It's only table tennis

My elder daughter, who is an actress and dancer, called me yesterday to say that she was really excited as she had just come out of an audition for a major West End production and had done really well.

She even heard the panel talking to each other about how good she had been as she was leaving.

The funny thing is that she is pretty busy working at the moment so she's not desperate to get the job. It would be great but it wouldn't be the end of the world if she didn't.

While I was running this morning I thought about this in relation to Tim Gallwey's 'P = p - i' formula, which stands for Performance = potential - interference.

The interference is usually the negative self talk in our heads - "I'm going to make a mess of this"; "I really need this desperately so I mustn't go wrong"; "I hate this feeling of pressure".

The thing is, the more we concentrate on what might go wrong, the more our subconscious puts our energy on things going wrong and we lose our natural flow.

Matthew Syed talks about this as the "choking effect" in his book "Bounce".

He says that in order to reach high levels of performance, a performer must believe that performing well means everything. However, that belief is the same one that can cause them to "choke" in a critical performance.

Matthew, who was an international table tennis champion, developed a technique where he would think about his health, his family and his relationships and then finished with the affirmation "It's only table tennis" just before an event.

This was his way of quieting his interference.

How do you quiet your interference?