Raise Your Power, Passion, Presence, and Performance

Do you have an Arrow UP or Arrow DOWN mindset?

I was speaking with Mike Way, elite coach of the Harvard men’s squash team who has coached many top ranked players and won multiple collegiate championships.

Coach Way uses a ladder where an arrow is placed to indicate player rankings for an upcoming match.

If your arrow is pointed downward, it means you're the higher ranked player.

If your arrow is pointed upward, you're ranked lower than your opponent and have less to lose in the match. As a result, you’ll likely play more relaxed with more freedom.

The higher ranked player can feel more tension because
they're the top dog and everyone is coming to get them.

This applies to most sports.

A lower ranked team or individual in the standings often plays looser and with less stress.

And if the higher ranked team/person isn’t careful, they'll all too often succumb to the mental pressure and make silly mistakes. You often see it happen in basketball, tennis, football.

Which way is the arrow pointed?

Can you mentally change the direction in your mind to play...

With almost all school buildings remaining closed for the rest of the school year as a result of the Corona virus, one of the unintended consequences is effectively cancelling all spring school and club sports seasons. For millions of student athletes across the world, this has been an especially difficult adjustment. Many kids get so much of their passion, energy, drive, meaning, and personal power from their team and playing organized sports. It’s one thing not to be able to watch live sports, but a completely different experience for the athlete not be able to practice or play their sport in competition or with the team. 

It's easy to feel frustrated, angry, sad, worried, and bored at this time. Here are a few tips to help student athletes, and the parents and sports coaches too, to remain up even when the team is in lockdown.

Use the acronym T.E.A.M. to help keep student athletes on the right track during this challenging time.

T: Tackle negative thoughts –while Tossing in some positive thoughts...

I’ve been running each morning for many years, usually with a dog at my side.  I run opposite traffic in the street so as to keep aware of oncoming traffic. I usually wear a reflective vest, hat, and if it’s really dark, a small led light attached to my chest.  I call it my Iron Man light.  I’m not out to break any records, just love the activity and mental release it provides being out in nature.  I despise running inside, so I’ll bear whatever weather is out all year round in a cold weather climate.  I usually don’t see too many people out in my neighborhood since I’m usually out pretty early usually before sunrise. 

On this particular morning, I got a little later start than usual and noticed a few extra people out.  About five minutes into my run, I noticed another runner in the distance coming towards me as I turned a corner.  I tried to quicken my pace a bit, but with my almost ten-year old dog tethered to my waste, it wasn’t easy.  The other runner...

(Don't let this be you!) 

Because I do a lot of professional speaking and lead workshops on mindfulness and stress relief, people often ask me what they can do to speak in public or deliver their next presentation with less fear and anxiety and with more confidence.

 Here are three suggestions you can use right away:

Use your breath to reduce your stress from speaking in public.  We breathe about 20,000 times every day providing us an anchor to focus on to help calm us down.  One of my favorite breathing methods is extending our exhaleswhich helps trigger our parasympathetic nervous system responsible for calming our mind/bodies down.  Think of a parachute that slows us down to help us land safely. When you put extra attention and emphasis on your exhale, your out-breath, you activate that internal parachute.  That will help reduce the symptoms we may feel from the fear or anxiety of speaking like shakiness, rapid breathing, stomach aches or other bodily pains, and sweating.   

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