The Performance Zone Before Any Event – Flow

I’ve always been fascinated with “The Zone”. That place where everything works like precision clockwork, with more focus, more power, and the best results. It is also called “Flow” and almost everyone has experienced it in a few instances in their life. You might have even known you were going to win before the competition even started. But how do you get there?

One of the things required to Creating the Flow State, is for you to remove any blocks that distract (dis-trac) you. Those things take create tension, constriction and take your focus away from the two most important things:

• What you want to do/create.
• More importantly, Why you want that? Your motivation, what’s producing the juice, the fulfillment, the strong desire.

One of the biggest, most tempting distractions is Doubt. As I’m sitting here gearing up for one of the last 2 cyclocross races of the season, I’m taking a deep look at any doubts that I have. There’s always a reason to distract you from your goals. It’s below freezing, I feel a little tired, my ankle still hurts from my crash last week….

But first, what is doubt and why is it there?
I always hear people talk about “just don’t think about it”, “ignore it”, “focus on the direction that you’re going”, “don’t think just do”, and so on. Which sounds good and positive, but is usually nearly impossible to do. Why? Because it’s part of the basic nature of being this thing called a human.

Doubt, performance anxiety, fear of failure, are actually incredibly useful emotions, and incredibly powerful. It is an anxiety which helps you take action to prepare more, to focus on what you need to do to meet the challenge, to overcome the obstacle, or to win. You have to understand that these emotions come up even when you think you can ignore it or deny it. And the key is not to try and get rid of the feeling, because it’s going to be there anyway. The key is this:

Understand that any emotion is power & energy, even doubts and fears. And that it’s not a matter of forcing yourself to feel certain emotions and not feel others, but instead choose to channel all of it into the direction of what you want to create.

What does that mean? You are going to feel what your going to feel, which is the reality of the situation. Your job is to learn how to use it to your advantage instead of your disadvantage. Realize long before, that the more important the event is (the higher the motivation), the more likely you will have stronger doubts and anxieties appear. Welcome it as a personal challenge to use it. The only thing ignoring it will do is push it down into your subconscious which still effects your performance anyway.

Everyone experiences doubt and anxiety, just to different degrees and about different situations/events. Some people become paralyzed by it stopping them dead in their tracks and others feed on it, pushing them harder to higher levels than ever before. What’s the difference? It has to do with what it means to you personally. That decision is made consciously or subconsciously, long before the event, before you ever have any doubt or anxiety. The people that get paralyzed and freeze, are the ones that decided long before (probably subconsciously) that it’s more important to believe it. The ones that feed on it, know that it will be there and have decided that when they see it come up, they see it as something they can and will overcome inside themselves, regardless of the outside situation or outcome.

Think about it. Some of the times you’ve probably felt invincible or the most alive, is when you overcome your own doubts and fears. You end up feeling suprised and in disbelief that you actually pulled it off.

What would it take to take action today? To do today whatever you think you cannot do? To take just one more step to creating your dreams?