The England football team is reportedly using the services of Steve Peters, to help the team win penalties.
Just think of Euro 96 in London, we lost against Germany (again). And when you look at the stats, we have an 88% failure rate at penalties, which shows there’s a problem. So, if professional sports people paid £200k+ a week need help with their job, it’s probably fair to say that most of us do also. This blog outlines some both basic and practical tips that could benefit you.
They key is, can you fix it? As a hypnotherapist in London, I find this question and situation fascinating. I believe you can fix the issue, whether this be anxiety around presenting, a belief about your ability to do the job etc.
To be good at sport, as with any job, you have get to a level of unconscious competence i.e. being able to do your job with your eyes shut. Just try an experiment right now. Think consciously about breathing in and out for 30secs or so. Or when you drive next, imagine thinking about driving, as opposed to just driving automatically. It’s weird, when we have to think about doing things consciously.
And, it’s the same with penalties, because stick a player during a match in the box and they’ll most likely smack the ball into the net. However, like thinking about breathing, when you ‘think’ as opposed to ‘do’ a penalty, it becomes harder.
What kinds of tools and techniques could we employ in the daily match that is our working lives?
There’s a host of areas where that you can do to improve this situation. If you were facing a challenge at work, in your career, in relationships, these 4 areas (amongst others) would be explored in a hypnotherapy session:
Beliefs – Ask yourself some questions such as ‘what is it you believe about your problem’. ‘For whom do you know this not to be true’. ‘How did you make this situation happen’. ‘What does this situation tell you about you’.
Skills and capabilities – Once you’ve generated these answers, it would be very useful to conduct a personal audit. And I don’t necessarily mean can you do powerpoint. More are there key skills e.g. listening / leading that you need.
Goals – Set yourself some clear goals. What do you want to do instead of the current situation do you want to do and when do you want to do it by.
Visualisation – Now, like all good sports people, start visualising yourself achieving your goals. There’s an art to doing this and essentially it has 4 steps:
- Imagine looking at someone (not you) successfully achieving your goals and winning.
- Now in every scenario imagine looking at yourself winning.
- Then and only then imagine looking at that scenario through your own eyes
- Repeat this over and over again
Doing this is massively important. Because of how our brains work (called mirror neurons), this technique means its possible to learn by imagination. And if you’ve challenged your beliefs and up skilled also, it’s possible that you can help yourself*.
I bet given his track record that Steve Peters improves our penalty win ratio. And if you follow these basic tips, you could some see some changes too.
What do you do now?
Given more time and on a 121 basis, I’m confident your with anxiety, confidence or an issue in your personal and/or professional life could improve*. So if you’re looking for some help and have looked at the likes of NLP & hypnotherapy for anxiety or confidence, then do get in touch [email protected]
