Extreme Mental Sports

Success in any arena comes down to one thing, mental focus. If you can focus your mental and emotional mind on the end outcome you will then have the capacity to focus on the details that need to happen in between. In fact, skill becomes secondary when you are able to focus on what is needed in the moment. You can over come any fear, lack of knowledge and physical coordination when you can focus the mind. Seven years ago, when I was getting my skydiving license, I got stuck on level four. In that portion of the testing I had to do left and right hand 360° turns. I failed four times. I was ready to give up. I was frustrated and it was costing me a pretty penny each time I went back up in the air to try again. Finally I got an instructor who pointed out why I was failing. This helped me in knowing how to correct it but I also had a lot of fear about getting injured, which was making my body tense. A tense body works against you in any sport. So, I did what any coach would do, I went to another coach for coaching. My friend, Rich Fettke, author of Extreme Success, was responsible for getting several of our friends into this sport and he happened to be at the drop zone the day I was ready to quit. When I asked him what I should do all he said was, “Jeanna, I think you’ll pass your next go round. Just do it.” What?! No coaching me on my fears, no strategic advice. DARN! Now it was simply up to me to get my head back in the game. I decided that this was it, no more failing, only a pass score on this jump would be accepted. Of course, that’s exactly what happened. I have no recollection of “doing” anything different on that jump when it came to my body, but the mental and emotional focus on passing was 100% percent there. When I delivered my second son, just a couple of weeks ago, I had a similar experience. I had back labor because my son was turned the wrong way, which is really painful. I was focusing the awareness of my breath to relax into each painful contraction. Even when I thought I was relaxing into it, my midwife would point out different places in my body that were tensing up, like my shoulders and face. I had to keep digging deep within myself to focus on my breath and not the pain or fear. My first son was turned the wrong way during delivery and had to be “vacuumed out and then sent to ICU for a couple of days. I had that painful memory fresh in my mind, even though I had done my best to let go of it. I asked my Inner Guidance to find the courage and focus to relax even more. I let breathing be my only focus. It worked. I was aware, in the moment, of how much easier it all got when I deliberately used my mind in this way. It's the same for all things we wish to accomplish. We have to make focusing on winning the only focus when it comes to attracting more money, easier relationships and healing any malfunction of the body. It can all be done with extreme mental sports. Let the games begin!