After only creating the site about a week ago, it is time to start talking about my often sad emotional fitness journey.
Sport has always been the great barometer of performance for me and my inner game with my huge hidden away self doubt. For so long self doubt has affected my sport, shown as real inconsistencies in tennis especially. Although the tennis form in 2017 has made a huge turn for the good, which will be my next blog post. Before this my sporting history had been common that I would play a freak game or few moments, then returning to the old mistakes again.
With rugby this was especially obvious. Aged in my early 20s, I was playing rugby for a Burnside social team in Christchurch, having previously played for the Lincoln University first 15 colts team. In was the local derby against our other Burnside social team. I had a blinder and was invited to train with the top club team as a wing. This was in the early days before moving to play open side flanker. The coach said I would do some off season training with their other key wing who was Steve J Cleave, he was somebody I followed on TV, as he played the next level up which was for Canterbury NPC team. As he was a well known local player, I was so excited. I had finally made it! Yet then self doubt returned over time and my belief I could even do it was lost again. Which was a consistent story of my sports career. Real highs and lows in self belief and self doubt.
Later the Rugby career highlight was certainly playing in-front of a big crowd in London for a NZ selection and the feeling of being admired and feeling that I had made it was something money can never buy. Certainly my life highlight that feeling of the huge crowd watching us play.
Yet soon after that my self-doubt took hold again and manifested in a different with overtraining. It was being part of the North Rugby 1st Grade squad a professional team in Sydney. I explain the story in the following video in a talk.
So as I reflect now in 2017, and my work assisting as a mental skills coach of professional athletes, I know that top professionals often don’t have self doubt. Some do but not normally in their area of sport. Hence now I have learn the techniques to let go of so much self doubt, life and sport feel very different indeed. That is the exciting story and why I love to help others make the move form fear and doubt to find flow.
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