Let me show you how you can empower both your team and in turn yourself to excel in your performance this year. It only takes small focused strategic corrections to see major improvement.

FIVE TIPS for managing performance
‘How can I be PROACTIVE when things aren’t going well?
Resilience is defined as ‘‘the capacity of a group of employees (read players), within a team to manage the everyday pressure of work and remain healthy, to adapt to change, and to be proactive in positioning for future work challenges’’

• Set boundaries.
  When pressure was building for James, because a client was very needy and ringing at all hours, he had to set boundaries, step away from his computer late in the evening and tell the client that he wasn’t available until the next morning after a meeting. This gave him space and time for some ‘self care’.
• Have a self care routine
  That could be several glasses of wine but that might not bring the benefits of clarity which helps to improve your focus. Exercise increases those lovely endorphins that make us feel good so try to make time for exercise or even a meditation.
• Talk to a friend or colleague
  Talk about how to move forward rather than going into victim mode. The blame game might make you temporarily feel better but the feeling doesn’t help you to grow. Be aware of the habits that make you feel good about yourself in the long term.
• Take a few long deep breaths
  In fact, take more than a few. See how few breaths you can take in 30 seconds. If you really want to get technical, time your heart rate before you begin and after 30 seconds. I bet your heart rate will be lower. Lower heart rate = feeling calm. Lower blood pressure – living longer.
  In the old days we would say, ‘Just count to ten’ and that actually works too to slow down the heart rate and reduce the damaging stress hormones.
• Be kind to yourself
  Don’t get into the thought pattern of, I should have done this or that. Acknowledge that there are some things you just can’t change and instead focus on what you can do now.

Winning or Losing
Events last year in the AFL finals (or quarter and semi finals to European
folks), have shown the dramatic effects of the mind games professional players experience with two top Aussie teams getting absolutely hammered recently when it came to their big day. Now with the all important final only one sleep away, which team has got their act together mentally as well as physically?

What difference does your mindset make?

Resilience really jumps out at you on the playing field when your team is down on points but if you stay focused and don’t lose your temper or lose faith in the power of your team mates, you’re more likely to come back on top. Staying focused on the positives and self belief, are the dominant mindset of successful people and successful teams.

Changing the Neural Pathways

Positive thinking and a healthy perspective on change are things that you can grow with a bit of training. That’s not to say that you’ve got rose coloured glasses on but you can train your mind to engage the neural pathways that make the highway to success bigger than the highway to failure. Don’t let your thoughts get sucked down that black hole every time something goes wrong!!

Resilience is defined as ‘‘the capacity of a group of employees (read players), within a team to manage the everyday pressure of work and remain healthy, to adapt to change, and to be proactive in positioning for future work challenges’’

Con- fidence
Improving performance is founded in self-belief and the knowledge that whatever happens, things will turn out fine in the end. If you constantly ‘catastrophize’ and think the worst, that might well be what you get!! We are who we think we are How can we put a stop to the erosion of our true selves and see ourselves in a positive light? I wrote the word confidence with the emphasis on the Con for a reason. The mind controls the body, controlling how the body reacts, and how we feel so we can Con the mind into believing what we want it to believe Accentuate the Positives During a workshop last week, I asked the participants to write down five positive things about themselves. They found this quite challenging and struggled even more when I asked them to say to themselves, “I am wonderful.” Most of the things they wrote were about what they were good at – like – “I am good at cooking.” though one woman was able to say, “I think I’m a good mother.” Can you see the difference? We really struggle to say nice things about ourselves and worry that other people might think we’re self centred and ‘up’ ourselves but there can be a middle ground where you’re quietly confident about who you are and able to say nice things about yourself. The Brain doesn’t know when you’re acting It may be that you don’t actually say negative things but you think them all the time. That’s where the CON comes in! We are who we think we are. You can Con your brain into believing stuff just by thinking it so learn to say nice things to yourself, beginning with thoughts and then say it out loud. If this is a tough thing to do, imagine that your in a TV ad’ or a play and you’re acting a part and practise. The good news is that the brain doesn’t know you’re acting!!! If you pretend to laugh, the brain reacts to that event as if you are really having a good laugh so it releases the good hormones – the endorphins to calm the body Studies were conducted where people had to imagine that they were lifting a weight with their right arm and after a number of sessions, the muscles in that arm were bigger!! Can you believe that!! Amazing.