Psychology of High Performance - Session 1

Belief 1	Preparation
Other athletes	Special training needed
Cliff Young	Practice was running around a sheep station

Belief 2	Equipment
Other athletes	Special equipment needed
Cliff Young	Overalls and boots should be worn

Belief 3	Technique
Other athletes	The race should be run like a marathon
Cliff Young	You should shuffle along (later this was found to be the most efficient way to run very long distances)

Belief 4	The race
Other athletes	The pattern should be – run 18 hours, sleep 6 hours
Cliff Young	He didn’t know sleep was allowed!

When there is a mismatch between our beliefs and results, our thinking and behaviour ‘automatically’ changes so as to make our results consistent with our beliefs.

Now consider an exciting alternative!
Instead of waiting for an external event to happen, why not just change your inner beliefs and get the best in performance?

This course will help you to change your beliefs and get better results.

We think and behave in a way consistent with our beliefs.

Back to the beginning

Remember Cliff Young? How did he do it?
To know this, we need to compare his beliefs with those of other athletes in the race. Take a look at the table >>

Conventional wisdom
Cliff did not have conventional beliefs, so they did not restrict him or stop him. The other athletes had what is called ‘conventional wisdom’ which acted upon them like the hypnotist’s suggestion in the case study we looked at earlier. Their beliefs influenced their thoughts, which in turn affected their physiological performance.

Likewise, when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile this allowed top athletes all over the world to believe that it was possible. They knew it could be done! Once they saw someone else do it, then they believed that they could do it themselves. Many of them went on to do it. They changed their beliefs and their bodies performed more effectively.

In business, sport and life in general there are countless examples of beliefs missing the point. For example, many people said mobile phones, personal computers and telephone banking would not have a market but all of these have become major “best-sellers”. It is important for people to be willing to challenge the conventions.

Now consider an exciting alternative >>

Performance fact >>

Now take a look at Exercise 6 and review the goals you set earlier.