Task: Write down the facts
It is important for your confidence & motivation to know you have improved and things are moving forwards. What if you could prove to yourself with weeks, months or years worth of evidence you have improved despite sometimes feeling like you haven’t?
If you have worked with me before you will know I like you to write down up to 3 facts daily, either after a training session, competition or at the end of your day. Why? Because if you did this everyday you’d have weeks, months, possibly years worth of factual evidence you have improve and things have moved forwards.
Why facts? Because a fact cannot be argued with. If you write down ‘my vertical jump height improved by 3cm (quantitative)’ you cannot say you haven’t improved. You may not be where you’d like to be, but you have improved. If after a competition you say ‘I played rubbish’ but you won one more point against your opponent than you won against that opponent last time, then you can write down you won an extra point. If you’ve worked hard on eating better foods and you have a day where you feel more confident in yourself, you can write down you felt (subjective) more confident for the first time in a while.
Imagine having a book full of daily facts. The next time someone asks ‘what do you feel you’ve improved?’ or ‘what is going well at the moment?’ you will have an entire book full of evidence and factual information to show that you have moved forwards and you have improved. If you are feeling down about a performance and need a pick-me-up you can go to your book of facts and read out literally months worth of things you have done well. Regardless of your performance or the day you’ve had, if you reflect on the process rather than the outcome you will always be able to find a fact or 3 to write down.
Rule: Compare only to yourself
If you want to improve, you are only in competition with yourself. Regardless of other people, have you improved? Were you better than you were yesterday? What can you control to ensure you are going to improve?
If you run a PB (personal best) but come 7th in your race, would you consider this a win? Or would you rather come in first place with a time that is slow for yourself? Would you rather be factually slower or factually faster?
How can you improve daily?
Tom Senninger (2000)
Practice on the edge of your comfort zone...
Your comfort zone is different to other people’s comfort zone. You might be able to do 3 push ups, so training on the edge of your comfort zone might mean working towards 4 push ups. Someone else might be able to do 30 push ups, so their comfort zone is different to yours.
Training on the edge of your comfort zone (learning zone) will mean making more mistakes, often having to start again, require lots of practice and feeling frustrated every now and again.
By training on the edge of your current comfort zone you will improve and keep edging forwards, growing the size of your current comfort zone. Likewise, if you stop pushing yourself, challenging yourself and drop back into your comfort zone, your comfort zone will shrink back down as will your results and progress.
I hope this post was of value to you. I’d love to hear your thoughts, please do send me a message on Instagram (simonjamescoaching).
Thank you for reading.
Simon James
