Mindset Session – how to prep to get the best out of it
- Make sure you’re ‘at cause’ not ‘at effect’
This means that you know that where you are now in life, sport, business etc. is a culmination of all your past decisions, beliefs, thoughts and emotions.
Here’s the tough love bit. Nobody else made you this way. That’s hard to agree to, isn’t it? You might think that person X made you feel Y. Actually, your mind chose to feel Y. Nobody can change you, you have to change yourself. At effect people have abdicated control of their problem /life to someone or something else. They are left powerless and often unhappy and unfulfilled.
Now, if you are ‘at cause’, this means taking the bull by the horns and taking back control of you. When you’re ‘at cause’, you cease to blame anyone, not even yourself. This is empowerment. You stop giving away control to others and take it for yourself.
It can feel odd at first; liberating, yet scary and exciting. That’s perfectly normal, new ideas and expansive thoughts are forming after years of letting your mind be under the thumb!
- Exercise your visualisation muscles!
Visualisation doesn’t mean seeing in megapixel definition, it means having an impression. Think of something very familiar to you, e.g., your kitchen, your phone’s screensaver etc. Close your eyes and picture it.
Now, if you can see a crisp image, great. If your image is grainy, grey, shifting, or defocussed, also great.
If your mind wanders or the picture turns into a negative, remember you are in control. You can override any automatic unpleasant images, you are the CEO of you! It may seem like your mind runs the show, when in fact, you run your mind. Your mind only takes over when you, as the CEO, decide to sit back and put your feet up!!
You might like to read more about visualisation here
Mental rehearsal has big advantages:
- It creates a set of instructions for your mind to follow (don’t worry if your pictures are negative, your mindset coach can show you how to change them)
- When you have positive mind’s eye pictures, your mind takes these as real. The (unconscious) mind does not distinguish between reality and imagination.
Visualisation may take practice, but it reaps rewards. During a mindset session, your practitioner may ask you to picture your issue – in a negative sense. They will then help you to erase that picture and replace it with how you want to ride.
That gives the mind a whole new set of instructions.
- Notice the specifics of when you are triggered
Make a note of
- what are you doing, seeing, touching, and hearing where you are and does location matter? (e.g., competition versus home; school versus hack)
- when exactly do the nerves kick in? how long before the ride do you feel uncomfortable?
- Have you always felt this way? What’s changed?
- When you think about being at your most uncomfortable, is the discomfort from
- What you’re saying to yourself?
- A physical sensation, e.g. tightness in your body?
- Pictures or movies that run through your mind?
4. Do a brain dump!
Before the session, you could write down everything you want to work on and your backstory. Or, make a voice note. Why not email it to the mindset coach too? It can save precious time in the session!
Bonus tip: this might be a challenge!
If you’re a very logical, analytical left-brained person, a mindset session is perfect for you if you can do the above and make sense of the techniques you will be introduced to. By this, I mean that you know that you are using your imagination, as this is the key to unlocking confidence. You are using your unconscious mind, which is the preserve of emotions, habits and memories, but it does not operate within the same guidelines as the logical mind.
It does not care if logically, you’d like to enjoy riding or that logically you have all the skills to ride well. You can’t attack this problem using logic, because the problem wasn’t created using logic!
If, during or after a mindset session, your self-talk, inner chimp or gremlins are telling you, “This is all very well, but you won’t be able to do it/ you have too many bad experiences / your nerves always have got the better of you,” then you are unravelling the good work done during the session. If at any time, you are using ‘but’, then you’re convincing your mind to go back to the old ways. You are talking yourself back into anxiety.
Even to the most logical of people, to undo the session makes no sense! Quieten your inner voice before the session. Give your inner voice the voice of someone you think is ridiculous or laughable, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Daffy Duck work well!!!! Who would listen to their ‘sage’ advice?!
I you’d like to chat about a possible mindset session with me, why not book a complimentary call? Simply click here to schedule. It’s always lovely to talk to people about where their mindset could take them. And don’t worry, there’s no pressure from me for you to book!