The psychological transformation through mental skills training and its impact on your performance can hit you like a thunderbolt, and that’s not an exaggeration!

The psychological transformation is actually a gradual process, and its full effect will be evident in a few weeks or at best a couple of months.

Let’s look at just a few areas of your game where you will start seeing quick results”

These are just a few ways in which your mental processes are transformed to positively impact your performance.

Goal-directed transformation:

To get the best out of mental skills training, you have to first know what you want from it:

Any training program works much better if it is goal directed.

Reaching the ideal state:

When you go through a transformation, you sometimes reach an “ideal performance state:” This is a mental state where all aspects of your mental skills training come together, and you deliver a superior performance. This may not happen in every match, but it is the endeavor of every grappler and combat athlete to get into this ideal state, and mental preparation is the vehicle that can take you there.

Ideal Performance State – The Zone/Flow II

The ideal performance state is referred to as the zone or flow in sports parlance. The zone or flow is the pinnacle of sporting achievement, when an athlete plays in an effortless manner and yet delivers a top quality faultless performance. Those who have been in that state, call it a magical state where performance is exceptional, spontaneous, automatic, and flowing. An athlete is able to concentrate completely and does not feel any pressure. He or she is sure of his game and technique and goes about executing with precision and timing. The body and mind work in tandem and perform like a well-oiled machine; the only thing is that the grappler is anything but a machine. In the zone, grapplers or combat athletes are cool, collected, and extremely shrewd in their moves and tactics, not machine-like.

Flow, control, effortless moves and countermoves, complete confidence-the match moves smoothly in your favor almost throughout from start to finish.

How do you get into the zone? Three key factors make this happen:

The mental framework of a person in the zone:

Finer aspects of being in the flow:

The experience of being the zone during a match can be a wonderful one, and its magic can be felt by you from the start to the finish of the encounter.

To achieve success, your mind and your body have to work in tandem and your mind has to be free of any negativity. A grappler or combat athlete can achieve peak performances on a more consistent basis by reaching the zone or flow through regular mental preparation and complete focus.

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1.  Know yourself

The most important thing is to know your strengths and weaknesses as well as your opportunities and threats in order to face the challenges around you. Know your priorities and focus on them to avoid interruptions in achieving productivity and success. You need to accept the reality about yourself before you manage yourself and the people around you. Be aware of your potential and uniqueness as this will help you move forward in life. Write down all the key points about your strengths, opportunities, priorities, potential and uniqueness as well as your achievements to keep yourself on track. Also list your weaknesses, threats and interruptions to decide which of these your need to overcome or find solutions for.

  2.  Self-confidence

Self-confidence is the most valuable trait and it’s necessary to practice this to bring faith in yourself and your abilities. There will be people in your surrounding that may have inadequacies to understand and appreciate you. However it may not be necessary react or response to these neither should you be demoralized or sad about what others think about you as this will affect your self-confidence. Remember you can’t satisfy everyone out there. In fact these could be accepted positively as an input to help you do better or make necessary changes without affecting your self-confidence. Self-confidence will be required to help you overcome your weaknesses.

3. Self responsible

Responsibility is a highly regarded value. This means that you should be responsible for your own actions, and if you have decided on something, then you should head on with it and be willing to manage the consequences or any adverse effects that arise. However reassess the actions and make necessary decisions on changes to prevent further undesired consequences.

4. Assertive

Being assertive is necessary. You have to be firm with your own priorities and approach. Highlight or stress your points clearly, yet flexible and open to new things. Assertiveness should be practiced with self-confidence and responsibility.

5. Wisdom and respect for others

It is important to practice wisdom in your actions and decisions. Be prepared for all reactions and feedback. Handle them with care and wisdom and show respect to other’s opinion and feelings. Complaints are part of any system, so learn to manage them without being intimidated. We can’t satisfy everyone but can do our best within our capacity.

6. Manage conflicts well

Conflicts could also arise, therefore be prepared to listen to all parties. Do not make decision by listening to just one party. Have an open discussion or a personal one depending on the situation in order to handle the conflict.

7. Problem-solving

Address a problem and come up with appropriate solutions. Take into consideration all necessary factors around you. If you leave a problem unattended, you may build-up more problems and create a tensed situation. Seek expert advice if necessary by having a mentor or going for counseling when necessary.

8. Self-pride

It is good to be proud of yourself as if could boost your self-esteem and self-confidence, however do not be arrogant.

9. Continuous learning and improvement

Enhance your knowledge, skills and abilities as they are important as a key to happiness and success. Practice continuous learning and take necessary steps to improve yourself.

10. Having a variety of skills

Having a good mix of interpersonal, technical & management skills is important to solve problems, make decisions, carry out your duties and deal with everyone around you. There are various ways of achieving these perhaps through relevant training and practice, mentoring, reading or perhaps through seminars/courses.

11. Keep fit & healthy

It is very important to keep fit and healthy to avoid stress. Take up activities that help you exercise like dancing, yoga or playing games. Keeping fit benefits in many ways; it takes care of all the systems in your body such as improving your blood circulation, prevents from digestive problems and provides you with mental strength and abilities to perform your duties and other daily chores. Through your activities you may also find friends.

12. Balance your life

It’s necessary to balance your life with many things. Have some activities of your interest that could bring you fun and joy e.g. camping, writing and joining clubs and societies. This will also help you to network, communicate, learn, share as well as vent your feelings, ideas and thoughts. Being a workaholic may not be good and could create unhappiness and stress with your personal relationships and affect your overall quality of life. So do take a break or find time to relax to avoid buildup of pressure and lethargy that would affect your productivity, satisfaction and happiness.

The important thing is that you keep practicing and reinforcing your assertive communication skills, rather than your initial effectiveness. It may be a new way of communicating for you, so it may take some time before it feels natural, but the more you practice your assertive communication skills, the more confidence you will gain and you will find out that  not only is it really easy, but it’s also very effective.

To be assertive is important. How to assert oneself can be learnt. Easy is assertiveness.

Assertiveness is getting what one wants. Assertiveness pays and is easy. To be assertive is to know how to get what one wants. How to assert oneself, be assertive, confuses many. Many interested in assertiveness want to be assertive but can’t assert themselves. Assertiveness is valued. Assertive people succeed. And, anyone can learn assertiveness.

Some attend personal development courses on assertiveness. Most, read books on assertiveness. They want learn assertiveness, how to be assertive. But they get subjected to a psychological analysis of assertiveness. They get confused about assertiveness. Attempts of many at assertiveness backfire. Some are laughed at if they try to be assertive. Being assertive is not an inherent quality. Assertive people were not born so. One can learn how to assert oneself. One can learn assertiveness. To be assertive is not difficult.

Assertiveness in business, asserting oneself privately, is getting what one wants. That is asserting, being assertive. This explains what assertiveness is and how to be assertive.

Assertiveness is the knowledge of advantageously agreeing or disagreeing with another, motivating and acceptably influencing in one’s favour. Those who are not assertive can be exploited. Assertive people often can not be. Being assertive is asking for something from another, in a specific and clear way, directly, and getting it. Being assertive is, simply, that. Assertiveness is noting more.

Asserting is communicating well. Assertiveness, being assertive, is about how one communicates. Many are hopeless in asserting themselves. People usually use two ways, or fret between them, which are not asserting. Asserting oneself, the way of the assertive, is different.

Few are people who are assertive. Many are not even simply aggressive or passive, but in a limbo. To be assertive one need not be aggressive or passive, but simply know how to be assertive.

If one is not assertive, whether aggressive or passive, one has no, or hardly any, control over how one’s treatment in relationships. An unassertive person is in a no-win situation: if one is aggressive, one does not get co-operation, tries being passive; if one is passive, one faces exploitation, tries being aggressive; when one fails in asserting oneself, one gets considered a bully or meek. One becomes a pushover or disagreeable, people become uncooperative, one gets treated so always, feels frustrated and inadequate. Not so, if one learns assertiveness, to be advantageously agreeable, assertive.

Assertiveness begins with an important but simple realisation. Anyone can be assertive. Anyone can be assertive.

One needs only to ponder on this, to be assertive: We are passive or aggressive indirectly or directly. If we are not assertive, we sit at the desk to write something, silently suffering the loud noise of the television the kid/s are watching while we are trying to concentrate; or we visibly and exaggeratedly scratch our head, hoping the kid/s will notice and lower the sound, or we visibly and exaggeratedly bang the pen on the desk and loudly exclaim ‘Oh, this is difficult!’ hoping the message will get through; or we yell ‘Hey, turn that off!’ That is innocence of assertiveness, not knowing how to be assertive. You aren’t saying clearly and directly, reasonably, what you want.

Say what you want clearly and directly, and reasonably. On assertiveness one can be one’s own teacher and experiment; say, instead: “Turn the sound down a little, please -I have some work to do and I need to concentrate…” People will be more co-operative than one would expect, one will get what one wants. That is being assertive.

Assertiveness, the realisation needed for assertion, to be assertive is simple. One’s being ignored, or resented, is to do with assertion: People have neither the time, nor necessarily the interest, to guess what one wants; they ignore the passive and also the aggressive.

Assertiveness is communicating advantageously. Asserting oneself is knowing how to be considerately polite, direct, specific and clear.

It is psychological: people love to be considered worthy to be asked if it is something social, like to be avoided waste of time if it something formal. Knowing and doing so is assertiveness -that is being assertive.

If you want to be assertive and get what you want, try that -that is all there is to assertiveness.The author has a website at: www.geocities.com/eoa_uk