“ No Wasted Journey”
With the death of the Wales football manager Gary Speed, the former Sale Sharks rugby player Selorm Kuadey and people like ex England Cricketer Andrew Flintoff speaking of his experiences, the awareness of depression in sport has increased. These are some of my thoughts on the subject as someone who has come back from severe addiction and depression and works on a daily basis with elite athletes across sports in the domain of sports psychology. My own story is not something I shout about from the roof-tops as fear of being judged still lingers – as it does for most people who have been touched by depression. But my experiences give my work an authenticity and a depth of understanding of the darker side of the human psyche especially in the soul baring crucibles of professional sports.
Sport can be seen as a reflection on society it is part of, depression is an illness of the late 20th century western society and, as such, sport is now feeding back that trend. As our society becomes more transparent so do our souls and there are less and less hiding places for doubts, fears and emotional fragility. And the heroes that are ‘worshiped on a Saturday’ are as complex away from the park as us all.
“Life doesn’t run away from nobody. Life runs at people.”
- Joe Frazier
My own story is one of getting sucked into addiction first through anorexia then alcoholism and a parallel journey of depression, which only got worse when I gave up my addictions. It wasn’t as if I wanted to kill myself – I didn’t have the energy for that – I often just did not feel anything about the world. It was a grey place which lacked meaning for me, my old interests and even people I loved. In my worst moments I thought ‘if I die, I die’. But the seed that kept me going was the fact that I had hope – that when I put my head on the pillow at night that tomorrow may be a better day, often it wasn’t but I kept in the game, kept turning up.
Sometimes it is easier not to play the game if you don’t think you are going to win. Sport is highly competitive and therefore attracts highly competitive people – who very often learn to put the majority of their self worth and identity on the result of the game they are playing. For me, if I wasn’t on the top of the hill I would rather be under it. I mistook the middle path for mediocrity. I didn’t know what life really was; it was as if there was a different game going on that people were playing and I did not know the rules.
What is depression? It’s different for everyone. Depression – for me – was about the relationship between my thinking, my emotions and my energy. Successful athletes need to be strong willed, focused, with incredible energy to enable them to get where they want to be. The qualities that are admired are drive, determination and mental toughness. Paradoxically, it is these very mental qualities that sometimes can leave them open to the ‘shadow-side’ – obsession, compulsive thinking and a warped sense of what is important.
Depression is an “illness” of energetic malaise, one which goes against everything the athlete holds dear. Imagine waking up in the morning and not wanting to do the things you love and wondering what is wrong.
The Greeks thought those with “enthusiasm” were imbued with god given qualities that mere mortals did not have and as such could achieve what the gods achieved. Depression is the opposite feeling to that.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; “
Theodore Roosevelt
Sport is an amplifier of emotions and a revealer of character, it magnifies feeling and embraces winning and losing, celebration and despair. I have worked with many players and coaches and have been like this myself – if your team lost on Saturday you were a nightmare for a few days and if you won you were on great form. The Saturday result could govern your whole week. This brings me on to the point of thoughts and emotions. Very simply as humans we can’t stop thinking but our thinking creates how we see the world and how we feel. We win a game or play well and think “that was good“, a cocktail of “feel good” chemicals are released into the body and we feel good feelings and act accordingly, when we play poorly, this leads to thinking negative thoughts, feeling bad and acting accordingly. What I would suggest is that when a thoughtful, strong willed person thinks negative thoughts these thoughts are brought to life and become very powerful and ‘create’ that persons reality. This makes it very difficult to see the world for how it is and in a very competitive environment where admitting doubt is often seen as weakness it can be difficult to find a way out.
As modern sport becomes more competitive, one of the challenges for athletes is that they begin to attribute all their own self-worth on their external results – winning tournaments, getting picked for the team – with all the uncertainty and fragility that goes alongside. While this is great, nothing lasts forever and when they retire or get injured, what happens then? And when athletes connect to something bigger than themselves, outside sport, with purpose and meaning amazing things are created, think about Lance Armstrong or Muhammed Ali. If we learn that our internal feelings need not be governed by external circumstance this gives incredible emotional flexibility and power to live a fulfilled life.
“When you are going through Hell keep your feet moving”
Winston Churchill
In conclusion, sport is very black and white – it should be simple and clear. Sport now reflects the grey areas of the world, the doping, the diving, the “intelligent interpretations of the rules” and the people that play it reflect our world with all its paradoxes, contradiction and incredible beauty. For anyone suffering from depression, get help, see your doctor and remember; “this too will pass”. Don’t wrap your whole identity up in the external winning or losing – easier said than done, I know. Don’t be afraid to keep a bit of you for your friends, family and for yourself.
The 12 Hidden Laws of Olympic Performance
Law One
A Top Performance is an Inspired Performance
“This was the most splendid team performance”
Lord Sebastian Coe, after winning the Olympic bid
No one gets to the top of their game on their own − not even competitors in solo sports! Behind every Olympic athlete, there’s a whole team of significant others; coaches, physios, trainers, nutritionists…the list goes on. Lord Sebastian Coe, Chair of the London 2012 Olympic Committee, knows a thing or two about team work and the inspiration that each and every one of us can find in other people. We are all connected, and in all areas of life, Olympic sport included, it’s an undeniable fact that top performances are inspired performances.
Seb Coe was inspired to become an athlete by watching athletes from his local area competing in the 1968 Mexico Olympics. John and Sheila Sherwood won bronze and silver medals that year, and all of the pupils in Coe’s school crowded round an old black and white television to watch them perform. Coe said, “By the time I got back to my classroom, I knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be.“ Of course, it was not only Coe’s dream to become an athlete, he made it his goal to become a champion athlete; a goal he passionately pursued and achieved by winning two gold and two silver medals in 1980 and 1984. In fact, he is the only man to have won 1500 metre gold twice.
Having been inspired by Olympic champions, Coe himself then became the Olympian who inspired another champion, Dame Kelly Holmes, who became a double gold medal winner in the 2004 Athens Olympics. That’s quite a ripple of influence, 1968 all the way through to 2004, but it’s a ripple that continues as Holmes continues to inspire today’s young athletes.
We can all be inspired and inspire. During his athletics career, Coe was coached by his father, Peter, his “greatest inspiration” and now in his political career, he is determined to inspire a nation, and the world, by achieving his dream of making the 2012 London Olympics, “the Games for everyone.” He hopes the Games will inspire people to challenge themselves to do things they might not have considered doing before, volunteering for example. “People inspired me in my sport when I was running cross-country; the people who were prepared to stand out on a course for six hours in sub-zero temperatures marshalling kids. Looking back, I would never have been able to do anything I have done without the volunteers.”
As part of the preparations for the 2012 London Olympics, an entire building will be dedicated to kitting out the Team GB athletes, and a special ceremony will be held to recognise the athletes becoming Olympians. It’s all part of director of sport Sir Clive Woodward’s master plan to inspire a “One Team GB” culture and team spirit across all 1300 members of the team − not just the 550 athletes but also all of the behind-the-scenes staff and volunteers. Behind every champion athlete, there’s a champion support team, and each individual in the team feels passionate about doing their best in their role to allow the team as a whole to achieve a best performance. When you find your passion, you find your inspiration, and you find your motivation to be a champion performer in whatever it is you do. Who or what inspires you?
Don is taking on individual clients in January for an individual, one year coaching programme based on his Amazon best selling book “The 12 Hidden Laws of Performance” email freyja@zonedinperformance.com if you think this is the programme for you in 2012.
‘Tis the Season
“There are three stages of a man’s life: He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus”
- author unknown
Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la do you love this time of year, or do you loathe it? Perhaps you’ve already got your decorations up and your “Santa Stop Here” sign out in the front garden, or perhaps you’re doing your best to ignore it all, hoping it’ll all just go away. Well, even if you are The Grinch personified, I bet you can still remember a time back in your childhood when this time of year was simply magical—go on, admit it!
If you’ve got kids, it’s not hard to remember the excitement of believing in Santa Claus, and even if you don’t have kids, it’s not really that hard to remember being one yourself, is it? Do you remember writing out your letter to Santa? I do. I don’t remember writing anything in particular, but I do remember the feeling of belief. I totally believed that if I had been “good” and made it onto Santa’s “nice” list, my efforts would be rewarded with that something that I really, really wanted.
So at what point in your life do you stop believing in Santa, and, at what point in your life do you stop believing that you can have what you want? Yes! If you’re not happy with your lot in life and you believe that you’re stuck with it, you’ve stopped believing that you can have what you want. Okay, before you get all “bah humbug” on me, I’m not suggesting that you should write out what it is you want and then sit back and wait for a jolly man in a red suit to deliver it to the foot of your bed! But, I am suggesting that you should think back to your childhood thought processes.
Take a look around you at the kids you know today. As Christmas approaches, they begin to think in terms of what they need to do-over and above what they normally do in order to receive what they want in return. It’s a simple trade—they do good things and they get good things in return! Now you might argue that life is not so simple once you’re all grown up, but I’m here to argue the point that it is. The only thing that changes between childhood and adulthood is belief.
You already know that positive thoughts lead to positive actions, and positive actions lead to positive outcomes. Well, think about it again now; when a child writes a letter to Santa, they are thinking positive thoughts about what they want, and they are thinking positively about the positive actions they can take to ensure that Santa brings them the things they want in return. And, when they hold up their side of the bargain, Santa delivers that’s the positive outcome!
You can do the very same now, today. If you’re not happy with your lot, switch your focus away from what you don’t want and write down what you do want. Look at your list and think positively about what you could do right now to move towards those things, then add the “magic” ingredient: belief. Believe that you can have what you want.
Positive thoughts are not just for Christmas, they’re for life!
Don is taking on individual clients in January for an individual, one year coaching programme based on his Amazon best selling book “The 12 Hidden Laws of Performance” email freyja@zonedinperformance.com if you think this is the programme for you in 2012.
Superstition, Self-Belief and Success
Football fans of a certain age might remember the comic book story of Billy’s Boots, a feature of Scorcher in the 1970s that continued to appear in various other “boys’ comics” for many years. The stories revolved around a young aspiring footballer called Billy Dane who was actually a pretty poor player until the day he found an ancient pair of football boots that had once belonged to a professional footballer known as Dead-Shot Keen. When Billy wore the boots, they appeared to have a magical mind of their own, allowing Billy to effectively follow in Dead-Shot’s footsteps and play superbly − scoring eight goals in one episode to bring his team back from the brink of defeat!
So, I hear you say, what has a daft story about a pair of “magic” boots got to do with the real world? Well, recent research suggests that amateur athletes who use a professional athlete’s equipment perform better − could this be scientific evidence that the magic in Billy’s Boots was real? The participants in the study were all keen amateur golfers and part of the experiment was to putt some balls. Half of the group were told that the putter they were using belonged to professional golfer Ben Curtis, the other half were not. Guess what? Even though both groups were in fact using the same bog standard putter, the group who believed it belonged to Curtis consistently sank more putts! It would appear that perceived success is contagious.
In all areas of life, what we believe to be real has a direct impact on our actual reality. Clearly, in sport, believing that a piece of equipment has been used by a successful professional can have a powerful ‘success placebo’ effect − demonstrating beautifully the “magical” power of our own beliefs. Half of the amateur golfers in the study believed they would putt successfully because they were using a successful golfer’s putter, and they did. The other half had no reason to believe their putting performance would be any different, and it wasn’t. But, here’s the thing, the only real difference between the two groups was simply belief. It wasn’t Curtis’ putter so we can safely rule out any magic of the Billy’s Boots variety, the improvements in performance were purely the result of believing that improvements were a real possibility.
Billy’s Boots might be a bit before your time but how about Buzz Lightyear? If you’re familiar with the Disney Pixar movie Toy Story, you’ll know that he’s an action figure who doesn’t believe he’s a toy; he thinks that everything it says about him on his packaging is real. He believes that he is a spaceman and that he can fly into space, so he does! Of course, as the story unfolds, Buzz comes to realise that he is in fact only a toy and that nothing he believed to be real actually is − he can’t really fly at all. Okay, he’s a fictional character and he’s a toy fictional character at that but there is a point to all of this! Before the movie is over, Buzz learns that not being able to believe in the blurb on his box doesn’t actually change anything, he can still “save the day“ by simply believing in himself.
So, yet again, I hear you say, what’s that got to do with the real world? Think about it for a moment; it was the amateur golfers’ belief in the “packaging” that inspired their improved putting performances. What would happen if they were asked to putt again after discovering the real facts? It’s only by believing that success is a real possibility that you can become successful. With self-belief, you have all the “magic” you need to make your way to infinity and beyond!
Related articles
- It Boils Down to Commitment! (donmacnaughton.org)
- High Performance Keys (donmacnaughton.org)
Copyright © 2009-2010. Don MacNaughton. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction without written permission.
Aliens, Zombies…and Other Imaginary Fears!
Photo by Stuart Anthony.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Have you ever watched a scary movie then found yourself totally ‘spooked’ for hours afterward? You jump at every tiny sound, you see things in the shadows, hear things, feel things, and generally overreact to everything and nothing. If you have, you’ve experienced your body’s fear response; your built-in, instinctive survival mechanism, designed to help you escape from danger.
Of course, there’s no real danger to escape from. The giant, three-headed, blood-thirsty, chainsaw-wielding alien that you thought you saw hiding behind your curtain isn’t really there and the shape-shifting-werewolf-vampire-zombie that you heard scratching at your door was in fact your dog stretching and yawning in his basket! C’mon, admit it, you’ve been there, right? We’ve all fallen victim to an overactive imagination at some point in our lives and experienced the sensation of the hairs on the back of our necks standing up along with a racing heart and sweaty palms. These are all symptoms of the fear response; but here’s the thing, they represent a very real, physical response to a danger that is entirely imaginary and, let’s face it, entirely unrealistic! The power of your mind is so great that your brain is unable to differentiate between real danger and imagined danger.
With that said, take a moment to answer the following question:
What would you like to be able to do in your life that you currently fear doing?
Perhaps you’d like to be able to give up your job and start your own business but you fear everything going wrong. You focus on what could go wrong; you imagine the worst case scenario so you see yourself sitting in your new business premises waiting for customers to flock through the door but no one comes. You hear your bank manager expressing his concerns over your finances on the phone. You feel your stomach rumbling as you imagine yourself looking into your empty fridge in your empty kitchen…in your home which is about to be repossessed anyway…you get the idea!
Perhaps you’d like to ask someone you know from your work out for a drink but you fear their response. Yet again, you focus on the worst case scenario. You see that person laughing in your face and saying “in your dreams” before tweeting the hilarious incident to the whole world. Or, perhaps you’d like to write a book but fear not being ‘educated’ or interesting enough so you imagine yourself being rejected by publisher after publisher or becoming J.R Hartley – only less famous!
In every case, your fears are imagined. The worst case scenarios that you are ’living’ in your mind are no more real than the alien behind your curtain or the zombie at your door. You are scaring yourself with your imaginings of doom, gloom, and disaster but those scary thoughts trigger your fear response. You feel your heart pounding and your palms sweating at the mere thought of doing any of those things; the fear feels real.
Okay, maybe there are real risks involved in doing what you fear but the bottom line is, if you allow yourself to focus only on scary, negative thoughts, you can only ever experience scary, negative outcomes. If everything going wrong really is the only outcome you can imagine then you better check behind your curtain because that alien really is there!
Related articles
- Finding Courage in the Face of Fear (donmacnaughton.org)
- Look Fear In the Eye – Then Poke It! (donmacnaughton.org)
Copyright © 2009-2010. Don MacNaughton. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction without written permission.
Create your Own Positive Vibe
“How Positive Thinking Affects How You Feel”
Sometimes you just get a feeling about something, right? A good feeling about something or a bad feeling about something; so what is that feeling? Let’s say you’re thinking about making a big change in your life but you’re hesitating because something is not sitting right and somehow it just doesn’t feel right. What causes that ‘gut feeling’ and where does it really come from?
Quantum Physics tells us that the universe and everything in it is a form of energy and all energy vibrates. This means that everything in the universe, including you, your thoughts and your emotions, creates its own unique vibration. The ‘feeling’ that you experience emanates from those vibrations. A ‘good feeling’ is created by the vibrations of positive energy and a ‘bad feeling’ is therefore created by the vibrations of negative energy, so the question now is, where does the energy that creates that gut feeling come from?
Have you ever walked into a room full of people and instantly felt unwelcome? Even without anything being said or without anyone outwardly being hostile, you still pick up on a “you’re not welcome” vibe. Familiar? What you’re picking up on is the negative energy being generated by the people in the room. You can’t see what they’re thinking, but you can feel it. The same can be said of finding yourself in a welcoming environment. No one needs to actually say or do anything, you simply pick up on the positive energy of the people around you – your gut feeling is that you’re in a good place.
So what if you’re the only one around, then where’s the negative energy coming from? The answer, of course, is you. Your thoughts create their own vibrations so if you’re thinking negatively, you are generating the negative energy that creates that bad feeling. By learning to think positively, you learn how to generate positive energy and you effectively learn to create your own positive vibe that you can take with you wherever you go – your very own built-in gut feeling that just by being you, you‘re in a good place!
Related articles
- The 12 Laws of Performance – Good Vibes (sportspsychology2.com)
- The 12 Laws of Performance – Can You Feel It? (donmacnaughton.org)
Copyright © 2009-2010. Don MacNaughton. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction without written permission.
High Performance Keys
How Committed Are You to Your Best Game?
“Commitment unlocks the doors of imagination, allows vision, and gives us the ‘right stuff’ to turn our dreams into reality”
- James Womack
Do you know a committed individual; someone who is committed to a cause perhaps, committed to their job, their family, or their sport? We often describe people we admire as being “committed” and it’s considered an admirable quality to be someone who is “not shy of commitment,” so what does it actually mean?
If you are a committed individual, you are committed to achieving a particular outcome in your life and you will accept nothing less. So how do you know how committed you are to your own cause and how do you know if you have the “right stuff” to turn your dreams into realities? The bottom line is, there’s a big difference between having an interest in achieving something and being committed to achieving that something. When it’s something you’re interested in, you’ll do what you can to achieve it when it’s convenient, but when it’s something you’re committed to achieving, you’ll do whatever it takes whenever it needs to be done, no matter how inconvenient!
Commitment means knowing what it is you want; having a clear vision of what it is you want to achieve, and then sticking with it, accepting no substitutes or excuses. Legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi once said, “The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen endeavour in life.” In other words, if you’re committed to your cause and you’ve got the “right stuff,” you will accept nothing short of a best performance in whatever it is you do – and you won’t sell yourself short.
Of course, not selling yourself short means knowing what you’re worth! How do you know what your best performance is: if you’re committed to excellence, how will you know you’ve achieved it? Commitment is all about seeing things through. You can’t know what your best is unless you keep challenging yourself, so being committed to success and achieving your dreams means continuing to do just that. However, it also means remaining open to change. Management consultant Peter F. Drucker once said, “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” You do need an action plan to commit to but you also need to accept, even with the best will in the world, things don’t always go to plan. Commitment is keeping your eye on your goal no matter what life throws at you, and finding another way. With commitment, you might need to take a few detours to get to where you want to go, but you’ll keep going and you won’t settle for any other destination.
Related articles
- “Coaching yourself through changing fortunes like a Pro” (the12lawsofperformance.co)
- The 12 Laws of Performance – A Passionate Business (zonedinperformance.com)
Copyright © 2009-2010. Don MacNaughton. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction without written permission.
Finding Courage in the Face of Fear
“There is no living that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid”
- L Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Cover of The Wizard of Oz
Who can forget the ‘cowardly lion’ character in the classic movie The Wizard of Oz? All he wanted was courage. He believed that if he only had courage, he’d be able to do everything he wanted to; everything he believed a lion should be able to do – everything he believed he couldn’t do because he didn’t have courage. So what is courage?
Courage > noun
1. the ability to do something that frightens one.
2. strength in the face of pain or grief.
Above is a dictionary definition of courage, but what’s your definition? How would you describe a courageous person? Brave? Bold? Or daring perhaps? Chances are, you see courageous qualities in other people that you don’t see in yourself, believing yourself to be a bit of a ‘cowardly lion’ instead. But here’s the thing, do the people you believe to have courage, believe themselves to be courageous? Chances are, they don’t – they’re just like you!
As L Frank Baum said, “True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid,” and that’s just it, we don’t all share the same fears. When you think of it that way, the person who is afraid of spiders but manages to pick one up – no matter how teeny-tiny it may be – in order to rescue it from drowning in the bath is no less courageous than the “superhero” fireman who rescues ten people from a burning building. I’m not suggesting for a moment that firemen aren’t courageous or that they don’t feel fear, I’m making the point that what they do is what they’re trained to do and because of that training, they have confidence in themselves and in their ability to do what needs to be done, even when faced with life-threatening danger, and to do it in true “just-doing-my-job-ma’am” Hollywood style! However, the person who is about to scoop up the spider from the bath is facing a fear that to them feels every bit as real and as life-threatening as a burning building. They don’t have any ‘spider-scooping-up training’ behind them, they don’t have confidence in themselves to be able to do it but they go ahead and do it anyway – that’s courage.
It’s fair to say that courage and self-confidence go hand-in-hand. The more you believe in yourself and in your abilities, the easier it is to face your “fears” and to meet life’s challenges head on. Back in the Land of Oz, the cowardly lion demonstrated great courage on many occasions as he journeyed along the yellow brick road with Dorothy but he didn’t recognise any courage in himself or in his actions because he lacked confidence in himself and believed himself to be a coward. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.” Take a moment to ponder over that. The cowardly lion already had his own courage but it wasn’t until the ‘wizard’ gave him a “bravery potion” to drink that he believed it himself. Are you really a cowardly lion? Or do you just think you are? If you think you lack the courage to do what you want to do in life, think again; all the courage you need is already within you.
