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The Fitness and Health Report
Information for a Healthy Life

March 6, 2001
Issue 20

In This Issue:

THE PEAK PERFORMING MIND

THE PEAK PERFORMING MIND

Richard F. Gerson, Ph.D., CMC, CPC

You've heard the saying "It's all in the mind". Well, the peak performing mind is not all in the mind. It starts with the mind but it also includes the entire body. In fact, the peak performing mind encompasses your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, your behaviors, and everything else you can think of that will affect your performance.

Take a minute to relax. Go ahead. Sit back and take a few long, slow deep breaths. Feel the tension leaving your mind and your body. Now, picture in your mind a time when you did everything perfectly. It could be a sporting event but it doesn't have to be. It can be when you were playing a musical instrument, singing, dancing, making love or doing anything else.

Feel how smoothly everything FLOWS. It all occurred without you having to think about it. You just were there in the moment doing your thing. You were acting "unconsciously", without thinking and everything was going perfectly. In fact, when you started to think about it, the performance started to deteriorate. Here's something fun you should try. Next time you're playing a sport, say golf or tennis, and your opponent is just beating the pants off of you, and nothing you do seems to work, do this. Ask your opponent exactly what is he or she doing that is making him or her play so well. You can even be more specific and as your opponent if it's in the preparation, follow-through, or foot position. Your opponent will begin to think about the performance and everything he or she is doing and the performance will deteriorate. You may even win the match. This works. I've used it hundreds of times, both in athletic competition and during training programs to emphasize a point. The point is that inappropriate thinking, or excessive thought processes, get in the way of the peak performing mind.

MEET THE PEAK PERFORMING MIND

Your peak performing mind is the sum total of all your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, past experiences, future desires, subconscious activity, and a belief that you are the best you can be. It is the mind that is operating when the right and left hemispheres of your brain, your conscious and subconscious and superconscious minds, and your reptilian, mammalian and cortical brains are functioning in perfect synchrony. It's when your brain waves are perfectly attuned to the activity at hand.

Many people believe that when a person is engaged in a peak performance, their right brain has taken over from their left brain. Others believe that the subconscious has taken over from the conscious mind. As you can see from the previous paragran, the truth is more that all the powers and capabilities of the mind are working together with the body to provide the peak performance.

The mental state of a peak performer has been described as flowing, free from anxiety and tension, with no competing or interfering thoughts. As an example, remember a time when everything you did went perfectly. You were just doing and being, not really thinking. In contrast, take a basketball player going up for a jump shot. Before he releases, he thinks "Is my arm in the proper position?" "Can I make this shot?" "Will I come out of the game if I miss?" Or, consider the golfer, who before a drive, starts to think "Now don't hit it into the rough." "Stay out of the sand trap." "Keep the club head up." With all these thoughts running through someone's mind, the body doesn't have a chance to do its thing; which is perform naturally. Instead of letting the mind go and relax, the performer has aggravated and overactivated the mind so that it can't do its job properly.

The peak performing mind has now become the meek performing mind.

You can prevent this from happening by regularly training your peak performing mind. Start with a simple relaxation exercise, such as deep breathing. When you relax your body, your mind follows. Put another way, physiology creates psychology. Also, work on relaxing your mind. When you relax your mind, and dispel the myriad of competing thoughts, your body follows. Put another way, psychology creates physiology.

The relaxation response you're eliciting does several great things for you. It relaxes your muscles, makes breathing easier, lowers blood pressure, improves circulation, and removes negative thoughts from your mind. It also makes you more receptive to positive suggestions that will build up your positive attitude and belief system.

The best performances of the peak performing mind begin with your attitude that you can do this: You can relax and put your mind in the proper state. Then your body follows.

Your next step is to use positive affirmations. Tell yourself positive things, such as "I am great. I am capable. I am a successful person." Use these affirmations to put yourself into a highly motivated and confident state. Keep the affirmation statements in the present tense so you can ex

perience them now, not in some hoped-for future state. You are now relaxed, confident and motivated. Your next activity to create the peak performing mind is to visualize and imagine yourself achieving a peak performance. You can go back into your memory and pull out something you've already done and relive that.

In one program I conducted, I had a triathlete vividly describe his best ever Iron Man performance. I asked him to describe it using all his senses and to paint the most realistic (live) picture possible for the rest of the audience. He was so into his description, he started to relive all the positive feelings and emotions he had during the race. He was getting very excited. His description was also so good that the audience started to have similar feelings. The joy, the elation, the chills, the desire to win, and the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment when the triathlon was completed. When he finished, they applauded as if everyone was actually at the finish line.

Use this "vividness" to put your mind in the right state. Include all the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings of the previous peak performance. (Pay attention to how you start to feel all over when you relive this experience. You'll be amazed at "how tall you get".)

If you can't visualize a past peak performance, create one in your mind. Act "as if" and become a peak performer. That's what all of us really do anyway. We pretend to be something and then with enough practice, that pretense becomes a reality. Just look at your children as they play pretend and copy role models. That's how they get so good at what they do and who they are. You should do it too.

Remember, you don't have to be an athlete to achieve this. We work with professional speakers, trainers, executives, teachers, and many others to help them achieve peak performance in their line of work. So make yourself a peak performer to put your mind in the proper state for whatever you have to do.

Once you've imagined yourself successfully performing, go out and actually perform. Don't judge your actions and don't be critical. Just do it and notice the outcome. The less critical you are of yourself, the better you'll perform. The more often you activate your mind in this manner, the more you'll achieve peak performances in all you do.

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