Accept Challenges, Learn From Experience
Let’s take a look at how you can accept challenges and learn from your experiences. Would you like to achieve peak performance in your golf game? How about in some other sport, career or area of your life? Well, you cannot have peak performance in your sport mentally unless you practice those skills in your life on a regular basis. Your brain, thoughts and mind do not instantaneously shift just because you are in your sport. To be able to master those skills in your sport, you need to master them in your life as well. As a Mental Trainer and Hypnotherapist, that is what I am here to help you with, and I hope you find my articles, training products and actual services helpful. If you need extra help beyond what I give you here, I am available to you. Please, do not hesitate to contact me.
As with other articles I write, I am taking a quote (or mental suggestion), from my golf product. It is: “I accept challenges and my swing just as they are in that moment- I access the information, gather data, learn from experiences and situation, get deeper understanding, then apply knowledge as opportunities arise.”
That is a really long suggestion compared with others I have reviewed in these articles, and I honestly feel like it includes practically all that I teach. It is interesting that it all fits into this short phrase, but the bottom line is that it is not so easy to apply. If we start at the beginning: “I accept challenges…”, just those three words alone are going to be a block for many of you in trying to achieve peak performance. Why?
First of all, many people do not look at interesting situations as challenges. They look at them as bad shots or maybe bad stations. Your first step, then, is to actually eliminate that form of thinking and see them all as challenges. After that is to accept the challenges. Again, I am not claiming this happens quickly or easily. It is a matter of being diligent and truly working on these things as a means of improving your performance and achieving greater success in your game.
Acceptance is having peace about challenges. It is having an inner knowing that all is going to be okay, and through this I am going to move further ahead, see progress and success, and evolve. “I accept challenges and my swing…”; but no matter what sport you are in, you can translate it over. I accept challenges in my ‘swing’, my ‘mechanics’, my ‘abilities’, just as they are in that moment. So what I am pulling in here is a realization that at any given moment, you have different levels of skill sets you are able to perform. Although people are actually capable of a lot of things, in any given moment they are only able to perform at a certain level, based on thousands of different elements. Those elements include your mechanics, your physical space, your mental state, your environment, other people and what they contribute to a situation, and so many other things. So at any moment, it is a level of acceptance for whatever varying degree of those elements exists at that time that contributes to your ability to achieve peak performance.
Then you look at how “…I access the information…”, in a given moment…which means to scan around you, within you and all that is presented in that moment; from a place of non-emotion, of gathering data and knowing that what is being presented is real and separate from yourself and your emotions; any expectations and fears from the given facts. Your ability to do this will directly impact your ability to select the right club, for example, or make other crucial decisions that will affect your performance or success with that shot.
After accessing information, comes gathering data and learning from experiences. Since a lot of people are unable to accept challenges – or they look at situations as ‘bad’ – they miss huge opportunities to learn from experiences. They miss the timing or ability to instantly accept and learn from whatever is being presented to them, or get a deeper understanding that will lead to an improvement in their performance. They do not realize that it is with a neutral assessing of information and gathering of data, that they can get a deeper understanding of themselves, of life, of the situations being presented (or the challenges), and their abilities in those situations. That understanding is necessary to lead them towards the changes in their mindsets or mental skills, that will help them improve performance – especially when faced with those challenges again.
The next step is to apply the knowledge (learned) as opportunities arise. So as you move forward, you gather data, you are neutral, accepting and open to learning from experiences, and you will apply that knowledge as other similar opportunities arise. Then each time you apply what you have learned, your performance should improve. Although every moment is new and unique, each one offering a different set of circumstances, you should be able to identify what skills to use in similar situations that worked, and build on them for greater success in the future – or you learn what to avoid that did not work so well the last time.
Since you will never be in the exact same moment again, your ability to access information, gather data, get a deeper understanding and apply what you learn is really invaluable to your pursuit of peak performance. Just as each person brings a different set of characteristics into each moment or interaction, your ability to master these steps will better prepare you for all the different possible challenges you face in future events. That will ultimately help you surpass your competitors and lead to greater success for you. Who wouldn’t want to be a step ahead of their competition?
Once you have gone through all of these steps, you will find that the process starts all over again at the beginning. As the next opportunity arises, you accept the challenges in that situation, within yourself and that moment, you access the information, neutrally gather data, learn from experiences, get a deeper understanding, and then apply the knowledge you learned as opportunities arise again. It’s like reading the back of a shampoo bottle, where the directions state: “apply, rinse, then reapply and rinse again”. The more attuned you are to this process and the better able you are to view situations as opportunities rather than challenges or problems, the more peaceful and successful you will be.
This teaching will help you to evolve and move forward in the mastery of the sport that you choose to participate in. In order to achieve peak performance in your sport and some level of mastery, it is a level of skill and also having a level of inner peace that I am talking about here. Mastery without inner peace is chaos – like being on an emotional roller coaster ride, depending on whether you are winning or losing or you perceive things as good or bad. Having this inner peace with mastery is what is going to take you to the top and help you to stay there. To have consistent peak performance and continued success in your game, and in life, please pursue inner peace as you work to master the skills of your sport. You will be glad you did.
I hope you find this information helpful in creating greater success for yourself, and you are truly able to begin (right now) to apply it to your life and sport. I am available to work with you if you need extra help staying on track with your sport, life, or overall well being, because they are all interconnected – the mind, body and spirit. I truly wish you well in your pursuit of mastery and inner peace, so you may achieve peak performance by accepting challenges and learning from your experiences. Thanks for reading, and have an amazing day!
