I wrote that headline in 2013.  Much more recently, I could write a headline that reads:  Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw…another very frustrating post-season performance.  Two of the top statistically dominant and winning pitchers in Major League baseball during the regular season, hold a just as surprising statistical and losing pitcher status during their post-season performances.

Justin Verlander:  But in the World Series, Verlander is 0-6 with a 5.68 ERA in seven career starts….Oct 30, 2019  What is going on here?

Clayton Kershaw:  https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/clayton-kershaw-postseason-timeline-breaking-down-playoff-struggles-of-the-dodgers-ace-after-game-5-meltdown/

As I said, back in 2013 about top professional golfer, Jim Furyk, I am inviting the reader to fast-forward to post-season baseball the past few years with Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw in mind as you read the next part of my blog post…

Innovative and tangible mental and emotional training tools are available, so athletes can dependably and rapidly produce a relaxed body and calm mind even under the pressure of playing for the championship on the back nine on Sundays.  Top professionals like Mr. Furyk no longer have to suffer a final round collapse!  In a FOX on-line news story about the recent BMW Championship, there is the writer’s comment about Jim Furyk, again leading going into the final round, losing another tournament.  It states: “Furyk’s victory drought is now at three years, and he has failed to win the last six times he had at least a share of the lead going into the final round.”

I want Mr. Furyk and Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw and others to know they can learn the brain science that teaches us that thought-and emotion-patterns related, in these three top athletes’ cases, to performance trouble spots in final rounds/World Series games literally travel from the brain into the body and the pattern is reproduced at a cell level.  For Mr. Furyk, six times and counting now.  I know, as a sport performance mental trainer specializing in mind/body performance patterns, that this pattern can be totally cleared out of the mind/body system using tangible techniques that are fast and effective.  Athletes who key on their mental training as the key to making them complete athletes want something they can actually do when under big-time pressure, rather than “fighting their body and head” to stay calm in those critical moments.  These techniques are transforming athletes into champions because they consistently perform with a relaxed body, calm mind no matter what.  Specifically, the mental training system I am teaching matches well with the pace and timing of golf; techniques a professional or recreational golfer can use anytime during each round of tournament play, at any moment of play. One young golf professional sent me a text following our work together to let me know that she had just shot the lowest single round score of her professional career.  I will be writing about some specific techniques in upcoming blog posts.  Stay tuned in please!

To illustrate my concern, just the other day, I had a top-talent baseball player referred to work with me. When I asked the young athlete about his current situation with his performance, he proceeded to tell me a story of ever-increasing loss of confidence and growing anxiety and developing the yips. His story highlights my observation of the gaps, even in the 21^st Century, in sport psychology/mental skills training service delivery. He, as one of thousands of young athletes, illustrates the reason why I became a Founding Member of originally, the Sports, Energy and Consciousness group…now the Evolutionary Sports Collective. We, as a collective, are focused on expanding the paradigm and introducing leading-edge methods that, when practiced, help them get out of being “stuck in their head/their thinking brain,” result in athletes of all ages continually evolving in their ability to stay mentally and emotionally fit and consistently perform their best in their sport and in their lives.

You are probably wondering what this young athlete said to me to cause me to “riff” on my observations and concerns over the past 40 years in Psychology and the last 15 years in Sport Psychology.  He said, in a paraphrase, that he had always struggled with self-doubt and loss of confidence, but he ultimately had been able to get through it and overcome it. The still prevailing belief is that slumping performances happen and athletes, coaches and teams just have to get through it.

Beginning this season though, he said the mental/emotional struggles had greatly increased.  When I asked what he was doing to try to resolve the troubling situation, he said he had been working with the Sport Psychologist at his school and another high-performance coach. He added they knew he was struggling; were earnestly trying to help, and yet he was scared because his mental/emotional state was worsening., He described their help as continuing only giving him advice and suggesting he stay with his positive self-talk.

In my observation, the bottom-line starting place is that we must fill the gap…practitioners must learn how to “deactivate the pre-frontal cortex”/turn off the thinking brain and reconnect the head with the body in our teaching/coaching and skill training. Mental training isn’t a cortex-only intervention. In fact, some of the leading-edge practices I teach are designed to “deactivate the pre-frontal cortex.”  All coaches agree that learning to manage the mental aspect is critical to an athlete’s success. Players need to be mentally tough, keep their emotions from interfering and compete with confidence in order to handle the emotional ups and downs of sports performance. The problem is that, even in the 21^st Century, almost no one is teaching anybody how to do this; the pace of evolution in delivering a whole suite of mental training skills seems glacial to me.

Here is the point of my prior narrative about traditional Sports Psychology approaches…Brain science teaches us that thoughts are energy, do you know what upset “thought/feeling energy” does to your body?  Do you know that negative thoughts and feelings (thoughts linked to physical sensations in your body) can get trapped in your body and you don’t even know it?  This unconscious disruption in your body then messes up your physical performances. This gives you the “disabled attitude,” where you can’t just slap positivity on unnoticed negativity in your body.  So with this news, do you believe you can totally handle the mental side of your game with thinking only?  I don’t believe so. You can decide to go forward building your knowledge of my expanded approach to mental and emotional fitness.

As I reflect upon this current-moment need in our whole wide world for real, effective and doable practices, I am remembering experiencing a life-threatening traumatic below-knee amputation while riding my motorcycle and being hit by a car. Somehow, I knew, at age 27, to practice one of the skills I teach. Instead of living in the “land of anger, anxiety, worry and fear,” I asked myself a quality question. The beauty of this skill practice is to know that the instant we ask ourselves a question our mind goes to work answering it. If I had asked, why me…why now? one can see that I would have traveled a very different pathway than the one I began walking as soon as I asked, What do I have to do now to live a productive life?

Resilience practice…fostering the growth of our marvelous ability, as humans, to bounce back from big-energy-body-mind-system disruption that thrusts one into uncertain and uncontrollable moments…is rooted in a decision. I believe we all have the ability to decide to hold our heads and hearts high and take decisive action again EVEN THOUGH… At the same time, we can provide some starting places.

During this disruption of your sport performance, I am offering the practice of asking quality questions to facilitate your ability to decide to take resilient action right now in your moment-by-moment life performance.

You can start by asking:

When I tell myself the truth, how have I been thinking, feeling and behaving during this pandemic challenge? I encourage all to practice radical self-honesty to gain awareness because nobody can decide, for now, what they want to do about their life performance nowadays unless they notice and admit how they are currently thinking, feeling and behaving.)

In this self-honesty practice, you begin by telling yourself the truth about what thoughts and feelings you are experiencing. You will learn to watch one thought at a time without judging or getting mad at yourself. In fact, do yourself a favor right now by completely dropping out of the self-criticism business. Practicing telling yourself the truth is a courageous act that leads to awareness about your thought/feeling habits. I call this practice self-honest self-observation. It helps you become skilled at reading your own mind and reading the related physical sensations in your body.

As important as recognizing thought habits is, it is equally important that you recognize feeling habits, although this typically doesn’t come naturally to us. So what are feelings for this purpose? Simply put, feelings are thoughts linked to a physical sensation in your body. Feelings can be the best inner guide for helping you decide whether or not you are ready to bounce back to being your best.

To understand what you are feeling, practice observing the physical sensations in your body stemming from anxiety, worry, fear, doubt (for example: tense shoulders, nervous stomach, rapid heartbeat, ragged breathing, blurred vision) and also the physical sensations of relaxation as they occur (for example: slow, abdominal breathing, even heartbeat, calm stomach, loose muscles). One key for effective practice is to sometimes start observing and admitting what is happening in your body, not what is going on in your head. Consider the word picture below:

Awareness affords one the ability to take resilient action. You can ask:

Is this a thought/feeling experience that will work for me or against me in achieving what I want during this time?

Other questions:

Have you made up your own mind whether you plan to drive your own life or be a passenger in life during these uncertain, life-totally-interrupted times?

Do you plan to hold a solitary focus on what you have lost and are missing out on or are you considering focusing some on how you can discover new opportunities and ways to contribute during these uncertain times?

I believe it will be the resilient, compassionate spirits who carry us through this most challenging time.