By: Brian Gilleece
The morning is the best time to do this, especially a Monday morning!
In this business there are LOTS of critical moments, and performing at your top level is the key to being successful, fortunately there are some techniques that can be used to try to maximize your ability in any situation.
Become Centered (Present) Worrying about what we should have done differently in the past, or what might get in our way in the future isn’t helpful to performing at our best now. An exercise to try would be to sit in a chair in a quiet place, feet flat on the floor, and focus on breathing in and out, focusing on the pause between breaths. When you can do this 5 times in a row, your mind will be quiet and you are likely to be as Centered as you will get.
Use Your Personal Power Fully prepared, we can now focus on our “super powers” that allow us to succeed. We all have them – our problem is that we’ve been taught to focus on what we can do better, not what we’re already great at. This can be done by simply writing down 10-15 things that you are GREAT at. Maybe you're a great listener, or storyteller or public speaker. Write it down and sit with your thoughts. Deconstruct WHY you are great at these things, and use this internal conversation to frame your thought process around the task at hand!
Relive Your Best Moments While being centered releases us from the noise of the past, accessing our past successes in similar situations is important to know that we will succeed in the future. For those entering a job interview, it would be important to sit and think about their best interviews of the past. We all have them, and its important to always keep those moments front and center and pull them up before any critical moment! What is YOUR favorite win story? Can you pull it up in a moments notice and use it? Can you tell this story to a stranger in an elevator if they asked?
Visualize Future Success It's easy to review your past shortcomings, but what about the times where you won? The times where you entered a room with an objective in mind and ended up achieving your goal! If you can't see it, how is anyone else going to? Draw up a CLEAR image of what the success looks like, even what it feels like, smells like! A detailed vision, before you go into your critical moment, have it mapped out in your head so you KNOW were the finish line is before you start the race.
Every single person has times in their lives they are very proud of and in this world it is EASY to forget the things we have already accomplished especially when NOT winning seems to be more of the norm sometimes.
NHL Players only score on 9% of the shots they take on net. 9%? Damn. Sounds like being an actor! It is important to continue to have a conversation with ourselves around HOW we plan on succeeding, you have to have a plan in order to find success and that starts with having a plan for our critical moments as well.
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