Are you driving your life with the mental handbrake on? Are you psychologically unable to give 100%? Is it holding you back from achieving your goals? Dubai-based sports psychologist Caren Diehl, Ph.D. says there are three main reasons people do not give their all to get where they want to be in sports, relationships, work, and life overall:
Fear of failure: not wanting to make mistakes and humiliating yourself.
Fear of success: if you do it once, can you keep doing it at the same level?
Internalising too much pressure: inability to deal with the pressure to succeed from either within or outside sources.
How can you counter these challenges and rise to new levels? We all know we need to live for ourselves, not to impress others. We have heard time and time again that we must love ourselves, but for many this is an overwhelming task. How can we break it down into bite-sized pieces and actions that we can really take comfortably?
“Create a job description for yourself,” says Dr Diehl. “Take the area of your life you want to improve and boil it down to its simplest context.” For example, a golfer might have a job description that reads:
‘Score as low as possible on each round of golf’.
Next, they write five key actions they need to take to do their job better. These are changeable variables that support their job. The golfer might say,
- Follow through each swing
- Become a more accurate putter
- Focus on my own game, not the others I am playing with
- Play at least 36 holes per week
- Take at least 4 lessons per month
Next, Diehl says, take your key actions and rate yourself three times; on good days, on bad days, and overall current rating. Use a 1-10 scale. From this you can re-rank the actions in order of importance and focus on those that need the most work. Go back and re-rank yourself monthly to track changes and improvements. “The boost you get will be written in front of you. Seeing your progress builds confidence, motivation and focus which feeds on itself resulting in your success,” explains Dr Diehl. The job description never changes, but the key actions may, over time. The golfer might become a terrific putter and leave that aspect off the list but may start slicing their drive and need to focus on a looser grip.
With thanks to Heather Long Vandevoorde, Ph.D.