motivation | willpower | exam nerves | sport & the 'flow state'

To perform at your peak, whether it be at work, in social situations or in sport, is a combination of :-

You will know what it feels like when everything goes smoothly : when you deliver a first class presentation, handle a difficult situation with ease, shoot a perfect goal, or have a day when everything goes the way you want. Times such as these leave you full of energy and confidence- and perhaps wishing that they could happen more often.

controlling your thoughts

Martin Seligman, in his book  “Learned Optimism”, says that the ways you explain bad  events is a habit of thought, stemming directly from your view of yourself in the world.
People who give up quickly after something bad happens tend to think in terms of ‘always’ and ‘never’, and will say things like “that always happens to me”. It then feels too much of a battle to keep trying. People with an optimistic style of thinking will see the bad event as a one –off, and so will be able to have another go without losing their confidence.

You may be able to put something bad into a box, and not let it affect every other part of your life. For example, if your job is made redundant, you may be able to carry on being a loving partner and friend, and enjoy your hobbies. Or you may think that you as a person are worthless in every part of your life and so lose your self confidence.

When bad things happen, you can blame yourself (“I’m useless”) or you can attribute the causes to external events or people.

If you are able to control the way in which you explain events, you are more likely to be able to get into the “flow” state of high performance, as you will be able to remain positive, and to keep trying, even when the going gets tough.

emotional balance

Controlling your thoughts and thinking optimistically can help you retain a sense of calmness and at times a sense of detachment, that can help you perform at your peak. The ability to step outside yourself, see any situation from outside, including being able to see it from other people’s perspective, and then the ability to focus inwards and concentrate completely on the job in hand, is a key component of peak performance.

hypnotherapy can help you control your thoughts and gain emotional balance by:-

• enabling you to relax and focus whenever you need to.
• helping you to develop more optimistic ways of thinking.
• using positive visualisation to rehearse how you want to perform in a particular situation.
• scrambling the faulty pattern matches your brain may be making between a situation and what you expect to happen.

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Motivation is a key component  in getting what you want and achieving the results that will satisfy you. But you may be aware that knowing the difference between the two types of motivation can help you understand what to do when you are facing setbacks.

going towards motivation

Some people have a clear idea of what they want in most areas of their life: they may have a five or ten year game plan, and be able to see in their mind’s eye what they want to happen. They know how it will feel, and what other people will be saying about them and what they will be saying to themselves. They use this constantly to keep themselves going. This does not mean they are inflexible, but can adapt in the short term to meet their long term goal.
They will do this whether their goal is to do with sport, their career, money matters, their weight, relationships or any other area where they have an end in mind.

away from motivation

Other people are very clear about what they don’t want to happen, and get motivated when something unpleasant or unwanted has happened. They do not have a clear picture in front of them  which they are aiming for, but have a deep sense of dissatisfaction they want to get rid of. This is the sort of motivation New Year resolutions are made of, which is why they so often fail. 
This Away From motivation does get you going, but only until the dissatisfaction or unpleasantness has gone, and then so does your motivation, until the unpleasantness returns.  For example, if you have ever started a diet because your clothes are too tight, you will know that once they get comfortable again, the temptation is to start eating more again. Or you may have changed jobs because you were bored but ended up in a similar job where a year or two later you again were bored and wanted to leave.

There is also a physical reason why this Away From motivation is short-term: your brain literally does not differentiate between what you want and what you don’t want, so whatever you focus on, your brain thinks about.  Have you ever tried not to think about how tired you feel? And found that all you could think about was what how tired you were feeling! So when you think about what you don’t want, that tends to be exactly what you get.

hypnotherapy can help you get motivated by:-

• Increasing your ability to visualise clearly what you want.
• Working at the subconscious level of your brain, rather than relying on willpower.
• Enabling you to think positively and optimistically.
• Helping you to become clearer about what you really want to achieve.

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Willpower is your conscious effort to change or do something you don’t want to do, but think you ought, should or must do, rather than want to do.
It keeps you going against the odds, and does indeed have great power and plays a part in your survival.

But sometimes willpower is not enough, as it works only with the conscious level of your brain, and does not use the enormous resources you have in the parts of your brain that lay deeper hidden. If you have ever tried to give up something you have liked, or to forget something unpleasant that has happened in the past, you will know that willpower can fail, despite your best efforts.

hypnotherapy can help you access the resources you have by:-

• enabling you to relax and work at a deeper level of your brain.
• helping you to focus on what you want.
• getting rid of the stress and strain.

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Sports people speak of being “in the flow”- a time when mind and body seem as one. This can happen to individuals, and also to teams of people.

This does not happen by chance, and there are ways in which you can get “in the flow” more often.

Timothy Gallwey in his books on what he calls “the inner game” uses the term
 Self One to describe the critical part of yourself that is watching and waiting for you to make a mistake, telling you that you are doing something the right or wrong way. This can hinder your ability by making you too self aware and encouraging you to try too hard to do the ‘right’  thing.

This Self One gets in the way of Self Two, the instinctive, very physical part of you when your mind and your body focus and work together, observing objectively, making no judgements.  Young children only have Self Two, as they learn more quickly than at any other time of their life, to walk, talk, hold, and throw. When you can trust your Self Two, the flow state becomes more frequent.

hypnotherapy can help you get in the 'flow state' by:-

• helping you to access your unconscious Self Two at will.
• enabling you to visualise peak performance and develop the brain patterns that will translate thought into action.
• helping you see the small differences between when you do something well and when  you perform at a lower level.
• helping you focus by dealing with stress and relaxing.

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Sometimes your worst nightmare can be that after all the hard work you have done, when the time comes for you to be tested, your mind will go blank, your fingers freeze so you can’t write or use a computer, and you will fail.

Examinations of any kind – including interview situations – can provoke anxiety in the most confident of people. You are being judged – and the fear is that you will not be “good enough”.  All those schoolday memories of being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ come flooding back and the emotional part of your brain takes over ; adrenalin is produced ready for flight or fight ; and the cognitive part of your brain can’t get its message through.  If this has happened before, the brain pattern matches to the previous occasion, so reinforcing this.

hypnotherapy can help you overcome exam nerves by:-

• unscrambling the brain patterns and replacing them with new and positive ways of thinking.
• enabling you to increase your ability to concentrate and focus on the present.
• helping you to relax and take control beforehand.

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