Changing Your Frame of Mind

by David Kenward, The Mental Coach

In last month’s column we talked about the law of expectation (that what we expect to happen tends to happen – at least with things under our control). This month, let’s talk about the law of confidence.

I’ve had a number of clients (especially in the sports world) tell me they’ve lost their confidence. My response is to ask if they drive a car. If they say yes (most do), I act amazed that a person with no confidence can get behind the wheel of a 2000-8000 pound machine, with a powerful engine and navigate it on a narrow strip of pavement surrounded by lots of other big machines (many coming at you).

You see, they still have lots of confidence. What they’ve lost is their sense of perspective.

This piggybacks perfectly on the law of expectation. How can a person keep their confidence (and perspective) when they’ve been taught that if they failed once, then they are likely to fail again and so they expect to?

Here’s a solution. Learn to condition yourself to have a winning frame of mind. Here’s one way to do it.

Stop reading and let yourself remember something you did that didn’t turn out very well, where you felt like you had failed. Notice how you feel and what you feel in your body. I like to say there are two parts of our mind, a thinking part and a believing part. Those two parts affect the chemistry of our brains to create physical feelings (like the rapid heart rate we get from watching a scary movie, even though we know it’s not real).

Now, let yourself remember something you did that you really liked, that you felt good about, where you felt like a winner. Remember what it looked like, what it sounded like, maybe what it smelled like (or tasted like) and what it felt like. Now, what do you feel in your body? I’ll bet it’s different from feeling failure.

This is called changing your state of mind and you do it naturally every time you hear your favorite song (where it just makes you feel good).

So, this month, look at pictures, listen to songs, pet your dog or cat, sit in a car or the park, taste and smell food or other things, just experiment and discover what changes your state of mind, whether you consider it positive or negative (do you like it or not) and write down the positives.

This is a big step on the path of taking control, on purpose, of how you think and feel.

That’s winning the mental game.

About David Kenward