Everyone wants to deliver their best performances more often. However, consistency is not something that can be successfully attained by striving for it.

Paradoxically, the more consistent that you attempt to become the more inconsistent your results are likely to be. You cannot become a better performer by aiming for something (a sequence of outcomes) that exists only in the past (your last result) and the future (your next result).

Analysis of the past provides opportunities for learning, but form is just what the past looks like on a piece of paper. Similarly, a focus on future performances only takes your attention away from the only place that results are created: Now.

The desire for consistency only creates an inner resistance to the reality of your performances. It leads to ‘trying too hard’ because you are not only trying to deal with what is happening, now, in this moment, but you are also attempting to fix the past (your form) at the same time.

You are not consistent. You are not exactly the same person (physically or psychologically) from one day to the next. Realise that. Instead, arrive fresh to each moment. Then being able to adapt from where you are is more valuable than striving for the notion of consistency.

Your experience, your game and your results are all better when you relax into them. If you are in great rhythm do not think about it, just do it. Enjoy it. However, sometimes the momentum of the game goes with you and at others it doesn’t. Playing your best requires working with both.
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You do not know how it is going to end up. Surrender to the unknown. Explore what is possible and work with play/ball/opportunity as it arises. Then, rather than tensing up over the concepts of consistency and form, you have fun finding out what happens.

This is an excerpt from my second book, Perform Beyond Pressure, which is available on Amazon here

There are no high-pressure situations. ​There are situations and, at the same time, there are temporary perceptions and feelings about them. However, there is no causal connection between these two variables, despite how it can seem to all of us at times. Even a World Cup Final is only as big as you believe it to be.

It can be easy to assume that the higher the level of the competition, the more pressure that exists. However, a more complex game against skilful performers does not equate to pressure, unless you believe that it does. People can feel pressure at every level. People can play with freedom at every level.

All the variables at every level - opponents, money, adulation, criticism - are inherently neutral. They are what they are. The extent to which they seem like a blessing or a curse is always a temporary, thought-created perception.

When it feels like a situation is ‘high pressure’, this is an ‘outside-in’ illusion. An ‘outside-in’ illusion is something that looks like it determines how you feel. This is despite situations and circumstances being unable to create feelings and emotions. All feelings are transient energy that arise and disappear within your mind. How seriously you take them, and how much time and attention you give them, determines the strength and longevity that the feeling has.

When you know that ‘outside-in illusions’ exist, you begin to intuitively spot them as they appear in your mind. You realise that matches, opponents and levels do not determine pressure, only your thinking and beliefs about them do. When you know that, you stop energising these perceptions with further analysis or a resistance to the feeling.

This causes the habit of perceiving matches to be ‘high pressure’ to fall away. The feeling of pressure stops arising or, even if it does appear, you see the illusion for what it is. When you see an illusion, you are instinctively able to go beyond it. To play freely no matter how you are feeling. You are still the same player, with the same skills, even when an uncomfortable feeling appears. Your capacity to adapt and perform in the situation is not impaired even if you do feel under pressure. 

While there are no high-pressure situations, there will always be challenging circumstances – given your skills, the environment you are in and the opponent you are facing. In a tough situation, simply deal with what is right in front of you in that moment. Leave everything else. You can only do what you can do, right now. One action at a time. Play one ball at a time. Repeat that process again and again, and so on. At the end of that simple process, you might look back and find a ‘big’ performance. Focus on what is required now and the result will take care of itself.

This is an excerpt from my second book, Perform Beyond Pressure, which is available on Amazon here

Here are four things that can help anyone with confidence.
 
We Feel More Confident When We Have Less On Our Minds

​Confidence is a natural state of being. It was part of our experience long before we learned to take ourselves seriously or took on the idea that we need something outside (e.g. money, approval, results) to make us feel OK on the inside.

Feeling confident has nothing to do with thinking positive thoughts. When we have less on our minds, we automatically feel better. Confidence naturally emanates from a relaxed state of mind, where we barely notice the thoughts passing through.
 
Confidence is what we feel when we are not consciously thinking about what, or how well, we are doing. This is why small children are the most confident people on the planet, despite their limited abilities and achievements. They are not wracked with doubt and insecurity, because they have not learnt to analyse everything they do. They live life in the moment, have fun and give it their best shot whatever happens.
 
Confidence Does Not Come From Our Results
 
We are taught that we can get more confidence from things outside ourselves. This can appear to be from being better, from what other people say or from achievements. If we believe that to be true, we innocently learn to make confidence and feeling good contingent on meeting certain conditions. However, confidence does not directly cause success, nor can success create confidence.

What happens for most of us is that when we win, we drop the thinking that says we needed to win and therefore we are able to enjoy the moment. It is that clear mind and relaxed feeling that makes us feel good, as opposed to the analysis and rumination that we often fall into when we lose.
 
We do not need to win to feel fulfilled and engaged in what we are doing. Our enjoyment of the game is not reliant on our results unless we think it is. Experiencing this newfound sense of freedom from our results can actually increase our likelihood of winning, because we simply play the game as it comes, adapting to what is required in each moment.
 
Everybody Loses Confidence, At Times, Because Thought Fluctuates For Everyone
 
It does not matter how good we are or what we have achieved, when our heads are jammed full of noise we will feel low. This is natural. Low confidence is a transient and temporary state of mind unless we fight it or hold it in place.

We extend this low feeling when we analyse the reasons that we believe are causing us to feel low and search for solutions to feel better. As we search for a better feeling, we rev up yet more thinking rather than allowing the mind to self-correct.

It is easy to believe our negative thoughts when we are in a low state of mind because they can appear logical, but the doubts are no more real than any other thoughts. Thought comes and goes naturally when we are not attaching to expectations of results and beliefs about what makes us feel good.

All feelings are simply reflections of the flow of thought – none of them are more indicative of our ability or predictive of the future than another.
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We Can Perform Even When We Do Not Think We Can
 
There is more to performing than feeling good. Being caught up in trying to be more confident gets in the way of how capable we are even when we do not feel it. Everybody has had occasions when they have felt very low in confidence but found a way to perform to a high level. Equally, everybody has had times when they felt ‘a million dollars’ and it seemed inevitable that we were going to succeed but we did not.
 
Whilst confidence is a great feeling to have, there is nothing that we actually need it for. The only thing that stops us doing what we would do when we feel confident is listening to insecure thoughts. Instead of listening to those thoughts, we can perform anyway. We can watch the ball and hit it, regardless of how we are feeling. We can trust that deeper sense of knowing that we are still the same player, with the same capabilities, when we are feeling low just as when we are feeling great.
 
This is an excerpt from my first book, Pressure Myths. You can get your copy of Pressure Myths on Amazon here