See yourself being successful

10/21/20

There are many coping skills that will allow for someone to have a calm demeanor to perform. This calm demeanor tells the audience that you are prepared and focused. The calm demeanor comes with focus, preparedness, and selling your ability to be the best and give your best. TO create confidence you are told that you need to think positively. Yes, this is very true, but there are many ways to improve your confidence. Let’s say that you are about to go before 40 companies at a sales event to show what your company has to offer the world of taxes. You have beaten the number, slides, and company goals down to a pulp and you can give this part of the presentation without issue. However, you still are nervous about your voice, your timing to changing slides, or your ability to present the material without showing nerves.

You have heard the expression, ‘see it to believe to it’. This act is what is known as imagery. You are imagining your success thus motivating you to work hard. How does imagery help? IN layman terms, it allows for one to see exactly what they are going to do before they do it. As an example, in sport, these images have helped football players in Spain, to stimulate optimal processes of adaptation before unexpected situations. This means, they saw themselves making penalty kicks, sending a corner kick to the penalty area for optimal chance of success, etc. A recent study in tennis showed that after practicing imagery, the participants had a decrease in serving errors, backhand errors, and forehand errors post intervention. After the 12 week intervention, the players were hitting more accurately in these styles.

There are two ways to see your performance to help build your confidence. First person imagery is about seeing yourself perform out of your eyes. Let’s practice this. From where you are sitting, imagine yourself walking to the cupboard to get a snack. You will see exactly what it looks like when you move from room to room to the cupboard and grab your snack. The third person aspect would be you seeing yourself perform as if you were an audience member. From where you are sitting, in your mind watch yourself kick the football through the uprights for a field goal. You are sitting in the audience watching the snap, the placement, the kick, the ball pass through the uprights, and you dance for your celebration just like any other audience member would see.

This skill takes time to learn. There are several ways for which imagery can help. You can learn a new skill, correct a bad habit, or motivate yourself just to list a few. There are great videos on YouTube on imagery. Listen to, watch, or read several informants when learning this skill so that you can have a full grasp of learning to do this skill and implementing this skill. Lastly, you can reach me at casey@clutchplayperformancepsychology.com for further information.

Thank you,