The word, “focus” is a buzz word in the world of sports. Athletes, coaches and parents use it all the time, but it is usually just limited to a comment similar to this:
“You have to focus more.”
As a mental performance coach, I’m not sure what that even means.
From an athlete’s point of view, it is very vague.
The truth is, we are always focusing, but often we are focusing on the wrong things.
When we are performing our best, we are focusing on the task at hand.
When we are performing our worst, we are focusing on the results, a past error, or some other distracting thought.
Think of a time when you were kicking butt...weren’t you just playing?
That’s why people say you played “out of your mind.”
When you were in a slump, people say you were “in your head.”
So what then, determines how often we play at a high level and how often we play poorly?
The six-inch court (field, course, etc) between our ears.
The mental game.
If you have been following my work, in recent times from my TEDx talks to my articles, and my time as a mental performance coach at the Rio Olympics, you know that I do not give traditional strategies, techniques, or routines on how to be more mentally tough.
I simply teach people how their minds work, and where their feelings/experience come from. And as a by-product, their performance soars.
I recently worked with a professional golfer, and after just our first session, she was pleasantly surprised by how easily she was able to just play her game, and had more fun while competing. She even admitted to feeling “lighter.”
Funny, she didn’t weigh any less.
Heavy thinking equals heavy feelings.
Light thinking equals light feelings.
All that happened for the golfer was that her focus shifted from trying to control her thinking and her playing to not caring about what thoughts were coming into her mind.
She was in the moment.
She was focusing on the right things.
The good news for you is that you have the same potential for a winning mindset as a professional golfer, Olympic medalist, and rockstar CEO. We are all born mentally tough and we do not need to re-train our brains to get back to our winning ways, we just need to understand how our minds work and then our bodies just do what they know how to do.
Bruce Lee said it isn’t about the increase, it is about the decrease. Get rid of the unessential.
In competition, when you learn about the mental game and get rid of the interfering thoughts that arise in your mind, you relax, focus, and kick more butt.
Oh, you’ll have a lot more fun too.
Questions? I’d love to hear from you...
Ed Tseng
Mental Performance Coach. Best-Selling Author. TEDx Speaker. Pro of the Year. Rio 2016 Coach.
ed@edtseng.com
609.558.1077