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?

What lenses are you wearing?

On my run this morning, I was thinking about yesterday evening riding my bike in the dark.

Whenever I ride my bike I wear a pair of sunglasses that have 3 sets of interchangeable lenses.

I wear them to stop bugs, dust or small stones thrown up from a car flying into my eyes.

When it's really sunny I wear my darker lenses, when it's cloudy with odd glimpses of sun I wear the orange lenses, and when it's really overcast or dark, like last night, I wear my yellow lenses, which brighten everything up.

It made me think about the lenses that we choose to wear behind our eyes, as well as the ones in front.

When I'm in a bad mood, I'm dreading what's about to happen, or I'm upset or feeling like a victim, it's like looking through my darkest sunglasses even though it's overcast or dark outside.

I'm unable to see any possibility at all. In fact I can hardly see anything outside myself at all. The only things that are really visible to me are the pain or discomfort inside me.

When I'm on my metaphorical bicycle in dark conditions with my darkest lenses it doesn't really feel possible to be going anywhere on my bike. The safest option is to get off it and push the bike home.

However, when I wear my yellow lenses, even cloudy skies appear to me that there is a glow of light trying to break through, and in autumn the colours of all the turning leaves are turned up to technicolour level.

Like my trusty pair of cycling glasses with the interchangeable lenses, we get to choose what tint the lenses are that we wear behind our eyes too.

What colour lenses are you looking out from behind your eyes with at the moment?

What difference would it make if you swapped them for your rose-tinted or sunny yellow ones?

What might you be able to notice that you can't even see now?

I bet you could go even further on your bike and the ride would be fun too.

The problem with comparing

I was thinking on my run this morning how warm it was considering it's the 1st of November today.

Warm compared with what? Warm compared with how cold it can often be in the month of November.

That got me thinking about how often I compare whatever I'm thinking of with something else.

That song sounds like another song by a different band. That person reminds me of someone else. I did that better, or worse, than I did it last time.

I compare things all the time.

I think that there's also an implied scale of good or bad in these comparisons.

If it's warm compared to typical November weather, surely that must mean that it's good, whereas if it was much colder than I ever remember it in November, I may well consider it to be bad.

It seems to be human nature to compare, and yet it's not something we're born with. We develop the ability to compare with experience.

But is it necessarily a good thing?

Young children look at everything with fascination, awe and curiosity, whereas by comparing what I look at, I've automatically built in an element of satisfaction (if it's better than what I'm comparing it with) or disappointment (if it's worse).

What would it be like if I could drop my comparisons and pretend that I've never experienced this before? This is also true because every day, every person, every song, every experience is completely unique in its own right.

What if I suspended all comparisons and looked at everything with fascination, awe and curiosity again?

I think that would be a good thing.

Run towards your fears

I was out shortly after 5.00 a.m. running my mile this morning, as I had a potential 2-hour drive ahead of me to coach a group of teaching assistants all day on delivering 21st Century Legacy's Be the Best You Can Be! programme.

During my run I saw two cars and three animals, one real and two imaginary.

The real animal was a fox, who trotted a few yards out of my way and then just turned to watch me go by, and the two imaginary ones were a dog which turned out to be a shadow from a streetlamp, and another creature of uncertain species, which turned out to be 2 reflectors on a street name.

There's something about the dark that brings out the darker side of our imagination. Trees sprout limbs, creatures are concocted from all sorts of shadows and even wind noises, and rustling leaves bring to life people who's main aim is our demise.

So what can we do when we're feeling in a dark place and our imagination is conjuring up our own demons?

Well, I don't know about you, but what worked for me this morning was to run towards my demons and to illuminate them by shining my head torch on them.

What helps you to illuminate your demons?

3 ways to avoid disillusion

Setting overly high expectations can be dangerous, particularly if you are convinced that those expectations will be met.

This is not the same as having an inspiring vision, where you are not attached to exactly how it will come about or the timescale.

An example is that somehow I expected that my running would automatically be easier with my brand new "boingy" running shoes.

It isn't. The three runs that I've done since buying the new shoes have been slower than I've run for a while, and have also felt harder.

The danger of unrealistic or overblown expectations is the disillusionment that can easily follow.

There are three ways to limit the damage of overly high expectations.

1. Make sure that what you are doing is ingrained as a habit and is not in danger of collapsing through disappointment. Whereas I might have become despondent and possibly even struggled to keep going with my running a year or two ago, because I have run every day now for 668 days, it doesn't even register on my radar as a possibility.
   
   
2. Make sure you set yourself a secondary expectation along the lines of "Well that would be fantastic, but if that doesn't happen, then at least...."
   
   
3. The third is to step back and look at the bigger picture - the inspiring vision. My inspiring vision for my running is to still be running a mile every day (at least on days where it's possible) until I'm in my 70's and beyond. My last three runs are not significant to that bigger picture. My new running shoes will probably still improve my chances of reaching my vision.