A topic came up last night after a sports team session I was on. It was Imposter Syndrome. Other negative thoughts and emotions had come up indirectly in previous meetings, and this time it was straight-up. It's a normal enough phenomenon and many of us go through it at some stage of our lives, in my experience.
The format I take for this team is to do some simple enough things - work out your goals and identify negative thoughts at the outset and go from there. Simple enough as a statement and maybe a little trickier to start and keep going.
For performance in sports competition there are a number of parts to work on, the physical fitness and feeling healthy is an obvious one. Are our muscles working well, good lung capacity, pain free and so on? Are we trained in the techniques we need so we can work out quickly what we need to do on as many occasions as possible, over and over again? There's many PT's and technical trainers that can help with that. It takes dedication and planning.
We can enjoy a sport and then look around us and almost admire others' abilities - they're quicker, look stronger and more confident, and seem to be always winning or close to winning. Which brings us to how we feel or think about competing
Some time ago I came upon positive intelligence #positiveintelligence.
The coach would speak at length about the benefits and how he transformed a multitude of peoples' lives who went on to do great things, but then a lot of the US guys easily talk in those terms. Different cultures, different ways.
What I did pick up though was that we can learn to displace unhelpful thoughts by using breathing techniques and so I trained in that without the expectation that I would become a multi-millionaire soon. :o)
The premise is that similar to doing weights in the gym, or the hard yards on the thread-mill we take time each day as we go about our tasks to focus on physical sensations - noting the temperature of your breath, your sense of touch, sounds and sights. Over time, we can re-train our minds to focus on positive and helpful thoughts to find creative solutions to the challenges we face. If we already have a positive outlook and a healthy level of confidence, then we can buttress and strengthen that.
As we go through our day do you feel fear/shame/guilt/anxious/not good enough - identify that and displace that thought with a focus on a sensation.
Practice, practice and practice again.
When we can manage our thoughts, such as those that lead us to feel like an imposter we can get into a habit of accepting - what can I do, am I straddled to this for always and ever? Or even - thank goodness I've discovered that I sometimes feel like an imposter, but that leads to - what am I going to do now that I've identified it?
Some simple practices to start with:
Notice the temperature of your breath as you inhale in your nostrils and also as you exhale.
Focus there even for even 5 seconds and maybe even longer. You can do this as you type an e-mail, walk, do household chores or yard work. You don't need a yoga mat, or a quiet place.
Start while doing mundane ordinary tasks so that you bring that practice with you without any disruption to your day. Say "yes" to disrupting and displacing unhelpful thoughts. Driving on the M50 in traffic wouldn't be the best place to start :0)
Notice how you feel now and move on.
When we embed our practice we will get to the stage where we feel those negative thoughts coming and we can step in so that we displace that thought or feeling in more challenging circumstances.
There are many other zero cost, zero time burden techniques that can be learned. Like all things we can learn, they take effort, dedication and trust. They can take a helping hand - I did 7 weeks of training and it's as normal has having breakfast now.
Just like you've been trusted to be on the team. You've met the standard, have the skills and what you don't know now you can chose to learn in time.
When our minds are clouded by unhelpful thoughts we can bring techniques to deal with that and allow the more helpful thoughts and feelings to come to the fore. For competitors managing confidence and handling feeling like an imposter is a fantastic thing to do and you can bring it into your day-to-day lives.
Creativity, empathy, compassion, innovation, exploration and moving to action are the helpful thoughts we want. Discernment rather than judgement.
If you have VHI health insurance they cover some of the cost of the Calms App which is an online meditation practice tool that I recommend.
The Power of a competitive Mindset for competitors
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