mean it will work for you, however, it will give you more ideas to consider. If you take for instance, Rafael Nadal’s famous hair behind the ear slide or underwear adjustment tug, these might not work for you but will give you some food for thought and something different to try. A more common ritual is the bouncing of the ball prior serving. Djokovic bounces the ball many times before settling in to play the point. Other players will bounce a fewer number of times. The number is up to you. The point is that by repeating the same rituals over and over exactly the same way in a particular order, helps to keep your mind where it needs to be to play your best. That is, it keeps your mind in the present moment, and if your routines are strong enough it is virtually impossible for outside, distractive, thoughts to creep in and distract you. Not get out there and try it out.

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For more information about Mental Performance, contact Scott Del Mastro, M.A. at Club Med Academies – 772-323-0625 or www.clubmedacademies.com

Creating Your Own Performance Evaluation System – Part 2 in the Learning How to Win Series

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In Part 1 of this series I discussed the relationship between confidence and winning and concluded that building a habit of winning is best developed by using the Scientific Method and proposing a hypothesis (game plan) each time you go out to compete. Once a hypothesis is created the next step is to improve your ability to coach yourself, to see what a coach would see and then make the necessary simple adjustments to your game plan that will allow you to perform better as you go.

Learning how to better understand why you performed the way you did during your performance takes time and needs a basis of comparison – a standard by which to compare how you performed to how you would have like to perform; hence, the development of your own Evaluation System. So, how would you like to perform? Try this simple exercise to find out:

Visualization Exercise

STEP 1
Identify your Ideal Performance State (IPS) using visualization to remember your best performances. For the purpose of this exercise, just pick one performance that stands out among the rest. In the future you can use the same process for any performance that you remember.

STEP 2
Understand what visualization is. Simply, it is focused daydreaming. Closing your eyes and remembering as many details from a past performance that you can and learning to see them in even greater detail.

STEP 3
Find a quite relaxing place. Sit in a comfortable chair making sure that your posture is straight and your arms are relaxed and resting on your legs.

STEP 4
Close your eyes and bring your attention to your breathing. At first, just pay attention to how you are breathing normally; how the air comes into your nose or mouth and how it exits. How your chest rises and falls with each breath.

STEP 5
Use a 3 count breathing technique to focus your breathing even more. Inhale through your nose for 3 seconds. Hold that breath for 3 seconds. Exhale that breath slowly through your mouth for 3 seconds. Repeat 10 cycles or until your attention is completely on your breathing and your body is more relaxed.

STEP 6
Breathe normally and shift your attention to the location of where your best performance occurred. Review, in detail, specific elements of the location. What city was it in? What did the surroundings look like? What were the courts, course, or field like? What were other conditions of the playing environment? Did they play fast or slow during your performance? What was the temperature that day? Etc.

STEP 7
Shift your attention to being on the court during the performance and ask yourself a few more questions. What were you wearing that day? How were you feeling – excited, calm, happy, nervous, …….? What was your heart rate during the performance? What was your breathing tempo – short quick breaths, or slow deep breaths?

STEP 8
See yourself performing. You chose this past event as one of your best. You need to bring your attention to the things that happened in this performance that caused you to select it as your best, and then seek to understand why they helped you play your best.

That is basically it, using visualization to identify the elements that caused your best performances. Once you understand the things that help you perform your best, then it is simply a matter of repeating those elements again and again (see Part 3 in this series on rituals and routines) to achieve the performance state that you want.

Often, it can feel, for the inexperienced athlete, that ideal performances are random, and in the beginning phases of competitive development, they can be; but as we develop our abilities and get closer to mastering our skills we realize that our best performances are not random, they are managed and calculated. And when we allow ourselves the freedom to enjoy what we have trained so hard to do we learn that playing in the ZONE, as someone has termed it, is not out of our reach.

The goal is to train ourselves to be completely present in our performance. To pay attention to when our mind drifts to things that hinder our performances and don’t help us stay present; and not to fight ourselves when things don’t go the way we expect them to go, but rather use the Experimental Method as described in Part 1 to quickly reset, and pay attention to what happens next.

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Part 3 in the “Learning How to Win” series will focus on establishing rituals and routines that will help us repeat our best performance over and over again.

What Comes First Confidence or Winning? – Part 1 in Learning How to Win

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Do you remember the age old adage about the chicken and the egg? Isn’t it the same with confidence and winning? They both fit into the category of a paradox that leads to a path of confusion. And although the mind puzzles are thought provoking and a fun conversation with friends, my contention is that they are a waste of time to think about, when there is work to be done.

Yet the word confidence and its meaning have been correlated so heavily with winning and losing that it is almost a mainstream postulate (fact) that people rely on to describe why they performed the way they did. Almost as if it were an accepted variable in the formula of success – Confidence + practice + fitness conditioning + strategy + experience + luck (luck is a whole other discussion for another day) + other = winning/success.

Let’s look more closely at the conundrum of confidence as it may relate to the outcome of our performances. Even Marrium-Webster has success tied to confidence in their first two definitions of the word:

1. a feeling or consciousness of one’s powers or of reliance on one’s circumstances – had perfect confidence in her ability to succeed

2. the quality or state of being certain : certitude they had every confidence of success

I would like to offer a different approach to winning and success, one that does not lead, typically, to a provoked emotional response when things don’t go the way you expect them to go – the experimental method.

The prime method of inquiry in science is the experiment. The key features are control over variables, careful measurement, and establishing cause and effect relationships. An experiment is an investigation in which a hypothesis is scientifically tested.

So then, the key is to understand what a hypothesis is.

a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

Therefore we must make a game plan (hypothesis) based on variables that we know about a situation or opponent, add in what we know about ourselves (strengths and weaknesses), create a system of measurement and evaluation, take a deep breath and then “grip it and rip it” as my coach used to say. In other words, just start playing and see what happens, evaluate the cause and effect of what happens, adjust, readjust, stick to this process and navigate your way to improvement and success every time you play.

Please comment below with questions and or feedback from your own experiences….
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Part 2 in the “Learning How to Win” series will focus on how to create an evaluation system that takes the focus off of winning and places it on the process of winning.

FUTURE DISCUSSION:
– Performance Evaluation Systems
– Game Plans
– Expectation Management

Lean Into The Cross

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Jesus says it, as noted in Matthew 16:24, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” For me this is best illustrated in the movie The Passion of the Christ when Jesus falls to his knees in front of the cross he must carry through the city streets on his way to Calvary Hill where he faced certain death by crucifixion. Just before he dropped to his knees from what must have been fatigue after being paraded and beaten I sensed a moment of relief. Relief in his eyes and body language that I interpreted as the knowledge that the end was near and that he would soon be with his father. To see, in tangible and certain terms, the path that I must walk through the clarity that Jesus seemed to see in that moment has stuck with me and liberated and inspired and challenged me to start more deeply searching for the cross that I must burden.
Take Up Their Cross - www.scottdelmastro.com

The Work That Must Be Done

This scene has always stuck with me since the first time I saw it when the movie was first released. It captured, for me, the meaning of “take up their cross and follow me”. Yes it was going to be a burden to carry it as shown by the struggle of the actor playing Jesus, but it was going to be the work that must be done, the work that God was calling me to do. Jesus seemed to understand, in that moment that God was in control, and was relieved to the core of his sole (or so I interpreted) to have finally seen the cross (or the God breathed burden) itself. Knowing clearly that the time had come and that his path was clear.

More powerfully yet, when Jesus fell to his knees he relievingly reached out grasping and wrapping his arms around the cross leaning into it with a sighful breath, and an exclamation of self denial crying out “I am your servant, Father…” a surrender that indicated to me that he was all in, fully committed in mind, body and sole, to which he gathered himself and continued onward to his death and ultimately his resurrection.

Leverage

Do you know what leverage is? Put it this way, with the right leverage one person can do something that they would not otherwise be able to do without it. Like lift loads that would usually be to heavy to lift for one person. Like if I sit down on the ground and position my back against a wall and place my feet toward the bottom at the base of a refrigerator and slowly apply pressure with my legs in a particular direction I can easily begin to slide the refrigerator across the floor of the kitchen. However, as soon as I move my back away from the wall and have nothing to push back against, I lose my leverage and am no longer able to push the refrigerator any further. The point being that I need the wall, without it I am limited on how far I can push the refrigerator.

We see and use leverage all the time in our everyday lives but often miss it or take it for granted because it has become such a common tool in how we do things. Above I gave a physical lifting example, but what about a cognitive example, “Johnny, if you do your chores today I will take you to the movies on the weekend”; or “…if you get good grades you will be able to go to college, and if you do well in college you will be able to get a good job, and if you get a good job you will be able to make good money, and if you make good money you will be able to provide for your family, and if you provide for your family you will be able to teach them how to provide for themselves, etc., etc, etc.

Lean Into The Cross You Are Almost There

This is where I look at the cross as leverage. In the movie illustrated earlier Jesus leaned into the cross. He fell against it, resting his body on it for a moment so that he could catch his breath and pray out to his father, positioning himself to take the next step on the path that God created for him. And in his apparent misery, he gained strength, strength from the knowledge that this was the cross that he must burden, the cross that God had asked him to carry, and knowing that he was not going to walk alone, but rather that his father was going to be right there with him lifting him up to the challenge, giving him the leverage and strength he needed to move onward.

God is all the leverage that we need. Knowing this, I am thankful, and looking forward to carrying the cross I must carry. Knowing that God will be with me carrying the load, I am ready to lean into the cross.

Interactions – Part 3

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Interactions - Part 2 - Meet People - Say Hello - www.ScottDelMastro.com

Interactions – Part 3

To recap, Part 1 challenged us to take count and be aware of what interaction opportunities we were missing. Then, Part 2 moved us from concept to action by making a plan and then start acting upon it. Noting that both were developed with the intent of helping others realize that they were not alone and that help, togetherness and community are always right there with the people we come across. And finally, Part 3 below hypothesizes that the interactions that we engage in actually might change the way we see the people we interact with and the way they see us helping us all to grow in our ability to relationship and build each other up.

Let’s get started. I want to look at our interactions from the perspective of physiology and how our insides and outsides might be altered based on the interactions we experience. In Part 1 I mentioned a movie that reminded me of Groundhog Day with Bill Murray – The 12 Dates of Christmas by Director James Hayman. In this movie there was a scene that sparked the thought for this post. In it, the main character realized that she had direct influence on the people that she interacted with, in that she could change the direction or state of mind of the people she interacted with based on the intent she had going into the interaction and the words and actions she used within the engagement. Which, I would guess, we have all experienced to some degree through observation after some of our past interactions. That is, if I went into an interaction with a pessimistic attitude, then the person I interacted with was effected differently than if I had gone into the interaction with an optimistic attitude. This seems obvious, right? But I think our attitude and intentions going into an interaction changes us more than we realize. I think it might change us at a molecular level as well, which is another level of growth toward impacting those around us.

For me this can be illustrated by a statement from Dr. Wayne Dyer. “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urQPraeeY0w

If this is the case, and we (you and I) do have the capacity to change purposefully, intentionally, and even physiologically, then we really need to consider changing the way in which we look at things and our approach to future interactions. But of course, you have to decide under which umbrella you want to build your interactional intentions – to build up or to tear down. For me, this is best illustrated by a poem written by Mother Teresa:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.

Let’s assume for the sake of this post that we chose to “build up”. It is, then, at this point where our journey will begin and we start taking action toward our very next interaction so as not to miss a single opportunity to build up the people we are going to come across next. When we purposefully and actively begin to seek out our next interaction with excitement and shed the skin of doubt, we can start the process of changing the world.

Program Your Day with an Action Statement

Phase Three – Do It: Start with yourself at the very first conscious moment in the morning. Making an “action” statement, based on your goals set in Phase Two, to yourself right when the alarm goes off in the morning. So that the first thing you hear is the action that you are going to take in how you want your day to go. Personally, I have changed the way I speak to myself from the first sound of the alarm in the morning I cannot wait to fill my head with the possibilities of the day. This is not to say that I never have conflicting feelings and emotions right out of the gate, of course I do, I am human, and it has not been easy to train myself to think and speak to myself this way. I have fumbled quite often and fought and am fighting myself on an exhausting number of occasions, but I am determined, as I am sure you will be too, to win the battle and impact the world around me.

After you go through this process or as you are going through this process, let me know what things you learned, what challenges you faced and what fumbles you had so that others will know that they are not alone in their fumbling and that if we all keep fumbling and succeeding we will make the world a better place.

Until we meet again…..build up, don’t tear down.

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