When trying to be successful within the things that we want to be during life we can make things considerably harder for ourselves if we don’t believe that we can actually complete our goals, some may want to do something but leave it down to chance, some may attempt their goal but due to a lack of motivation or because of a hiccup give up.
We may decide to settle for a lesser achievement, continue to struggle for years with our goals just out of reach or reach our goals, achieve our aims and not believe that we can achieve more.
Making our goals realistic and achievable is very important, however having the confidence, self belief and determination to succeed with a large pinch of hard work is what can make our dreams of succeeding a reality.
I have worked with several people involved in different sports which has highlighted this point to myself greatly as when competing in sports your performance has to be at its best within a very small window of opportunity.
For myself there is no greater feeling of supporting someone to achieve their goals, while working with them, their goal becomes my goal as I want them to achieve, to succeed and to feel the emotions that accompany that moment in time.
A sport that has shown me this over any other has been Snooker, To many the sport may not be of interest but it can be seen as a very difficult sport to achieve in, Many can play it but a select few can be classed as being at the top and really its only those at the very top who can say that they can gain monetary wealth from the sport.
This can add a tremendous amount of pressure to performing well within a Tournament or Match, making Ability, Positive thinking, Confidence and Self belief hugely important.
Snooker at the moment is a great indicator of how working on ourselves, our beliefs and motivation can greatly improve our chances to succeed.
When describing to others how working with them may help I often talk about how they practice their sport or study for their role, what equipment they use and what facilities they have .
Often these people will describe that they have spent a large amount of money on these and explain how they have the best Equipment that money can buy, they hire the best facilities and practice as much as possible perhaps hiring a coach along the way. They want to win or achieve their goals and have great ambitions to do so.
Very often they will describe how they can’t understand what else they can do or how they have not achieved what they have set out to or got to where they have wanted to be. They feel stuck, don’t know what is left to do and are left thinking that their results are just down to being unlucky.
Some may have set goals but often these are fairly vague, such as I’m going to win a Tournament but without any set time frame or an idea and path of how they are going to achieve this.
It becomes clear to me very quickly that the one thing that they haven’t done is look at improving or changing their self belief, confidence and general outlook on things.
We can keep forging ahead believing that we have everything in place to succeed but if we don’t recognise the importance of working on our inner self and spend just as much effort on this area we leave out a large piece to the puzzle of success.
I mentioned Snooker because although many who are involved in the sport would agree that the mental side of it is important not many players have actually done much to learn about what this means.
Over its history there have been a few examples of how it has played a role but still it is an area that is mainly left to look after itself.
Over recent years amongst other things such as diet and physical health a small number of players have looked into the Mental side of the sport a little more and it’s been no surprise to myself that they then have gone on to achieve great things, often the goals that they had originally set out to achieve but then along the way had become stuck.
They have something extra that most that play within the sport at the moment don’t have and this has given them a huge advantage when playing opponents.
Snooker again is a great example because it can be such a frustrating sport that can bring people down fairly quickly so when a player has worked upon themselves and their attitude it can have very extreme results which really stand out.
A player can literally go from losing matches being frustrated, getting angry or thinking about leaving the sport to winning their first Tournament in a very short time of feeling more positive, motivated and setting new goals.
As Humans we only really look at ourselves when we either achieve something great or when we think that we have failed when we are still trying to achieve a goal we will blame the other things around us such as in snooker it could be the table wasn’t right, The other player was so lucky, Someone moved in the crowd and put me off, The tip on my cue wasn’t right and this can be said for so many other areas within life.
These things may well of happened but if the player is full of confidence, has set goals and a plan of how to achieve them, feeling more positive and is able to clear their mind quickly of negative thoughts they stand a much better chance of succeeding and often will not even notice normally disruptive events around them or these events will at least have less of an effect on their performance and the overall outcome.
Many sports people will know of being in “The zone” this is when everything seems to come together at the same moment in time, a moment of what I call being T.O.P.P a “Trance of peak performance” which is helped to be made possible by Confidence and self belief which enables us to block out distractions and negative thoughts to a much higher level and where we can perform at our best with a greater amount of relaxed concentration.
Many people will try harder to get into the Zone when really being confident, thinking positively and feeling relaxed is the key.
If you think about it, it is only common sense, how do you think you are going to perform at your best or achieve your ambitions and goals if you are not positive about your chances of doing so?
With practice and a bit of work we can learn to change negative thoughts that work against us to Positive ones that work for us and instead of helping our opponents, environment and situation we can help ourselves to succeed.
