Standing Tall

Professional tennis players will tell you their secret, if asked nicely. Professional footballers will tell you the same thing, as will elite athletes, race car drivers, and most anyone who has ever visited "the zone" - that special place where absolute performance takes place.

What is it about "the zone" that makes so much difference?

Well, its a mental thing. Your Mind produces the blitzing performance that, on the day, providing it is the best blitzing performance, makes you the winner.

In many sports and competitions, your ability to influence your competition is limited, or zero. All you can do to make them worry about you is perform better than they do.

Even in some team sports, it is hard to put the other side off balance unless you are winning by such a margin they mentally give up the chase.

So what performance excellence comes down to is being the best - doing your best - at the critical time that enables you to win the competition.

But you can't always do that - the forces of evil - distractions, important things, confused thinking, tiredness - can make it hard to perform on the day, the way you need to.

So you need to ask the tennis pro what the secret is.

And if they are honest, they will tell you that when they are in "the zone", the ball seems bigger, travels slower, they see it earlier, it feels "warm", and they feel as if they are taller, looking down a little.

I had an experience yesterday that made me remember all that I had forgotten about stress management, and performance.

I forgot the golden rule - if you really, really want something, you have to be prepared to let it go. I tried too hard, didn't relax and let my ears do the work, and suffered the consequences.

And at no time did I feel taller.

When you find yourself in a similar situation, it is not the end - just the beginning. First you have to recognise you are mildly stressed, then you have to deal with it. If you go to a much earlier blog here and find the chapter on Stress in Orbit, you will find a lot of simple, fast acting techniques for stress management. Circular breathing is the one I should have used yesterday, because then I would have regained my ability to think quickly and listen and analyse before entering the verbal fray.

However, it was a great learning experience, and this blog has eventuated because of it, so something good and worthwhile is what we now have.

Think strong, stand tall, pull your shoulders back, take a deep breath, and above all, be positive.

You can do it, and you will.