Mental Moment-Heart & Soul

Too much thinking confuses you’re brain. After a while the brain takes flight (checks out) because it’s overloaded and is unable to decipher which direction you want to go.

Generally a lot of  thinking a week or hours before you are to perform is your way of (unconsciously) sabotaging the situation. It is the keyhole the brain needs to fire off in a million different directions confusing and sabotaging more deeply as you go.

One example comes from a cuerrent client. In three months this client has done an amazing amount of work and has started developing a better, very solid plan for playing and performing. As this clients ‘Olympic’ moment drew near the plan that that’s been working has gone out the window and it’s unconsciously been replaced with old, safe, familiar patterns: perfectionism creeps in, two days prior there are doubts and changes in pre-performance routine and words from critics take over. Three days ago this client was feeling confident and ‘playing the best ever’.

Whats the solution? There are several solutions: bring the client back to what has been working (working well three days prior) and help my client realize that the current experience is coming from those old patterns. Within each of these ‘solutions’ is a million ‘micro-solutions’ but the biggest and best part of those micro-solutions for this client was to stay out of the head (analytics) and  ‘just play’. Caution: this is an extremely difficult notion to learn and develop but this is part of what my clients been practicing and he knows he can do it. (Do not try this at home :-)).

There is a time to think and a time to just play. Figuring out where that fine line is can be difficult but it’s important otherwise  if you are thinking too much or all of the time your brain will tell you when it’s had enough and who’s in control? You or your self doubting, self sabotaging brain?

Practice playing  from your heart & soul so that during competition you’ve experienced  how wonderful it feels. The benefits are amazing.

Dr. Michelle

Photo credit: ces.ncsu.edu