Stay Factual
You don’t rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training." — Archilochus
Photo by Usa Wrestling How facts give me back the present moment while wrestling.
Facts alleviate story being steared by fear, feelings, and doubt. Stories that are created based on uncertianity of success that can take over in the moment.
With every deep breath, I think of every move as a pinpoint in the process. Moving outside of the outcome mindset and more into the process. My matches are building blocks.
In sports psych, we talk a lot about traps. How we can set these little traps up in our minds and fall into them. I used to always say this saying to myself: It’s you versus you. As I deep dive into one of the biggest opportunities of my life, I just think about how true that is. The mind, especially my mind, needs an anchor to shift the story, to be able to process things, and to function and step into each moment.
I never knew how much my mind would be the biggest obstacle in my career. The heavy feeling of Am I doing the right thing? Is this going to get me to where I'm going? And then navigating feelings that feel almost like intuition into the future like a storytelling of, Okay, you feel this way, you're going to do this way when sometimes it's so much simpler of just doing the movement. The easiest things are the hardest things.
When my brain flagged uncertainty, what part of it was actual physical data from my training, and what part of it was just an old story trying to protect me from failing again? Is what I ask myself.
At the end of the day, it comes down to sitting back, watching, and stripping the moment down to the facts. What is actually happening right here, right now? It can be as simple as how I am circling the mat, that gives them my elbow. If I had followed my feelings in that moment, I would have spiraled into frustration over the two-on-one working it over and over again. That would have became my full focus but by looking at it factually, I realized I was just circling right into it. Once I caught that and adjusted to circle away, the two-on-one never even happened.
If you let feelings drive, they will take over. But when you look at the situation objectively for what it is, the fear loses its grip, and the growth takes over.