Regardless of the Result

Leading up to a big event, we’re all excited to go to the Open or Nationals. But if I expect to do well, I need to have to time to practice, and for maybe months or weeks and days leading up to the event, I begin to repeat to myself and to others affirmations. They’ve turned out for me to be a great tool to be able to carry out any performance goals you might make.

Seeing it happen in your mind. You need to be able to say “regardless of result, I am going to do this, this, and this,” and say it over and over again to yourself every day, and to the people on your squad. “You guys, I’m just gonna tell you, I’m gonna do it this way, I want to see if this works and the only way I’ll know if it works is about commit 100% of what I’m gonna do to the way I want to do it, to see if it holds up under competition.”

It’s awfully easy to avoid making those performance statements. But we’ve found if you’ll go ahead and make them, and if you can say the phrase, “regardless of result, this is what I’m going to do,” it takes running away from the responsibility out of the question.

And it certainly does enable you to create a goal and stick with the goal, because you have been using affirmations for the weeks and months leading up to the tournament, that you’re going to do it.

A lot of people try to get amped up when they get there. And that’s the wrong thing to do. I’m sure that there are some people out there that can understand that and have done it.