Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Seventy-Three – Effective Emotional Management – Where to put your emotion to springboard you forward with purpose and control
Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches and parents who are looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is ever evolving and always innovative, and I'm your host, Dave Diggle. In this episode 73, what I'd like to do is share with you an audio from a video I put together recently whilst traveling through the US. I've been working with some key athletes in LA on skill acquisition, skill retention, and skill optimisation, and I introduced the concept of how to manage their emotions, where to put their emotional focus, and what that does for their skills and performance framework. So in this episode 73, we're going to look at just that: emotional management. This audio recording goes for around about 20 minutes and it outlines two core skill sets that you can apply to optimise your performance and skill acquisition. Those two skill sets are:
1. The emotional slider, which is where you choose to place your emotions, and
2. The consolidation process. When you know you know what you need to know, or when is it just emotion.
Because I've stripped this out from a training video, if you prefer to watch the video or go back after you've listened to this podcast and watch the video, you can go to my site, which is smartmind.com/emotion. On that page you'll find access to both the video, the templates referenced during the exercise, which you'll also be able to download, and a couple of bonuses that come along with watching that video. So without any further ado, just relax, enjoy, open your mind and picture how and where you choose to place your emotion and let this core bit of content help you optimise that.
Hi, I'm currently traveling through the US. I've been working with some of my clients in LA last week and I delivered a piece of content to some of them that made a significant difference in not only how they created sustainability with their performances, but also understanding their emotion. So we've talked about emotion in the past when we've talked about fears and performance anxiety. Both of those key things are very relevant when we're discussing those and emotion has a very specific role and consequence when we're talking about fear and anxiety. However, it also plays a really significant part in how we create sustainability in our performance and also how we learn and acquire skills – that skill acquisition process – what we need to do as a performer to create efficient emotional management and why that's really critical to our sustainability. There are two key areas that we want to talk about today. The first part is what we call the emotional slider. The second part is consolidation process with a skill or with a performance.
So let's get into the first part, which is the emotional slider. I want you to picture in your mind you're driving in your vehicle and you're looking through your windscreen. You can see the road in front of you, so you know where you're going. And because you know where you're going, there's that sense of ease that comes with that and the comfort of, "I know what I need to do, and if anything comes up, I can deal with that." Now I want you to to imagine what happens if you get a foggy windscreen and you no longer can see outside that window. That will change the way that you drive that vehicle. Our emotions. When we talk about performance, skill acquisition is exactly the same. If we don't know what the next step is, if we don't know what we need to do to create how we do that skill or how we perform in that competition, then our emotions are going to rise. And the higher our emotions, the less likely we are to be able to control our performance. So understanding where we place our emotion is a significant part of sustainability. So we're going to have that same image inside ahead. We're driving our vehicle, and if we moved that windscreen further forward so we could actually see the road, then the anxiety would lower, wouldn't it?
We'd know what we need to do. We'd know what's right in front of us. We'd maybe still have a little bit of anxiety because we still can't see too far in front, however the fact that we can see the road again will allow us to feel more comfortable. What if we move that window further forward, that foggy window that we couldn't see? So not only can we see what's right in front of us, but we can also see longer term. So this is what we call the emotional slider. Where do we choose to put the emotion? Well, in this case, our emotion, the further we put it away from our starting point, the better clarity we have around the process that we have to follow to get what we want. Those of you who have listened to me before know I talk a lot about the wants versus the needs. Our wants are emotional. I want to be a world champion. I want to go to the Olympics. I want to win the national title. I want to be six foot four. Whatever is the most emotional to you, your emotional wants are.
What we choose to do to get there, are our needs. What do I need to do to be world champion, to be Olympic champion, to be six foot four. Whatever it is, those actions don't have emotion with them. They are just process. So we want to make sure that that process isn't foggy. We want to make sure that process is clear, concise, and precise inside our head. In order to do that, we've got to move the emotion away from the start of the process to the end of the process. Emotion is really critical. It's something we don't want to get rid of. We don't want to be emotionless. We want to have that emotion because it helps us with sustainability, because it gives us momentum, it gives us motivation, and it gives us passion about what we're doing. So emotions do need to be part of our process. It's just where we place the emotion will dictate how that skill is sustainable or not. So how many times have you gone to perform either a skill or gone to a competition and thought, Do I feel ready now? Our language is very critical in how we do what we do. We know this. We know that the way that we communicate externally and internally has a massive impact on what our body does and how our brain processes.
So if you're asking yourself, Do I feel ready? What you're doing is you're putting that emotion before the process because you're saying, "If I don't feel ready, then I'm not going to do the process." We want to make sure that we are saying, "What do I need to do? How do I create that outcome that I want? What's the steps I need to take to get to be national champion, world champion, Olympic champion. Once I know what those steps are, the emotion comes in at the end of that process. When I achieve that, I reward that." That's what we want to create a positive emotion with. So the emotion then goes at the end of that process. The same can be said for skill acquisition. If we look at, Am I ready to do this skill? Do I feel comfortable? Do I feel confident now? Confidence is just an emotion. The more confident we are, the better our emotions. So if we feel confident, if we feel ready, if we feel that it's sustainable, then that's going to be for this moment in time, because when you get up tomorrow, you won't feel exactly the same. There'll be too many variables, because I guarantee when you got out of bed this morning, you would have felt different to how you got out of bed yesterday morning.
And that's all natural because all the dynamics around you are different. It's all different influences on you. It could be different weather, it could be you woke up at a different time. It could be you went to bed at a different time. So getting up and waiting to feel the same, it will never happen. You will never, ever feel that way again, it's unique to you this moment in time. So relying on that and waiting to feel ready to feel the same is only ever going to create doubts inside your mind. So again this picture, that emotional slider will show how we move the emotions away from the start and what that does to our level of clarity. If you're just listening to this at the moment, then I want you to picture inside your mind a dead straight line, and you're standing at the start of the line. And at the end of the line is what your objective is, whether it's to learn a skill, whether it's to perform in an event, whether it's to be national, Olympic or world champion. If we move an emotion closer and closer to that starting point, the less we'll be able to see past that emotion and we'll get that foggy brain where, "I don't know what to do" and we start focusing too much on the now.
And as the closer and closer we come to that point of, "Do I feel ready before I do any kind of process" the less clarity we're going to have in how we do that skill. Now, that's going to be okay once. However, I asked you to do that every single time. Do that skill, do that process to get that skill or that performance, it's going to become more and more difficult for you to be able to replicate.
We know sustainability and replicability is what makes champions. So we want to be able to see that process so we can replicate that process. That's going to give us the clarity, it's going to give us the replicability. So that's what we think about emotional sliders. What we're doing is we're moving the emotion too close to the start of the process. We want to make sure that the emotion is as far away from the starting point as possible. What do I need to do to get what I want?
The second part to this process about managing our emotion – when we talk about performance and skill acquisition – is consolidation. We want to make sure that we have got that skill, we've got that process in order to perform. Now most athletes, when they're feeling comfortable, when they're feeling bulletproof, will skim across the top of a lake like a stone. What I mean by that is, "I've learned this skill. Next skill. What about the next skill? What about the next skill? What about the next skill?" Of course, that is really efficient in time management. However, it's incredibly volatile. What I mean by that is if you picture a bridge going across a river, and the points where the bridge is balanced on the land and in the river are very narrow. Of course, you use less materials to get from one side to the other side, so time-wise and energy-wise is really efficient. However, as soon as you apply any kind of external pressure to that, it's going to tip over. If we look at the slide that's on the screen at the moment, what that's showing is that skimming stone picture in our brain, How do I get from one skill to next skill to the next skill to the next skill? Of course, it's going to be a very attractive proposition, yet we want to make sure that we can replicate that skill. We can replicate that performance at an event. So therefore, there needs to be some stronger foundations, some stronger framework to be able to replicate.
The second image is the polar opposite to that. So instead of that skimming stone with very, very small base of consolidation, we've got a really large base of consolidation. What that looks like is as we learn the skill, we then slide all the way back to almost where we started from, waiting for it to feel comfortable. And I'm sure as an athlete, there's been many, many times where you've learnt a skill yet never felt comfortable enough to perform that skill, never felt comfortable enough to own that skill. And you've just replicated it at some point because you've had to. This has an incredibly strong foundation, has an incredibly robust process to it. Any kind of external pressure on it isn't going to budge it because the base, the consolidation is so huge. However, the downside of that is it takes forever. It's like government. It has a great idea then spend so long refining it that it never, ever really becomes efficient or the piece of legislation you're after. It always becomes something that's either too late or a shadow of its former self.
Skill acquisition and skill performance can be exactly the same way. If we don't understand, when is it "I can perform this!" rather than "When do I feel ready to perform this?" The third option is just like Goldilocks. It needs to be just right. The consolidation process needs to be, "When do I perform this?" rather than "When do I feel comfortable enough to perform this? What do I need to be able to do to perform this? What do I need to do to be able to perform an event? What do I need to do to own this skill?"
When we're talking about needs versus wants in skill acquisition or performance, what we're looking for is that tipping point. When does it stop being something that you need to do and something that becomes about emotion? When do I feel comfortable? Think of it like this. We each have a convincer number inside our mind. What that is, is when you become convinced. So me, I'm a one-time convincer. When I go shopping for say, a pair of jeans, I'll walk into a shop. I will look at the jeans and go, "Those ones." Once I've decided what I want, I'm out the door.
I don't go back to any other jeans shops. I don't go looking making sure I've got a great deal. One-time convincer. Yes. My wife, on the other hand, will go to that shop. She'll go through every pair of jeans in that shop, and then she'll go to the next shop and do exactly the same process. And then she'll go to the next shop and do exactly the same process and probably even go back to the first shop to make sure that she ticked off everything. So she's a multi-time convincer. Neither of those is right or wrong. One is driven by need, and one is driven by emotion. We want to make sure how many times do you need to perform that skill before you go, "I've got it." And it's not waiting for it to feel comfortable or familiar, it's, "When do I have that skill?"
If we think about those three bridges again, which one of those is going to be the most efficient for you? We know that the first one, the skimming stone with a very small consolidation is an attractive proposition. However, it's incredibly volatile. Any kind of external pressure, any kind of change to your environment will shift your ability to perform that skill.
The second one will be incredibly strong foundations, incredibly reliable. However, your ability to move on to the next skill is inhibited because you're spending so much time consolidating the first skill waiting for it to feel right. And the third one is all about creating the optimal time to move on to the next skill, the next evolution or iteration of that skill you're learning or performing. So that one needs to be, "What do I need to do in order to own this skill?" The first one isn't trying to own it. It's just trying to get to the next skill. The second one is trying to own it and all the real estate around it. And the third one is efficient. What do I do to learn the skill and how do I know I've got it? So we've looked at emotion through the first part where we talked about the emotional slider, making sure that you can see the process in order to replicate the process and then place the emotion at the end of that process to reward it. That will increase your serotonin, drop your cortisol, and create a replicability and a buy-in.
The second part of this is looking at the consolidation process and shifting away from making sure I feel that I can do this skill, to be more what do I need to know before I can do this skill? So when I explained this to these clients here this last week, that shifted quite significantly how they process their skills, what they needed to do to feel ready to move on, and they took it from an emotion to a process. So I'm going to ask you the same thing. I want you to think about whether it's skill acquisition or your performance. What are your needs versus what are your wants. What do you need to be able to do to own that skill, rather than what do you want to feel in order to own that skill?
I hope you got a lot out of that piece of content. Once you understand where you can put your emotion to get the most out of your performance – and it is a choice – you'll start to see replicability as something that you can control. I'm going to put the video and the templates that we went through today on my site smartmind.com/emotion.
I'm also going to put a link there to The Performance Framework. This is an exercise that will allow you to better assess your current preparation, your framework and your performance and then you will be able to tie what you've learned today into better understanding your current strategy; where you're putting the efficiency in your time, your effort and your emotions.
And so until the next time train smart and enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
https://www.smartmind.com/
