The #1 Thing That Will Make Or Break Your Performance

This weekend I watched my daughters volleyball team in a tournament game. Their season encompassed a windfall of losses and this game was no different. As a once volleyball player myself who loves the game, sure I observed over the season a lot of different areas of skill they could work on. But there was only one thing that was the biggest contributor to a losing season. Belief in themselves and the attitude that went with it.

Each and every single one of these girls has the skills and potential of a great volleyball player. During a game I observed one by one a flyaway bump there, missed serve here, followed by the opposing team's ace serve and their confidence and belief in themselves took a downward spiral to being completely obliterated.

It was a cascade effect. As one player was affected it would affect the next, and then the next until the team's collective belief of themselves was failure, that they suck and will never win a game. They let the repetition of their losses be the indicator of proof as to what they believe they could achieve and how they feel about themselves.

I invite you to consider what might be your internal dialogue as one of these players? How is the internal dialogue of your beliefs and attitude the same or similar to you now as an entrepreneur, as a leader or manager? What insights could you gain from their experience as a team leader? What experiences are you using as proof of your faults that keeps you stuck? That keeps you from attaining what you really want?

When we don't succeed we often look at it as a failure. Being our own best worst critic we immediately jump to our own perceived inadequacies. We focus our attention on the lack, not being enough encircled with a critical attitude and set the player on "repeat." Because the brain is a very efficient machine the repetition creates a habitual pattern of thought resulting in the creation of a new neural network directly to your subconscious to run automatically.

What kind of impact do you feel that will have on achieving your goals? What kind of impact might it have in other areas of your life?

To increase performance and gain positive momentum towards achieving your goals it's necessary to press stop on the repeat button and choose a different tune.

If we are able to press stop on the negative belief/attitude repeat button that keeps us from achieving our goals and set the player on repeat on the learning, positive beliefs of ourselves sprinkled with an attitude of optimism we become our own superman/superwoman. We work with our brain to create new neural networks to our subconscious that run automatically that support where we want to go and what we want to achieve.

As a leader, if we can positively impact our teams beliefs both individually and as a group, collectively increased momentum and performance will be the result.

What's on your playlist?