How to achieve your goals for 2015

Happy New Year to you!

This is the time of year when a lot of you may be considering setting some goals. You may have even set some goals for 2014 and some you may have achieved and others may be still on the “To Do” list. There are a number of reasons why people don’t achieve their goals. Some of the main ones include; setting a goal that is too big (“I want to win Wimbledon”), having a goal that isn’t inspiring enough (“I want to keep my house tidy every day”), aiming to achieve something that is too vague (“I want to be successful”), looking to please someone else (“I will practise my clarinet for 2 hours every day to keep Mum happy”) or creating a goal that doesn’t have a timescale (“One day I’m going to write a book”).

If you want to set some goals for 2015, here are seven hints to make it more likely that you will achieve them.

1. Make your goal challenging yet achievable. We are more motivated by a challenging goal especially if you have a good reason for achieving it.

2. Be as descriptive as possible, in terms of what you want to achieve, how you are going to achieve it and what resources and abilities you require to get your goal. The mind is always scanning for things in the environment that are relevant to you. If you let your mind know exactly what you want, it is more likely to draw your attention to things that will help you achieve your goal.

3. Break your goal into small, easy to achieve chunks. If you are aiming to be able to run a marathon, the first goal may be to run a mile first. Give each stage a timescale so that you know whether or not you are on track.

4. Tell others about your goal. It has been found that we are far more likely to achieve a goal if we tell everyone about it. If you keep it to yourself, there is a lot less to lose if you give up. One very good reason for using social media.

5. Write your goal down. Research has shown that you are far more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down (remember to make them descriptive!).

6. Have fun. Enjoy the process of achieving your goal. The pursuit of a goal can be far more rewarding than the actual achievement of attaining the goal itself.

7. Take action. Do one thing every day towards your goal. Even if you are not in the mood to work towards your goal, just do one very small thing that moves you towards it. Once you have started, the chances are that you will end up doing more than you intended to.

Have a fantastic 2015! I hope it is all you wish it to be.

Andy Barton

Performance Coach

The Sporting Mind

Want to feel invincible? You need to set the right tone

I recently worked with a tennis player who had become interested in the use of affirmations after reading that her hero Serena Williams used them for her preparations. From a young age Serena’s father would write motivating messages on large pieces of paper for her and Venus which he would hang up around the court where they were practising. Words and phrases such as “Believe” or “You are a winner” would adorn the courtside and would become mantras that they would repeat to themselves to get themselves in the right mindset to perform.

My client told me she had come up with some affirmations of her own but found they didn't really inspire her very much. I asked her to give me an example of one of these affirmations and she proceeded to mumble, in a totally uncommitted (and slightly embarrassed) monotone, the words “I am invincible”.  For a moment I glanced at her fingers to see if she had crossed them for good luck, such was the lack of resolution in her voice. I then asked her how “invincible” she was feeling after stating the affirmation and she admitted that she wasn't feeling it at all.  

This was unsurprising to me as words, on their own, aren't particularly effective for instilling emotions in us. For an affirmation to be effective they need to be stated with the appropriate tone of voice. It doesn't matter whether that is the voice you speak with or whether it is the voice in your head.  For example, if you were to imagine the words “I am invincible” being stated by Mickey Mouse or Homer Simpson (go on give it a try!), can you really take it seriously? Now try it using the voice of Darth Vader (the fabulous voice of actor James Earl Justice) and notice how differently you feel about the phrase now.  

An invincible affirmation requires an invincible tone of voice. If you also add to that the appropriate body language, you will find it difficult to feel anything but invincible.

Andy Barton

Performance coach

The Sporting Mind

Who's responsible?

I once worked with a footballer who’d been struggling with his performances for several years. A few years previously he had been feted as the next big thing. At the age of 18, those in the know were expecting him to take the Premiership by storm and inevitably take a leading role in the England set up but now, aged 23, things hadn’t panned out quite how he had hoped and he was even struggling to keep a place in the starting XI of the mid-table League One team that he was now playing for.

A reluctant client (he was only seeing me because his agent insisted) the main problem appeared to be that he didn’t seem to accept that he had any control over his world or how we acted or felt. An explosive temper had led to a number of incidents which usually end up in a yellow card, and very often a red. His progress had flatlined and, he even admitted he had been a better player 5 years previously. As a result, he had moved from club to club; each one buying him largely based on his old reputation rather than his present form. And yet, he didn’t believe that any of the responsibility was his. He was very quick to blame everyone and everything apart from himself.

In the sessions we had together at various times he blamed his coaches, his team mates, the tactics, the referee, his fitness coach, his diet, his girlfriend, his boots, the fans and even the pitch. Hand in hand with this was that he also didn’t feel that he had any influence on his performance. He referred to himself as being a ‘confidence’ player. A term you hear quite a lot in football and essentially means he is the type of player who will only play well if he wakes up feeling confident. Unfortunately, those days were becoming few and far between. At no point did he consider anything to have been his fault.

You may be aware of the concept of Cause and Effect (C>E), where one action causes another to happen. The problem is that a lot of people seem to live their lives on the Effect side of the equation where their mindset has them believe that what they do and how they feel is a consequence of external factors, i.e. everyone and everything else. If the world decrees that they are going to be confident that day then so be it, they can go out and perform. However, if the world decides otherwise, then it’s going to be a bad day. Successful people live their lives on the Cause side of the equation, where they feel that they are responsible for what they do and how they feel. Confidence, then, becomes a choice not an aspiration. One way to put yourself on the Cause side of the equation is to take responsibility for what you do and how you feel. Unfortunately, my client saw responsibility as being a bad thing and, unsurprisingly, after a few sessions decided that it wasn’t working for him. The last I heard was that he was playing semi-professionally for a non-League team.

It seems to me that there is very little benefit to surrendering your responsibility to the world, apart from the fact you can have an excuse when things don’t go to plan. Taking responsibility allows you to shape the world in the way that you want to and feel confident, happy, motivated, energised and fulfilled when you want to and not because someone (or something) else decides for you.

As Eleanor Roosevelt so deftly put it:

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Andy Barton

Performance coach

The Sporting Mind

Feeling bad? Change the label

It was fantastic at the weekend to watch the Ryder Cup victory by the Europeans. The whole competition was an illustration of sport at it’s most intense. Some players, like Justin Rose and Rory McIlory seem to just thrive in these situations and others just find it completely overwhelming.

Have you ever had that feeling when you’ve gone into a competitive situation or even done something out of your comfort zone like making a speech when you feel ‘nervous’? Unless you are devoid of emotion, we have all experienced this feeling at some point. Interestingly, according to psychologists  Shachter and Singer (1962) we don’t experience a particular emotion such as ‘fear’ or ‘nervousness’ immediately.  According to their Two Factor Theory of Emotion they state that we actually experience a level of physiological arousal and then take in our environment and only then put a label on the emotion. So when Webb Simpson stood on the first tee to play the very first shot of the Ryder Cup, he would have been experiencing high levels of arousal and would have then taken in his surroundings (large noisy crowd, 1st tee, European and US flags etc) and quite possibly would then have given this arousal the label of ‘nervousness’ or even ‘fear’ (which would certainly have accounted for the bad mis-hit that followed).

Initially, the physical manifestations of ‘nervousness’ and ‘excitement’ are identical. The head spins, the heart beats fast, hands get a bit sweaty etc. It is only when one of the labels is put on it that we respond accordingly. So, if we call it ‘fear’, we will then put ourselves into a negative spiral which can be quite hard to undo. If however, we describe it using labels such as ‘euphoria’, ‘pumped up’ or ‘buzzing’, then we tend to greet the racing heartbeat as being a good thing. Great sports performers don’t necessarily need to calm themselves down, very often they just need ride the wave of excitement.

When Rory McIlroy was asked how he felt about being drawn against in form US player Rickie Fowler for the Ryder Cup singles, his answer typified his mental approach.

“I’m really excited. It’s going to be a great match.”

When you are feeling strong emotions make sure you pick the right label!

Have a thrilling day!

Andy Barton

Performance coach

The Sporting Mind

Don’t wait for certainty, just take action

How often have you said “One day I am going to...” and then followed this with a statement such as “...get in shape”, “...write a book”, “...learn a new language”, “...run a marathon”, “...take up an instrument”, “...change my career” only to end up not doing anything about it because you are not certain that it is going to work. You then decide to put it off until a time in the vague future when you do have certainty. The problem with this approach is that there is no such thing as 100% certainty so more often than not people never get round to pursuing their dreams. Instead we sabotage our dreams by making excuses (“I don’t have time”, “I can’t afford it”, “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not ready”) and then carry on with our lives as they are.

One problem with dreams is that people tend to focus on their conclusion rather than the process of achieving the dream. This usually has the effect of making it seem far too big and unachievable. For instance, if your dream is to climb Everest and you haven’t actually done any exercise for two years it may be quite intimidating to think about getting to the summit. The best way to make a dream achievable is to turn it into a goal by breaking it down into small pieces and then focus on the smallest piece first.  So instead of focusing on getting to the summit of Everest, set a goal to scale a local climbing wall first and then move onto a slightly greater challenge. Focusing on the smaller parts of the goal gives you greater motivation, belief and energy to achieve your dream. Even the smallest step takes you towards your dream and creates a feeling that you are working towards something worthwhile. 

So what are you waiting for? Now is the time to take action.

Andy Barton

Performance Consultant

The Sporting Mind

Watch what you say

Have you ever considered what impact the words you use have on the way you represent the world in your mind? Our language colours our perception throughout the day and impacts on our self-belief, our behaviour, our confidence and our emotions. When we think about the future, for instance, we play an internal movie representing how we expect that future to be (or less visual people play a radio show). Our words play an important role in our internal representations as they are effectively the script of the movie. The words that we use mostly in day to day life will therefore determine the kinds of movie we play. If we constantly use negative words such as  ‘worry’, ‘fear’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘stress’, we end up creating disaster movies in our minds. .

An experiment was carried out at New York University where subjects were primed with words associated with old age by getting them to rearrange cards with individual words on them to form a sentence. Each of the sentences included words such as ‘worried’, ‘forgetful’, ‘bingo’, ‘lonely’, ‘grey’ and ‘Florida’ (if you’ve been to Florida you will know why), all words which could be associated with the elderly. Waiting outside the room where the priming took place were researchers who secretly timed each of the subjects as they made their way to the room at the beginning of the experiment and as they left the building at the end. Interestingly, the ‘old age’ words seemed to have a profound effect on the subjects as they were significantly slower leaving the room as they had been when they arrived.

If you want to be happy, excited, fulfilled, relaxed or motivated, make sure your script is the right one!

Andy Barton

Performance consultant

The Sporting Mind

Think yourself fit

Even after many years working in the field of mental performance I am still in awe of the extraordinary power of the mind. Certainly the one thing that seems to unite elite sports performers, no matter what their chosen sport is, is that they all possess unusually vivid imaginations. It is what allows them to see, hear and feel things that us mere mortals are not able to that sets them apart in a competitive situation.

One way of exploiting a powerful imagination is to use mental rehearsal techniques essentially to train the mind and body to perform skills successfully. When we imagine performing a skill, we actually fire up an almost identical pattern of neural response to when we are actually performing the skill itself. When Rory Mcllroy is lining up a golf shot, he mentally rehearses it by using all of his senses to imagine the look, sound and feeling of the shot in his mind before actually playing the shot. As he imagines it, he fires up the required neurons and muscles that are involved in the shot, effectively programming it in to his mental computer.  The more vividly he imagines the shot, the better the programming is.

One study carried out in Cleveland, Ohio compared people who went to the gym with people who imagined being at the gym and having a virtual workout.  The participants who actually went to the gym over a 3 month period increased their muscle mass by an average of 30%. Interestingly, the participants who only did the virtual workout and lifted no weights at all, still managed to increase their muscle mass by an average 13.5%.

So if you want that six pack before you go away for your summer holidays, all you have to do is use a little imagination!

Andy Barton

Performance consultant

The Sporting Mind