What the mind can conceive the body can achieve.
What determines your success largely takes place in the mind. While on the court you can observe that different world class tennis players have a variety of playing styles, almost all of them have the same beliefs and mindsets.
You need to cultivate a similar mindset to really take your game to the next level. In other words, you need a mental fitness program to compliment the time you spend on the court.
Today I will show you how to design such a program in 5 easy steps. These steps are:
Deciding what you want
Figuring out what's stopping you from getting it
Creating massive pleasure to obtaining what you want
Creating massive pain to not obtaining what you want
Re-linking current associations
To learn more about each of these five steps and how to use them to improve your game, click here.
Deciding What You Want
To get your mind in the right state to improve, you have to give it something to focus on. This way when your work your mental muscles to improve your tennis game, you'll know what you're working them for.
What aspect of your game do you wish to improve most?
What would bring you the most amount of pleasure?
What would you dare to dream about achieving in tennis if you knew you couldn't fail?
How will you know when you've achieved it?
What will it feel, sound, look, smell and taste like?
Take time to consider each of these questions. Lift all limits and just dream. This is the only way you'll hone in on figuring out exactly what you want to get out of tennis. Once you've done that, it's time to move on to step two.
Figure Out What's Stopping You From Getting It
It's not a matter of just knowing what you want. You also have to know what is currently stopping you from getting there. Is it a physical attribute? If so, can you improve that attribute to the point it needs to be at to improve your game?
Perhaps it's a mental limitation. Many people can't break out of their current zone because they fear changing. The equate change with pain. The best strategies in the world won't coax them out of their current comfort zone because to leave that zone is just too overwhelming. In order to move past obstacles, we must first identify those obstacles. Otherwise you might be trying to climb a brick wall when you really need to be swimming across a body of water.
Create Massive Pleasure to Obtaining What You Want
Once you know what you want, and what's stopping you from getting it, it's time to get leverage. The first step to leverage is to increase the intensity of your desires. Think about it – almost every tennis player wants to get better. But few want to get better so badly that they will do whatever it takes to make those improvements.
Come up with such compelling reasons for getting better that it will make it harder for you to stay the same than it will to make a change.
Create Massive Pain to Not Obtaining What You Want
How much will you enjoy tennis ten years from now if you never improve any aspect of your game? How will this hurt your confidence to make changes in other areas of your life? Just as pleasure moves us toward the positive, pain moves us away from the negative. Create massive pleasure to changing, and create massive pain to not changing.
Re-link Associations
Take everything that you think is currently preventing you from improving you game, and try to re-link it to a new emotion. Instead of linking practice with fear, link it to empowerment. By practicing better, you'll have more power on the court. Instead of linking goal setting to “having to try real hard”, link it to growing as an individual.
Go through everything that you currently associate some sort of pain to, as it relates to your tennis game, and relink it with something that brings you pleasure. Then just consistently reinforce those links.
If you go through these five steps, you'll have created a mental focus so sharp that, if given a lever, you could move the whole world.
No comments:
Post a Comment