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IT PAYS TO PERSIST
 How
long are you prepared to persist before you succeed? All successes require a
large degree of persistence. According to an American Psychologist Dr Martin
Seligman, all things being equal, the most optimistic person or team will win.
From his research, he was able to predict the result of basketball and baseball
games accurately, based on the level of each team’s optimism. To succeed in all
areas of life you need a positive mental attitude to be able to focus
continually on goals or solutions.
In sport or business, if you focus on what goes wrong (the mistakes and
negatives), it can push you in a direction you do not want to go. How? Imagine a
golfer preparing for a shot over water. In their mind they think “I don’t want
to go into the water”, they visualise it happening, they imagine how bad they
feel if it happened, then they play the shot and…. hit it into water.
As humans we move like guided missiles towards what we regularly and
consistently think and imagine with feeling. This natural guidance system is
dictated by the thoughts and feelings we program into ourselves. What the golfer
should do is pick the spot where they want the ball to land, visualise it
happening successfully, remember past success, and feel how good it felt, then
hit it.
However, things will not always go to plan no matter how positive we are. How
you deal with mistakes is crucial to your confidence, karate ability and
business prowess. Treat mistakes not as failure but as feedback. An excellent
and very effective strategy in the event of a mistake is to say “that’s not like
me, next time do it this way” and then program your positive desired outcome.
How you explain why things happen, particularly negative events, is very
important. When negative things happen, it is natural to feel momentarily
helpless, but how you recover is crucial. To succeed in anything you will have
to overcome lots of trials, obstructions and setbacks. Your level of optimism
significantly improves performance in all areas of life. Pessimists do not
fulfil their potential; they get more illnesses and respond negatively to
positive events.
When things go wrong, try to de-personalise it, make the effect short lasting
and don’t let it affect other parts of your game or life. When things go well,
do the opposite, and absorb the effects personally and enjoy them. Let these
feelings last for as long as possible, and let them flow over into all areas of
your performance and life.
Sensei James Walsh
Regional Instructor - United Kingdom
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