Your X-Factor

If you really want to find the x-factor of the athlete in you, there’s only one rule to apply. Refuse to impersonate.

We are conditioned to impersonate others, not just in sport but in all areas of life. We are taught to model on our hero’s, heroine’s and peers.

However when someone stands out from the crowd in terms of realising their talents and potential, it is certainly not due to the conditioning or habit of modelling or following the behaviours of others.

They stand out because they strayed out off that projection and wandered into an introspection that allowed them to access something that no one else has, the deeper personal intuition that says no or go.

We could call that intuition self trust!

Self trust is most often found in self exploration.

In sport we tend to follow best practise, these are the qualities of said modelled athletes, these are the parameters we need to chase, here is the protocol, here is a nice graphed progression model and here are the projected outcomes,

let’s get after it. Let’s get after what? Someone else’s past? The mobs most travelled path?

Your best work as both athlete and human is carried on the wind of your own unique talent, and we all have access to it.

If we truly look at the greats we can see the proof, all great athletes and performers have the x-factor and that factor is multiplied by the power of the present moment and divided by the awareness of intuition, drive, heart, guts and pure will.

From the outside those athletes can look ruthless, because true presence has no flavour, no judgments, no refusals, no send backs, everything is fodder for advancement.

It’s about coming back to your natural state of presence and awareness and realising that you have been disconnected to it through mind based projection and models that you tried to apply to your own existence, and you never can because you are all you’ve got. It’s your life, only you can live it.

If there is a refusal to it, it is the refusal to speak or think against the self, that requires a deep level of self trust, you don’t earn self trust by modelling or comparing yourself to someone else.

You won’t find your x-factor out there, it can only be found in here.

If I sit an athlete down and ask them, I want you to tell me honestly what you believe you are missing as an athlete, the answer for the most part looks similar for the majority of people, here’s an example- ”I need to get stronger, I need to get faster, I need to do more core, more gym, more kms, I need a more detailed plan.

Rarely if ever will you hear the words, I need to explore my own depths a little deeper and work out how I can find self trust. I need to overcome my conditioning and my limited thinking and beliefs.

People don’t really have belief or limited thinking, belief has them.

Here’s something else, if you think you’ll find self trust by only addressing the physical components you are way off base, even if you vastly improve, you will still have the limitation of the limited self on board. A projected self is a limited self.

No matter what happens you must first remove the words and projected reasons that form the belief “I can’t”.

If that thought was formed, it can also be broken. To break it you have to travel through the portal of challenge, failure and discomfort, into a level of presence that allows you to access the deeper drivers I mentioned earlier, being heart, will, guts and the intuitive drive.

Thought and belief are like an autopilot, they keep plotting the same damn route over and over again. They keep taking off and landing in the same places, if nothing else it is tedious.

If you want something authentic and different you must break the chains of your own belief system that keeps you stuck in projection, which basically means stuck in your head.

You need to come out of the story of me compared to him or her and own your own journey.

If you make it, great, if you fall short, great, you’ve given it your best shot and there are no regrets.

Regret is farmed and harvested on the back of your projections, the deeper side of you that knows you didn’t travel your own instinctive path.

Regret is a lack of trust! It keeps you seperate from your potential because it keeps you away from your own deeper truth.

Guilt, shame and judgment are just some of the tools projection uses to keep you away from yourself and in line with the status quo you were taught to adhere to. Yes that’s right, the autopilot.

Run with the herd if you want to, nothing wrong with it, it’s a comfortable way to live, but understand that the zenith of performance is going to demand the dissolving of your alignment with that herd and the dismantling of the limited belief systems it carries.

If you really want to know what you are made of, you are going to have to move against the flow of adherence to the mob. It is going to demand that you walk out on the standard path. If you wanna dance, you gotta pay the band.

We are all individually so much more than that. Regardless of whether you realise it or not.

You are the lightening rod life uses to deliver its power to the ground.