Self - Awareness

As I tweeted the other day (@sportatitsbest), I’ve only just started Andre Agassi’s autobiography Open, and I’ve already found a reference to what I believe is an extremely key skill that all athletes need to develop if they want to reach the top.  Of course I’m talking about today’s topic, self-awareness.  Here’s the quote:

“Butterflies are funny.  Some days they make you run to the toilet…  Other days they make you laugh, and long for the fight…  Figuring out your butterflies, deciphering what they say about the status of your mind and body, is the first step to making them work for you.”
Hope you enjoy the post.

These days, most national teams in Canada operate under the Integrated Support Team (or IST) model.  Right from the Own The Podium website,

“IST’s are the Sport Sciences, Sports Medicine and other team management professionals that support coaches and athletes/teams. ISTs typically include a physiologist, sport psychologist, biomechanist/performance technologist, nutritionist, physical therapists/athletic therapist, and a physician.  The goal of a IST is to ensure that Canadian athletes are healthy, fit and psychologically ready for optimal performance.”
IST’s are great for bringing everyone around an athlete on to the same page with respect to any aspect of their development.  People from every discipline come together and a lot of great information is shared and it can be very insightful and helpful to have so many perspectives sitting around the same table.

However, when I competed prior to 2006, we didn’t have IST’s and in fact one year we didn’t even have a coach.  We had a very good team leader, which I personally found very valuable, and we had good medical support, but in terms of an on-ice technical coach, we just couldn’t find someone to fit the bill after the previous coach left for other opportunities.  The surprising thing was that it was actually a very successful year overall, and for me personally it happened to be my best ever.



The reason it worked was because my teammates and I each had very good self-awareness with respect to actually sliding down the track.  We didn’t have a coach but we learned the tracks as well or better than we otherwise would have because we coached each other.  At the time there were four of us on the men’s national team so in effect each of us had three coaches.  If we arrived at a new track, after the first run we would meet and discuss our issues.  If someone had a problem steering effectively through a corner that another team member had been successful with, there was a passing along of information.  Occasionally there would be corners that we all had trouble with and in these circumstances we would get together, come up with a plan such that each of us would try a different strategy and then meet again after the run to determine what we had learned.

It was an effective strategy only because each of us were very self-aware with respect to where we were in a corner, when we were steering, how hard and for how long.  In a sport where you can at times be more upside down than right side up going well over 120 km/h and under several G’s, that’s not easy to do.  It worked because we could accurately convey information about a corner and because we were willing to invest in each other’s success.  Your own information was going out to the team but you had three people’s information coming back to you which both speaks to the team environment we had, and the importance of being self-aware.

Now, myself and the other coaches preach two things above all others.  One is the team environment and the other is to listen to your body and learn what it is telling you.  It can take a long time to get there but that information is key.

Duff Gibson

The role of Beliefs

Did you know that the a belief is not about reality?


You have a belief in place of knowledge about reality.


Beliefs are about the things that nobody can know in reality.


So now ask yourself what is my reality? 

Why to BELIEVE in others

Viktor E. Frankl was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. He spent three years during World War II in concentration camps, including Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Dachau, where he formulated many of his key ideas. Logotherapy, his psychotherapeutic school, is founded on the belief that striving to find meaning in life is the most powerful motivation for human beings.


Frankl wrote 39 books, which were published in 38 languages. His best-known, Man's Search for Meaning, gives a firsthand account of his experiences during the Holocaust, and describes the psychotherapeutic method he pioneered. The Library of Congress called it one of "the ten most influential books in America." Frankl lectured on five continents.


"Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human. "
Viktor Frankl

Vancouver Canucks Live in stuck Belief Systems not unlike the frozen water they skate on

I am so grateful to the Masters I have had the priviledge of studying and apprenticing with. Robert Dilts of NLP University and Christina Hall President of NLP Society. My life was turned around completely and forever because of NLP. My work is totally based in NLP. I will always be grateful for and to NLP and these Master Trainers who create and teach with integrity. This has been passed on to me and I honor this and embrace using these techniques when I work with all my clients.Below is an exerpt from an interview with Robert Dilts for the documentary Beyond Beliefs.

by Robert Dilts, Co-Developer of NLP

Excerpt from interview for the film"> Beyond Belief
The other thing about NLP it says there are different levels, lets call it programming.  That is, to have a behavior, there is an inner mental map, a cognitive program that sort of guides that behavior.  Behind that cognitive map are beliefs and values which are different than, let’s say, our idea about what we want.  They are more the motivation, the permission, and then behind that is our sense of identity.
So if I say I want something, there is an “I” who wants it, and behind that “I” that’s where you get to that sense of a purpose, of belonging to something that is beyond yourself, that is bigger than yourself.  This is where you get a sense of some kind of deeper vision of purpose.
People who are able to achieve things they want in their life most effectively are people who are aligned in that way:  their identity is aligned with their higher purpose, then their beliefs fit with that identity and that is connected with their capabilities which lead to their behavior.
When you are aligned, when your identity and your beliefs and your capability are aligned, we called that being in the zone.  A lot of NLP is about coaching what you might call the inner game.  Every athlete, every performer knows that you have an outer game, which is what you are doing, what the physical activity is.

And there’s the mental game, which has to do with your mental attitude and your emotional attitude.  So when those things are aligned, the athlete would say you are in the zone and a performer you would say you havepresence. So when you have that sense of confidence, the zone is what we call being in a state of effortless excellence, of flow.

 The idea of neuro-linguistics is you’ve got language and the nervous system.  A positive affirmation is the linguistic part of the belief, but it is not the “neuro” part.  To actually bring in an empowering belief, you are going to be doing more than just saying it in the mind.  That’s the verbal part, the idea of the belief.

 In NLP we say you’ve got to get beyond the idea. to get it in the muscle.  The way you are going to do that is by adding in information from the other senses and also using the body, your physical attitude, you are aligning again the words with your inner images, your memories and your physiology.

 In NLP coaching we do a number of things.  The first is to help people get IN the zone and the second is to find out what gets in the way of being in the zone and how to transform that.  One of the ways that we’re going to coach people to get into the zone, it starts by coming present in the body, to come into the body.  In fact, we say the body is always in the present, to bring the mind and the body into the same place.

How Should We Set Our Goals?

How should we set our goals?”


The first thing to understand is that you are in this situation because of your present state of self. Your beliefs, your personality, your behavior, have made you in this present state of reality. If at all you want to change your situation, you must set a goal to change yourself first; you must change the state of yourself. In changing your belief systems your accepted reality changes, and when this is changed the outer changes automatically. So the fact is that the outer goal is secondary, the inner is the most important thing. If ever you want to change the outer reality or achieve some outer goal, first start with the self. Only then you will know what effortless achievement is.


For a long time effort has been introduced to us by many speakers and psychologists, simply because they believed that in order for the self to change, the outer must change first; some even consider that the self has nothing to do with the outer. This is why they have always emphasized effort and propagated struggle. You must understand, this struggle and hardship is not with the outside, it is because the self (the reality creator) can't be changed.


What I am discussing with you seems to be difficult but actually it is not. Remember, stop wishing and start seeing that which you are, and see that which you are is the same as your reality. Also remember that the self is not fixed, it is changeable. If you dare to go beyond the self and see that it’s not actually you, that you are something transcendental, then almost everything you want is possible, all goals are achieved; not by maddening effort but by spontaneous creation.

It's Not What YOU eat but what eats YOU - Part 11

From approximately eighteen to thirty years of age, people can start to practice and implement the directions of their beliefs and consciousness. Those who act upon their potentials and continuously become what they desire to be, even if their family, peers, and society disagree, will be much healthier than those who do not accept the joy of their potentials. They will perform at much higher levels in whatever they do, because they have their heart and soul in what they do. These people do not count their rewards by numbers. They count their rewards by their happiness, their joy, and their state of excitement. Their excitement is not so much in seeing if they can win over someone else, but in challenging themselves. They risk!

Between the ages of eighteen and thirty, people still have many chances to make changes. What can young adults do to enhance their health and personal expression? They can go on a path of self-discovery and thus not become one-sided. They can explore their desires, and their sources of joy, and become well-rounded people, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Rather than holding onto accomplishments, they can develop great freedom and can use it to pursue potentials felt but as yet unexpressed. This is possible because in most cases the responsibility to parents has been reduced, and commitments to a mate and children have not yet been made.

So there is much freedom of choice. This freedom of adulthood can be powerful when combined with knowing systems, health and radiance, and the privileges of being an adult. During childhood parents can help prepare their children to assume the joys and responsibilities of such freedom.

It can be difficult for young adults, who usually have not yet established families and often do have personal freedom, courage, and initiative, to go on paths of personal discovery. The difficulties for middle-aged adults, who often have been stuck in beliefs for a long time, are even greater. These people think they do not have the capacity to ever get their potentials going, that is, if they think about it at all!

Next Part 111

NeuroLogical Levels in Sport same in Corporate and Individuals

One of the most useful NLP models for capital “C” coaches is that of NeuroLogical Levels. Both coaching and modeling frequently need to address multiple levels of learning and change in order to be successful. According to the NeuroLogical Levels model (Dilts, 1989, 1990, 1993, 2000), the life of people in any system, and indeed, the life of the system itself, can be described and understood on a number of different levels: environment, behavior, capabilities, values and beliefs, identity and spiritual.


At the most basic level, coaching and modeling must address the environment in which a system and its members act and interact—i.e., when and where the operations and relationships within a system or organization take place. Environmental factors determine the context and constraints under which people operate. An organization’s environment, for instance, is made up of such things as the geographical locations of its operations, the buildings and facilities which define the “work place,” office and factory design, etc. In addition to the influence these environmental factors may have on people within the organization, one can also examine the influence and impact that people within an organization have upon their environment, and what products or creations they bring to the environment.

At another level, we can examine the specific behaviors and actions of a group or individual—i.e., what the person or organization does within the environment. What are the particular patterns of work, interaction or communication? On an organizational level, behaviors may be defined in terms of general procedures. On the individual level, behaviors take the form of specific work routines, working habits or job related activities.
Another level of process involves the strategies, skills and capabilities by which the organization or individual selects and directs actions within their environment—i.e., how they generate and guide their behaviors within a particular context. For an individual, capabilities include cognitive strategies and skills such as learning, memory, decision making and creativity, which facilitate the performance of a particular behavior or task. On an organizational level, capabilities relate to the infrastructures available to support communication, innovation, planning and decision making between members of the organization.

These other levels of process are shaped by values and beliefs, which provide the motivation and guidelines behind the strategies and capabilities used to accomplish behavioral outcomes in the environment—i.e., why people do things the way they do them in a particular time and place. Our values and beliefs provide the reinforcement (motivation and permission) that supports or inhibits particular capabilities and behaviors. Values and beliefs determine how events are given meaning, and are at the core of judgment and culture.

Values and beliefs support the individual’s or organization’s sense of identity—i.e., the who behind the why, how, what, where and when. Identity level processes involve people’s sense of role and mission with respect to their vision and the larger systems of which they are members.

Typically, a mission is defined in terms of the service performed by people in a particular role with respect to others within a larger system. A particular identity or role is expressed in terms of several key values and beliefs, which determine the priorities to be followed by individuals within the role. These, in turn, are supported by a larger range of skills and capabilities, which are required to manifest particular values and beliefs. Effective capabilities produce an even wider set of specific behaviors and actions, which express and adapt values with respect to many particular environmental contexts and conditions

As an individual we are a whole system within a system. As an individual on a sport team or in a corporate office we are whole system within that system. The magic happens when there is congruency which means the neurological levels are aligned. As an Optimal Performance Coach my work involves ensuring there is congruency in this alignment in individual players, teams in sport, coaches, management and in the corporate world.