Misleading thoughts will pop into our minds and can distract and disrupt effective performance.

We do not control the thoughts, and connected emotions, that randomly appear.

Thoughts and emotions, both wanted and unwanted, can inform constructively or wreck performance.

“Today I escaped from the crush of circumstances, or better put, I threw them out, for the crush wasn’t from outside me but in my own assumptions.”

Great wisdom for athletes, performers, and all other human beings. Who came up with that? Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, somewhere between 170 and 180 AD. Yep, over 1,500 years before most of today’s sports and psychology science were created, and sage wisdom for people of any era.

It’s our assumptions, judgments, and opinions that create the bulk of emotional ‘crush,’ not the actual circumstances. A team is going to lose, a hockey goalie is going to let a puck slip by, and a ballerina is going to stumble.

As Epictetus, a Greek philosopher of over 1800 years ago, expressed it:

It isn't events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgments about them.

It isn't events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgments about them.

Exactly. It’s the mental judgments that emerge from those events that can be problematic. The thoughts, stories, etc., our minds feed us that are the real culprit. Performers able to effectively respond to that potentially distracting mind chatter and the emotion and body sensations that tag along with them are able to minimize ‘emotional crush,’ enabling their ability to move on and performing the skills and other things required of their endeavors.

The process and ability to do that is a........

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