Master The Zone - Discover Your True Potential As an Athlete

The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance

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Champions are made from the inside, out. He was a master imager and visualizer. He not only saw himself as the greatest of all time, he lived it even before becoming it. His vision was clear. He shared his vision with all who would listen from the start and never wavered. He was able to create the reality he envisioned. Losing a match later in his career did not take away anything from his greatness.

This is because he knew, and those around him intuitively knew, that his greatness was tied to something far deeper within himself. Winning was not his first goal, it was a result of his goal to be the greatest. Ali took it all the way by allowing his opponents to beat themselves.

He helped them create an internal emotional image of losing to him. Just watch his old fight and pre-fight films and see. During the majority of his career he won before he ever got in the ring, and his opponents lost before the first punch was ever thrown. Their goals were primarily tied to two things: This prevented them from going within, like he did, to create a state where they knew they were better and could win. As mentioned, imaging takes place at a deeper level then visualization.

The more deeply relaxed you allow yourself to become, the more vivid the imagery. Use a relaxation session of 30 minutes or more and allow a few minutes to relax into the session. Start by visualizing a picture of your performance. Once it is clear, enter the picture, become fully part of it.

Become aware of how you and your muscles are feeling, your energy level, your surroundings, other participants, the sounds, the smells, the temperature, the light. While you are deeply relaxed, use this time to make it even more real, notice little things that pass you by when you are performing.

Observe everything to its fullest. Now you have choices. You can go directly into your performance, work through the various aspects of your performance, do it perfectly and see yourself succeed. Or, you can go through all the activity leading up to your performance, notice everything that goes on around you, and then enter your performance. You can perform your entire activity or just a part of it, this is your choice.

The Training Schedule of Jerry Rice

You will start to develop an inner sense of timing. As the session near the end, slowly allow yourself to drift back into waking consciousness. As you are finishing, give yourself a little praise. Let your inner self know you can succeed at any level you choose. Tell yourself you are capable, deserving and worthy of success. You can rise to new, higher performance levels. Always believe in yourself! It is when you are in these deep states that your subconscious mind is open to suggestion.

It is at this level, beyond your normal ego, where you meet your true confidence. This is where your true intent speaks to you with honesty. If you are having performance blocks of any kind, it is here where you may find they are self-imposed, caused by influences that you can change. You are ultimately in command of your life!

Visualization is another equally important form of mental practice. It is not all-immersive where all your senses become totally involved as in imaging. Still, it is very effective in helping improve performance. The deeper theta sessions are excellent for assisting in visualization exercises.

Before you begin, pick one part of your skill that needs improving. Start out on something small and workable, save the big things for when you really start to build your confidence and ability with this skill. Take your time with the session. Allow it to release you to a point where your mind is clear and empty of daily thoughts. When you are really feeling relaxed, bring a picture into focus. Do you have it?

Now, make that picture larger, make it more colorful. Now make it brighter. Go back again; make it even larger and more colorful and brighter in your mind until it starts to become real. Center that picture; fine tune it in your mind. Just let it happen naturally. Just go with whatever is happening. It will all come with time. Enjoy it, make it fun. Ok, now you have a fairly clear picture, if it is not a clear picture, you may have a fairly clear feeling of being in the activity.

Your normal thinking is slowing way down. You are there; you are part of it now. Move into the activity, immerse yourself into the picture. Can you feel or see success? What is your body telling you? Listen to it as it translates your subconscious, turning into feelings in your body. Just observe your feelings without trying to change them.

Allow the entire picture flow through and around you. Go back and practice this day after day. See yourself in the same situation overcoming blocks and reaching new levels of performance. Give yourself the opportunity to allow it to work for you. One note of reminder: You have to set realistic parameters. Set your goals as high as you want, but make them attainable goals, goals that your subconscious will accept.

That is the key; to see yourself as what you truly are capable of being. Take the first few minutes to allow adequate time to reach that state. Start a video tape of either yourself performing at your peak, or of someone else you admire performing at their peak. Watch the tape with a non-critical mind.

Left and Right Hemispheres

Be a disinterested observer. Just stay in your relaxed state and allow your inner mind to absorb. You can also use this with a tape of a performance you are not happy with. Watching the tape with a non-critical mind is the key. Just accept the performance for what it was. If your intent is to use past performances to create a higher level, then it all becomes part of one positive experience. To enhance your confidence, see and feel yourself achieving your goals and performing at your top level. Proper mental preparation before a major event is very important.

Mentally familiarize yourself with the environment you are about to enter. Rehearse your performance or key elements of your performance in your mind in the place you are about to enter. Focus on your ultimate goal. Knowing exactly what you intend to accomplish is a powerful motivator to success. Stay fixed on your goal. Keep it near to you at all times. Know your reasons for doing what it is you are doing. Imagery and visualization of past and upcoming events, going over what you have done well or not so well can help maintain your persistence and intensity level while preparing.

Move into your performance. Notice when you commonly become distracted and identify the underlying cause. Tell yourself to remain on focus. Practice this until it becomes second nature. Use imagery and visualization to reinvigorate or take your drive to new levels.

Move yourself into your activity and let yourself know that you are special and you are gifted with skill. Offer thanks for those skills and find your own purpose in life for being handed those gifts. Great performance and great performers develop by internally saying the right things in the right way. Knowing how to use and create positive affirmations — self talk — will have a profound influence on your success. It is important to become fully aware of what you say to yourself and, just as important, how you say it.

Every word you say to yourself has meaning to the subconscious mind. Throughout your waking hours, consciously or subconsciously, you are constantly running scripts and subscripts in your mind that are both positive and negative in nature.

Becoming aware of the correct way to run these scripts is a tremendous tool for performance enhancement and creating the outcome you consciously seek. The subconscious part of the brain receives communication in a very simple, straightforward manner. It feels emotional content and sees the image attached to a thought. This can then re-register in the conscious, left side of the brain as a troublesome, underlying feeling of failure without being able to put your finger on its source. Positive and negative affirmations can have an equally powerful influence on your performance.

This is why it is important to be aware of the ways in which you communicate with yourself. You are your own author of your own internal script! You decide at each moment what is going to be imprinted on your brain. You may notice that this is written in a positive style to provide you with a sense of the greater possibilities of positive affirmations. Affirmations are best absorbed under circumstances where your mind is still. The best affirmations are short, clearly defined and positive. We offer some simple, but powerful lessons on creating and constructing affirmations properly.

Correct construction techniques will have broad positive impact. It is a form of mental practice worth developing that can change your entire outlook on life and produce remarkable results. Keep affirmations short Short, simple statements work best. Make them clear Clarity is important: They need to be specific in nature and easily understood so the content fixes itself in your subconscious. Focus on the positive Be aware of the words you use and the power they carry.

Keep negative words out even when trying to use them in a positive way. Make them realistic You have to be able to believe in what you are saying to yourself for affirmations to be effective. Construct them in the present tense Stay in the present moment. It also helps you avoid constructing negative statements based on past performance.

Say your affirmations out loud to yourself Bring your auditory processes into this activity to help make affirmations more effective. Write them out This simple, physical act helps fix them in your mind. Writing them out is an important exercise because it brings not only visual and auditory, but the kinesthetic into the activity as well. The more senses you bring into the process, the more effective this exercise will be. Review Often Place your list where you will see it and read it every day. In addition, update and review your affirmations on a regular basis so they stay fresh and current.

Affirmations should be with you always. Share them with others When you are part of a team, work with your group or teammates to create a set of shared goals. Shared goals create greater results. Use your most important affirmations several times a day Repeat your affirmations quietly to yourself throughout the day, especially when going to sleep or waking up in the morning and when doing sessions. When self-talking, watch out for words like: These are self-limiting terms and place the focus in the wrong area — on the negative.

Negative self-talk is fear-based and a very common and efficient way to move into a defeatist mode. It creates emotional anxiety because you are focusing on not doing something. It is an attempt to move away from possible failure instead of towards success. Visualize the person you want to be. Reflect on what realizing your full potential means to you. Is it a way of being? Achieving a certain level of income? Most people will have different definitions of potential.

It is important that you have some sense of what your potential means to you. What does the life of future-you look like? What do you do? Who are you with? How do you feel? Imagine this in as much detail as possible. For example, if you see someone who has just opened her own bakery, think about where it is, how many employees you have, what people think of your business, and how you feel to be your own boss. Examine the character strengths and skills that future-you has used to get to this place.

Think about which of these strengths and skills you already have, and which you need to further develop. Decide how you can develop the areas you identified. In this example, you could read some books on business, talk to other small business owners, and visit the U. It is OK to change your mind as you learn more about yourself. Take a step back and ask yourself why you are entertaining a particular version of your full potential and whether it is achievable in theory.

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If you do not at least consider this, you may be missing out on the chance to re-define your potential and all the joy and meaning that may come along with doing so. Be patient and kind to yourself. Achieving your true potential will take time and effort. More importantly, it will take self-compassion.

Acknowledge your strengths and skills as well as the areas in which you need to grow. Honor the efforts you make each day toward realizing your true potential. Imagine yourself doing something that you have only dared to dream about. Focus on the big picture instead of the details. Focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses. Recognize and challenge generalization. Generalization happens when you take one experience and generalize it to the whole world.

You are a person who is learning from her mistakes so she can keep developing. Recognize and challenge mental filtering. This thought trap can hold you back by distorting your focus. Challenge yourself to look at the situation as an outsider might. Try to list the facts of the situation as objectively as you can. In this case, you could remind yourself: The three things that need work are things that I can work on.

Watch for all-or-nothing thinking. Instead, remind yourself that perfection is an unrealistic standard that no one can meet. Extend this generosity to yourself and to others. Stop catastrophizing in its tracks. Catastrophizing is another thought trap that can keep you from realizing your true potential.

When we catastrophize, we allow our thoughts to spiral out of control. We expect that the absolute worst will happen. But, you think, what if I never find anyone else to love?

Is it really likely that you will never find anyone to love? There are billions of people in the world, so chances are there is more than one you could be happy with. Is it true that if you live alone you must end up lonely and eaten by cats? Plenty of people live by themselves and still have full, rewarding social lives. If you find it coming from a fear or pressure from someone else, challenge that thought. Part 2 Quiz What is an example of all-or-nothing thinking? Make a list of goals. Once you have visualized the type of person you want to be, it is time to figure out how to become that person.

You will be greatly aided in achieving this giant task by breaking down into more digestible, manageable, and concrete parts. You will need to further break this down into objectives actions you can take and tasks specific, small things to do to accomplish it. So, if your goal is to master the violin, objectives could be learning vibrato, studying the works of various composers and taking lessons. Breaking those down, you could set tasks for yourself. Organize your goals by importance.

Figure out which of your goals are most important to you. Which goals would you be most excited to accomplish first? Do certain goals need to be accomplished before others? Focusing on improving one or two areas will keep you from feeling overwhelmed. In some cases, some goals are necessary to learn before you can tackle the others. Since Vivaldi songs make use of the vibrato skill, you need to know vibrato before you can fully play Vivaldi.

As you get started, be sure to rank highly a goal that is somewhat easily attainable so you can have an early success that will help you to stay motivated. For example, you could set learning how to tune the violin as the first goal you tackled, since this would be easier to tackle than learning a Vivaldi song, and it would help you to further learn and play the violin since it would be properly tuned for when you practice.

Create a list of actionable objectives. After you have organized your list of goals by importance, choose the first two or three most important goals and create a to-do list of daily tasks or objectives that will help you to accomplish, over time, these broader goals. A task is a small, specific thing that you can do to achieve your objective.

Keep a written list of your daily tasks and cross them off each day that you finish. Repeat this process until you feel that you have mastered the objective, and replace it with another.

Calmness, Stress and Balance

For example, each time you practice your song, cross the song off your list of daily tasks. When you've mastered that song, it's time to add a new one to the list. Part 3 Quiz How should you organize your tasks if your goal is to learn French? Adopt a growth mindset. Believe that you can work hard to improve your ability and skill level. Take mistakes and criticism and learn from them. Do not believe that abilities are fixed or unchangeable.

Masters of Habit: The Deliberate Practice and Training of Jerry Rice

Adopting a growth mindset leads to improved performance and motivation in a number of contexts. You will undoubtedly make mistakes and experience setbacks on your quest to realize your full potential. However, thinking about these in terms of what you can learn from them to take into the future will keep them from holding you back from progress. These authors finally succeeded because they had a growth mindset, and continually improved their work until it found a home.

Keep your expectations realistic. Think of it this way: That would be a very quick recipe for disaster. As you work hard toward your goals, think optimistically about your progress. For example "Life is available only in the present moment. Sep 21, Cliff Chew rated it really liked it. An easy book to read, this book covers a lot of concepts towards mindfulness and sport performance.

For someone who is interested in both topics, this is a refreshing book that combines both topics into one. One thing that I felt was lacking in this book was any practice advice that one can bring away to their own lives. Conceptually, you will learn why being mindful helps with creating a better life. But how to be truly mindful? You need other books or experiences for that. Aug 10, Blake Knudsen rated it liked it.

Sadly, I have to hang this book up for now because leaving for college won't allow me to continue reading it through my library. But overall, the book is neat and has a different perspective to getting in "The Zone". There were some aspects to it that I didn't really care for like the Zen Buddhism crap.

Now that isn't that bad, but I wish it was explained in a more simplistic manner, not some complicated process. But can't judge until I finish the book. Jul 12, Cody Steele rated it really liked it. Several cliches, and overused quotes but I guess they keep showing up in books for a reason. His life story is actually nothing short of incredible even though he doesn't highlight it as much.

The dude has endured some crazy times in his life and has uniquely drawn from those experiences to help others reach their max potential. Crushed this book in two sittings because it was so engaging. Aug 09, Nathan rated it liked it. Mumford covers lots of basic meditation content with stories of coaching famous athletes. This book would be good for athletes who are interested in meditation.

So many great things to think about reflex on and apply when you are trying to remain in the moment. I do wish it had more exercises to practice. Nevertheless I got a lot out of this book. Good read on mindfulness and sports Mumford writes an interesting and accessible work on mindfulness meditation and its place in athletics. Aug 19, Eduardo Longoria rated it did not like it. Not what I expected, disappointed. Sep 02, Shayla rated it really liked it Shelves: An easy, entertaining and thoughtful story about mindfulness and the impact on performance. Another example of how our mind, thoughts and inner stories can make a difference to our performance.

Apr 04, Mike rated it liked it Recommends it for: Very solid read on mindfulness, daily practices, sports and life balance. A bit long in some sections and repetitive in others but otherwise pleasant book with some great take-aways. Jun 16, Shelley rated it really liked it. A great introduction to mindfulness that will be more accessible to athletes than some other texts.

Jul 17, Jordan. A rated it it was amazing. Awesome and intriguing book on the practice of mindfulness! Aug 11, Peter Galamaga rated it it was amazing. Great intro book on the life-changing simplicity of meditation. Mumford works with elite athletes and professionals of all stripes. Jan 23, Todd McQueen rated it really liked it. Heard George speak and he was excellent. Fast and easy read with thoughtful perspectives and observations. Jul 19, Alisha rated it liked it. Any athlete should read. Mar 06, Victor Colella rated it liked it.

Pretty good, but it had a bit of a habit of making something that could be said in words last 1 chapter. Lost a bit of interest towards the end. Jun 29, Jack Oughton rated it really liked it. This book is enjoyable and quite different - recommended. May 04, Derrick Thomas rated it it was amazing. A lot of insights into why we sabotage ourselves! Jul 20, Steve rated it liked it. A lot of citing other sources with no real insight into sports at all. Mar 02, Algirdas Purkenas rated it really liked it Shelves: An okay read, reminds you of the importance on staying in the present moment.

Really helped me in the long training sessions where I had lots of thoughts coming into my head.

Mar 06, Nessy Dimitrova rated it it was amazing Shelves: I read this e-book thanks to Blinkist. Those feelings of inspiration and excitement are the exact feeling a non-fiction book should evoke. This was so well-documented and an enjoyable read! The key message in this book:

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