I was a huge culprit of being able to perform when there was no pressure and at times perform when I needed to. What I didn't realise was how to keep consistency. This happened even when I was an athlete in the National Rowing team. We still see it happen at this level across multiple domains.
Most of the time you hear people saying, "well hopefully today will go well" or "good luck". I'm not a huge fan of these statements. It doesn't teach me what I'm doing well or how I can reproduce it.
The past two years have seen me go through the biggest mental growth spurt I've ever had. It's still ongoing, and yes I still hit bumps along the way. But the bar is getting constantly raised on what I can do and what I can deal with.
When I was an athlete yes I was decent enough at reflecting on what I was doing, how hard I was able to push myself and then apply that when it was needed. However, I didn't ever stand back far enough to look at the big picture.
I didn't see what was tripping me up. Funny enough it was all in my head. I was the limiting factor at the end of the day.
My emotions, my thoughts, my behaviour all linked to how consistent I was when it came to performing.
I realised this applies to everything. However, rarely does anyone access this. We usually only try to fix something after it's broken or not working so well.
I now look at it the same way as I did as an athlete. As much as you are able to condition the body through exercise, you can condition yourself to think a certain way. This has been my biggest challenge so far. It's what my whole work is about. It's crazy once you have perspective, you see how much you've been tripping yourself up.
Once you get perspective on what you're doing and how you're doing it, you can then adapt.
If you think the way you think is good enough well "good luck".
The thing with our brain and thinking is that is can always develop. It doesn't' matter who you are, what level you're at, things can always move forward in the way that you think and how you apply yourself.
This happens by.
1. getting perspective on what you're doing right now.
2. Looking at what you're doing each day for you.
3 . Accessing how you thought behaved and acted that day.
4. What can you do to improve upon the next day?
5. How can you adapt you (1 thing)?
6. Looking at how YOUR, EMOTIONS, THOUGHTS, ACTIONS are impacting you.
You can't control anything outside of your own head. In there you always have a choice. We do get led by our emotions most of the time, you can manage it! Learning to hit the pause button and see what you're doing is a valuable tool to have.