A practical guide to managing your mind through positive psychology. The author has worked with military and sports clients for decades and provides a wide range of tools and examples to help you build your confidence, in all situations.
There’s definitely a sports slant to many of the examples, but if you can get past that, the approaches described can be applied to any walk of life. One of the key principles is around building a ‘bank account’ of successes and wins that you access to help improve performance.
Chapter by chapter, you are guided through a series of steps to help defeat your inner critic, focus on the skills you have rather than don’t, to visualise success and do the best with what you have. Mistakes and failures are also addressed, contextualised in a way that is aimed to help you move forward rather than ruminate on any errors or blips.
Preparing for big events – presentations, performances, sports events etc, are also covered. Guidance is given on how to use your physical body to help prepare, as well as some tips and tricks to help you get into a flow state when performing, rather than getting caught up in debilitating thoughts.
Building on this, there’s some useful content on how to manage your inner voice. How to treat yourself as you would a friend, to accept your weaknesses as part of who you are, and to recognise that we all have weaknesses – they are part of what makes us human.
A key part of the process is self-reflection, and in particular ‘after action reviews’, a tool to help you honestly review your performances. An important aspect is to make sure that the best aspects of your performance are captured and stored for future use, while identifying those areas where you can improve next time.
Can it be as simple as changing how you talk to yourself and adapting a different attitude? The research and case studies show that it can be, however, the whole approach goes against our in-built biases and wiring, so it’s a skill that needs to be developed and worked at like any other.
I chose the audible version of this book, and came away with a number of practical tools and ideas to try. There’s an accompanying pdf that provides the exercises and practical next steps. If you’re interested in this topic then this is definitely worth a read.
