Mental Preparation
Whenever you are participating in a sporting event, making a speech to the PTA or to the Board of Directors, rolling-out of a new product, doing something scary like asking your boss for a salary increase, or saying “no” to a high pressure sales pitch, you will find yourself under pressure. Pressure and stress are part of normal everyday life. Mental preparation may be as important as ability and talent in achieving success. There are several activities that we can do to enhance the likelihood of success.
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Pre-event plan – How are you going to prepare for the event?. - Event-plan – What is your strategy for competing in this event?
- Refocusing plan – What will you do if your event plan does not work? .
Preparation Activities
Develop Motivation
Increase persistence through difficult tasks even when benefits are not immediately forthcoming.
Goal Setting
Develop specific, measurable action oriented realistic and timely goals. Create plans for getting better (mastery) rather than being good (performance).
Attention Control
Maintain focus and awareness on relevant stimuli. Develop refousing plan to manage internal and external distractions
Arousal Control
Discover and regulate optimal state of emotional arousal. Develop pre-event routines to energize or relax as needed.
Thought Control
Create supportive and positive self-talk. Learn effective use of affirmations, cues, anchors and reframing.
Emotional Control
Manage strong emotional reactions such as anger, fear, frustration, pain, elation and joy.
Mental Imagery
Use vivid multi-sensory images for successful performance rehearsal, error correction and pain management. Imagine not only success, but how you overcame obstacles in the path of success.
Increasing Hardiness
Reframe threats as challenges, identify commitment rather than alienation, and know that you can control some things around you.
Practice Skills
Rehearse using focused and purposeful practice and discipline to convert ability to deployable skills. Frame mistakes as opportunities for learning, not failures. Some would say that feedback is an opportunity to learn what the rest of the world already knows.