There is a huge power at our disposal that we often don’t use to full effect in sport. In fact, many of us don’t use it at all.
There is a moment just before the mind kicks in where instinct takes the first bite of the cherry. You kind of know what to do, but the mind doesn’t trust the instinctual movement. So you second guess it with thinking, start weighing up options and safety, and before you know it, the efficacy of that moment has passed and you have once again lost the opportunity to respond as you were intended to, with instinctual intelligence.
Yes, more often than not, we should run with the first instinct. The difficulty is not built into the course, the other competitors or the weather conditions. It’s all built into the way you are looking at it!!
You are making mental decisions about whether it’s hard or not. When you do that you are moving away from the inbuilt mechanism that we all have to deal with challenges like this, “instincts”.
Stay in the game, not in the mental pain. What are you going to do, react with resistance or respond with intelligence?
Stay conscious and you will stay with your instincts. Remind your body to relax as much as you can. Check the tension, let it go.
On the day, the more relaxed you are with it, the easier you will go through it. Just keep reminding yourself that the difficulty is built into how we look at it, not the way it actually is. Isn’t it hard enough? Why add to it by building a layer of pure story on top of it?
That story takes away the natural inbuilt intelligence that brings you the capacity to deal directly with it, you are shooting yourself in the foot! In the end, the best way to be at the zenith of performance is to simply shut up internally.
Don’t make judgments, don’t make stories, don’t make decisions about what you can’t really know until you are in it. That is the utility of silence and the futility of words…
Gilesy