Do Superstitions Get In The Way?
June 18, 2007 at 12:36 pm | Posted in Golf, Mental Training, Sports, Sports Performance, Sports Psychology | 4 CommentsTags: athletes, superstitions
Athletes by nature are very superstitious. They can tell you about their lucky socks, special shorts or shirt. The items they have are countless. The other things are what they do. It might be how they tie their sneakers, get ready before competition, or they things they say before competing. It seems that athletes dabble in the mystical arts, doesn’t it? Shakespeare wrote: “Nothing is good or bad lest we make it so.” The same applies to our lucky charms and rituals. We create our own meaning out of the most significant and insignificant things. Our tendency is to generalize, distort or delete information in a way that will serve us or not serve us.
There is a technical term for these things. One is called the placebo effect. We may have some idea what this is. The term is translated roughly meaning, to placate or appease. The placebo effect is commonly known in regards to medicine and their trials. One group is given some type of medicine while the other group, the control group, receives a placebo (sugar pill). It has been found in some studies that the placebo group ended up equal if not better than people in the testing group. Now why is that? Good question grasshopper. The reason is that we give it meaning, our subconscious takes it in, and our bodies are transformed. It is essentially a belief pattern. The same is true for athletes and their lucky charms. Athletes place the belief in the item and things begin to happen. It’s not really that mysterious.
I remember in the movie, “Practical Magic” the lead, Aidan Quinn is shot in the heart but does not die. The reason he doesn’t die or even get hurt is that he has his policeman’s badge there. He believed that the badge gave him power; it also seemed to give him life. Do you know any athlete that feels invincible because of their lucky charm?
Another facet of this is the ritual. They will chant, tie their shoes, say a prayer, warm up a certain way. All athletes will have certain rituals that they must follow. Why you might ask…because they say so. They claim that if they don’t do it that all will be lost. Many times they are correct, but why?At one end of the scope is the nocebo effect (Latin nocebo = “I will harm”). This is the opposite of the placebo effect. The body fights itself. In a study with clinically depressed people, they found that their cells attacked one another. The results of the nocebo effect can be devastating, even resulting in death. I remember a story of two women. One woman was given the diagnosis of a heart murmur, which is not a serious heart condition. Another woman was given the diagnosis of a galloping rhythm, which is a serious heart condition. The one woman who was given the diagnosis of a heart murmur subsequently panicked and died from a massive heart attack. The other woman, on the other hand, lived well into her eighties. When this woman was asked why she able to live so long she replied, “Because the doctors told me my heart was as healthy as a horse.” She interpreted that a galloping rythym was something good and she reaped the rewards.The key is the interpretation of information given. We create the meaning no matter what it is.
Our filters are geared to see the good or the bad, the beautiful or the ugly, the opportunities or limitations. Again, this life is our story. Let’s create the story in our favor. Can you imagine the placebo effect on our lives? How would your life look if your life story were told in your favor rather than the critiques point of view? If you are facing a challenge, what good meaning can you take from the experience? We are a culmination of our experiences. Perhaps we struggle to find the meaning, but life has a beautiful way of coming full circle. We become the supporters of someone in the future who face the same things we did years earlier.
We have what I call “X-Ray vision” because we have the ability to see right through them and help them as human beings. These moments connect us to the people and the events around us. The moment becomes richer and in turn, we become richer.
Until then…
Kick butt and be a champion!
Coach Guerci
Are The Voices In Your Head Coaching or Catastophic?
June 17, 2007 at 10:37 pm | Posted in Golf, Mental Training, Sports, Sports Performance, Sports Psychology | Leave a commentTags: athletic performance, Confidence, good luck
All the athletes who I’ve coached come to me with their problems with athletic performance. They act as if they forgot how to compete. They use such phrases as I used to, I can’t, I don’t know if I can, and the big one…I forgot how to. In dealing with athletes and clients, I closely listen to the words they use. People are constantly communicating with you. Most of the communication is so subtle while other communication is so blatant and so obvious that we miss it. I’ve trained myself for an extraordinary heightened awareness. It takes some training, but with our wonderful ability to create a habit, I’ve been able to do it. I love to teach anyone how to do it. I can sum it up in one word…decision. I will get into that in some later post.
Getting back to communication using words being our flags and highlights which we often mix. People’s words get lost in the buzz of society, media, and our own thoughts. When you focus on the communication, it expands to extremely revealing ways. Above, I mentioned the athlete killing phrases my athletes and clients use. Look back at them for a moment. Now, I have to give you the inside scoop about words. I have learned that our human history harkens back to a time of magic, wizards, and enchantment. There are the paraphernalia of these people of power and we all know them because it’s a part of our mythological history which we tend to push off as fanciful and just stories. The items of power are the wand, the spells, incantations, and curses along with the talismans and lucky charms to ward off evil. These things are still alive and well in modern society. Now they are not hidden in some secret enclave or secret societies. They are right in front of our eyes and we can’t see it. That’s because we are in a spell too. Do I have your interest peaked?
I’ll break it down to a less “out there” terms. Let’s ground it. There are the phrases that we repeat over and over that cause major breakthroughs and breakdowns as an athlete. Anything we repeat over and over has to engrain itself in our subconscious mind where we unconsciously act upon the thought. I believe the last statistic in regards to how many times a thought goes through your mind it 100,000 times. Hey, if someone is repeating something that many times to me, I’m believing it. It kind of sounds like brain washing or mind control. Well, it is, however, we relegate the power outside ourselves when the power lies within all of us.
We provide our own mental nutrition, look for others outside ourselves to confirm that thought, and then provide evidence in our performance. Remember me mentioning about magic wands, well that thing is right inside our mouths. We wag our tongues using spells that we have picked up along the way. The spells and incantations mesmerize and encompass our minds. We are quite literally entranced by our own words. We speak, think and act on these words daily. Since understanding this, I have instructed my athletes and clients to be vigilant guards to their minds, only letting in what will help them because that support will be repeated over and over. An athlete’s mental nutrition is of utmost importance. Some athletes watch every morsel that enters their bodies, but allow their minds to host an open house in each interaction.
Other high performing athletes are accused of single mindedness. These are the athletes who are munching on high octane thoughts, thoughts which catapult them to the highest ranks and accolades. So our mythology shows us that we are the wizards casting the spells upon ourselves. I won’t get into what we do to each other. I will save that for another posting. We use the wands, words, and charms to help us or hurt us. The unbelievable fact is that we make up the story. We create all the characters, situations, dramas, the rises, the falls; it’s all made up by us. Let’s start telling us a different story, one that makes us legends in our own minds. Until then, our subconscious mind can only follow through with the dominant thought. What’s dominating your thoughts…victory and the agony of defeat?
Until then…
Kick butt and be a champion!
Coach Jim Guerci
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