The best thing about working for myself has been the ability to manage my own time and do the things that I want to do. I have been quite intrigued by Sports Psychology so I picked up 2 DVDs from the Singapore National Library - Becoming a Champion: An Athlete’s Guide to Building Self-Confidence and Becoming a Champion Athlete: Mastering Pressure Situations! by Greg Dale, Assistant Professor and Sports Psychology Consultant at Duke University.

While watching the DVDs, I was constantly thinking how sports psychology techniques could be applied in business to become a champion entrepreneur. Here’s my take on it.

Becoming a Champion: An Athlete’s Guide to Building Self-Confidence

1. Confidence is belief in your abilities and you choose to be confident. This surely applies to business and entrepreneurism because it will be hard to succeed without having confidence in your abilities or your services/products.
2. Don’t rely on external factors for confidence. It should come from within you.
3. As contrary as it sounds, Greg emphasizes that success comes before confidence. Build on small successes and that’ll build the confidence.

Then the DVD focuses on 3 stages of building confidence - before competition, during competition and after competition. These 3 stages can equate to business in many ways, for example, pre-sale, sale and after sale.

Before Competition

1. It is better to focus on process goals (goals that are within your control) than outcome goals (goals outside of your control).
2. Be aware of self-talk. Stop and replace the negative self-talk with positive ones. Graphically visualize letting go of negative self-talk, for example, imagine taking all your negative self-talk and flushing it down to the toilet.
3. Be an actor. Use your body language positively. Act and feel confident.
4. Trust yourself that you are prepared and ready to go.
5. The competition is the reward so embrace it instead of fearing it.

During Competition

1. Understand that mistakes are likely to happen but try and see the positive side of things. Let go of mistakes, learn from them but never dwell on them.
2. Striving for perfection is futile.
3. Cherish everything positive that’s happening during competition.

After Competition

1. Don’t be too harsh on yourself. Objectively evaluate your mistakes and what you can do to change it now that you have learned from your mistakes.
2. Cherish the positives that happened during the competition.

Becoming a Champion Athlete: Mastering Pressure Situations!

We all feel pressure in many ways daily whether at work, home or elsewhere. This DVD discusses topics like how to deal with pressure and embracing pressure situations rather than fearing it. Surely, these tips could be useful in business where some of us face the most pressure.

Dealing With Pressure

1. Where does pressure come from? Greg puts forward the notion that pressure comes from ourselves or more precisely, our mind because we allow other people or things to influence us.
2. Practice dealing with pressure by keeping the whole situation in perspective. In other words, view every opponent the same way and give your best. Neither play up or down depending on the opponent. We could use this in business by treating every situation, people or circumstance with the same effort. However, this is indeed easier said than done but practice.
3. Eliminate “What-Ifs”. Do not over analyze.

Trusting Your Instincts and Yourself

1. The self-talk should be positive. Remove the word “don’t” from your vocabulary.
2. Focus on the most relevant things and do not get distracted.
3. Let go of mistakes.
4. Are we speeding too much? In pressure situations, we tend to speed up too much. Take a deep breath and slow things down.

Embracing Pressure Situations

1. Embrace pressure as an opportunity and a reward in itself.
2. Reflect on how pressure situations were handled. Think more of the victories than the losses.