Performance is 90 percent mental and the rest is physical.
This is a quote many athletes would have heard before. And while the maths might not exactly add up and as clichéd as the saying might be, it helps to remind us that it is important to train for both the physical and mental components of any performance (whether athletic or not).
Has COVID-19 and the fallout sent you into a spiral in an unknown direction? Do you feel like you’ve been knocked down? Do you feel like you have or are likely to fail?
If you said YES, that’s overwhelmingly normal and what I call being human. At some stage, we are all knocked down and face challenges that are extremely complex in different environments. So why is it that the solution most friends and family give us – “get back up and try again” – so widely used and yet hard to implement?
The time has come for new changes, new opportunities, and to come back out into society again. Some people are heading back to their old work, some are moving back into the office after working from home, some are going back to school, sports, and hobbies. But others have found a new purpose during their downtime: starting a new business, pursuing a new passion, immersing in self-reflection and self actualisation – and some may have discovered a new lease on life.
I love me a good metaphor. ‘Happy as a pig in mud’, ‘full as a centipede’s sock drawer’ etc. etc. During tough situations, (I don’t know about you, but this is my first global pandemic and definitely counts as a tough situation!), I like to take solace in a metaphor to add humour, imagery and most importantly a sense of hope.
In my field of work, a couple of my favourites are ‘riding the waves of emotions’ and ‘weathering the emotional storm’. COVID-19 is indeed a ‘storm’ and it wasn’t on the BOM radar. We find ourselves in uncharted waters, thrown in the deep end, with only time telling who will sink or swim!
This is certainly a challenging time for a lot of people. It may bring up feelings of anxiety, distress, isolation and disconnection. People are experiencing severe hardship with the loss of jobs, businesses, livelihoods and the concern for the health and wellbeing of themselves and loved ones. We here at Outside the Locker Room are here with you, we are …