Your Peak Performance Plan

Happy New Year! This is a great time to take inventory and consider how well developed your mental skills are in the following areas.  Rate yourself on a scale from 0 – 10 for each skill, acknowledge your strengths, consider which areas you’d like to improve and make a concrete plan to further develop your skills thereby creating your own personal peak performance plan for 2020.  

Goal Setting

-       Effective goal setting involves setting your sights on a destination and then focusing on the concrete, controllable steps to get there.  Do you effectively set long and short-term outcome goals, as well as process goals that help you make daily progress?

Emotion Management

-       Emotion management tools include processing emotions through talking or writing, engaging in self-care, reframing unhelpful thinking patterns, and utilizing relaxation techniques. Do you have a diverse set of coping tools that you can call upon to effectively manage your emotions?

Pre-Performance Routines

-       Before a competition, presentation, exam or any performance situation, it can help to have a consistent routine to get you into your optimal performance state.  What’s your routine and does it help you feel ready to perform? Is there anything you’d like to change about your routine to make it more effective?

Visualization

-       Can you create clear mental images of performance situations from a first person perspective (from your own eyes as opposed to watching yourself perform)? Are there ways that you can use visualization to prepare yourself for performance or anxiety provoking situations?

Motivation

-       What’s your why? How often do you connect with your purpose? How do you motivate yourself on a daily basis as you work toward your goals?

Mindfulness

-       Mindfulness is about your ability to be in the present moment in an open, accepting, non-judgmental way.  How do you feel about your ability to be in the moment and return to the moment when you drift? Are you able to accept the totality of your experience?

Positive and Balanced Thinking 

-       What do you do when you encounter unhelpful thoughts? When you are engaging in unhelpful thinking patterns, are you able to either distance yourself from these thoughts or reframe them into a more effective way of thinking? Attending to and embracing the positive is a skill that you can develop. Do you actively pay attention to and make note of positive moments in your life?

Adaptability

-       How do you cope with change and challenges? Are you able to reframe situations in order to overcome challenges in a positive way? Do you actively put yourself in situations outside of your comfort zone to increase your ability to adapt? 

If you are unsure about the path forward in any of these areas, consider consulting with a sport psychologist.