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Does anxiety ever prevent you from succeeding? Does it ever keep you from being as “good as you should be”? If so, you have a lot in common with [tag]Olympic athletes[/tags] and professionals from every vocation imaginable. Here’s what one group of elite Olympic athletes recently did to help them eliminate or significantly reduce their anxiety and unleash their athletic potential.
The United States Olympic Swim team invited in The Pacific Institute to conduct a seminar for their athletes prior to the FINA world Championships. The aim of the seminar was to “turn the athletes’ minds into bunkers that fortify them against self-doubts”.
Soon, ABC’s Good Morning America is scheduled to air a piece on the Seattle-based company and the role that they’ve played with the United States Olympic swim team. The segment is a follow-up to an article in the New York Times by Karen Crouse on 7/26/09- “Avoiding the Deep End When it Comes to Jitters”-, which talked about how even the United States Olympic swim team must prepare themselves to perform up to their potential.
Are you telling me that even Olympic athletes need assistance in order to be able to perform up to their potential? YES- we all do! Studies show that most of us are only utilizing about 10% of our potential.
How can Olympic athletes experience self-doubt and perform beneath their potential? When expectations from those around us are high, when we’re trying to perform better than we “know we are” and when we’re trying to perform in environments that are out of our comfort zones, our brains start creating negative (avoidant) thoughts that tell us to “go back where we belong”. Where do we belong? Back with the familiar: at the old job, at the familiar pool, with the old friends, with the old ways of doing things. That’s why trying to do anything new or different can be so challenging.
Do you every experience self-doubt? Do you every question your own ability to do something that you know that you’re good at when you have to “do it” in front of a larger audience or in a different setting? Does your negative self-talk ever kick-in when you’re tired, alone or about to try something new?
Pressure and anxiety occur when we try to perform better than we know ourselves to be. There is no pressure when we’re relaxed and performing in areas that are “comfortable” to us.
The key then is for you and I to become comfortable (familiar), in our own minds, with the new level of performance that we desire. So, how do we become comfortable and relaxed prior to swimming the race or giving the presentation? We must be able to “see it” first in our own minds.
The Pacific Institute’s Project Director Brian Goodell – a two-time Olympic gold medalist- was one of the people contributing in the seminar for the U.S. Olympic Swim Team on how to utilize visualization techniques and achieve optimal performance.
Why do U.S. Olympic team members need to visualize? Because they get anxiety and experience moments of self-doubt just like you and I do whenever they’re in new environments or away from what’s familiar to them!
In order to reduce or eliminate the anxiety, athletes visualize themselves performing up to their potential before they ever get into the pool. They’ve rehearsed and visualized the event in their own minds where they can see themselves performing at a high-level of performance against the greatest competitors in the world in front of thousands (or millions) of people. They’ve already used their forethought to prepare for any obstacles that might be ahead of them and to visualize how to go over, under, around or through the obstacle. They’ve already successfully finished and won the race in their minds before they ever stepped into the pool!
I’ve been successfully utilizing these techniques for myself -and physically- and for my partners around the world for many years. Once we set goals for ourselves, we can use the visualization process to assimilate these new ideas of quality and quantity of performance into our minds safely from the comfort of our homes and offices before we ever have to do it for real!
