Tip Of the Week, 4-24-09

Intensity

Successful people are able to focus their attitude, mental state, and preparation into a laser-like beam. True intensity must come from within.

It takes practice to learn to be intense. One way to train yourself to be intense is to “Succeed to Failure”

• Your goal is to perform your skill or task until you can no longer either perform it physically or until you are unable to mentally focus on it.
  
  Measure the number of shots or time you were able to perform until you failed. Then do it again, this time with the goal of exceeding your last set.

Share your intensity training techniques.

Tip of the Week, 4-17-09

Preparation

Have you ever noticed how some people seem to perform their skill with ease?

Take Roger Federer as an example. When you watch him play tennis, it appears he hits the most difficult of shots with ease.

Would you like to learn how to perform with that same ease?

Any athlete or high performing individual makes it “look easy” when performing. In the case of the successful business person, it is sometime hard to tell if they are at work or play. These role models in business and sports all seem to have several things in common. They seem to have a “can do” positive attitude. They are full of confidence because they have put in the hard work to prepare themselves for the task.

Look at the successful athlete and see how they prepare for their event. They spend hours on the practice court or in the gym conditioning themselves.

Successful business people do the necessary homework to fully prepare themselves for the big meeting or sales presentation. In short these successful individuals put in the work behind the scene that now one else sees. They know that the more prepared they are the better they will perform, thus confidence is developed.

They know the pain of preparation is worth the gain of success.

Tell us what you do to prepare yourself for your best performance.

Tip of the Week, 4-10-09

Mental State

What does that really mean? We always hear that successful individuals are “mentally tough”. Does that mean the “mentally tough” person focuses only on the task and nothing else?

Mental state as defined in AMP IT UP, Train Your Brain for Success is a condition. It is a balance of eagerness to learn, a mind void of unnecessary thought, positive attitude, proper preparation, and a firm belief in the task and/or goal you want to achieve. It is a calm, fully aware, fully relaxed yet ready for action feeling. Having the proper mental state is like setting the table for a meal of peak performance.

The question is, how do we achieve our best mental state to perform at our highest levels? The proper mental state is not a one size fits all concept. We need to identify in ourselves the “triggers” that place us into this performance ready condition.

What do you do to prepare yourself mentally? What are your triggers?

Reflect on your recent success as well as your dissapointments and share your story.

Tip of the Week, 4-3-09

Attitude improvement:

Have you ever noticed some people seem to have a bad attitude when they show up for work and wondered why? Would you like to learn how to always project a positive attitude?

We have all witnessed this person arrive at school or the workplace. Once others feel their bad or negative attitude you can see people make every effort to avoid that person. Sometimes these people with the bad attitude do not even know they have it or even worse, they choose not to have a positive attitude.

Both internal and external forces and events shape our attitudes.

An example of an external force could be having a car accident on the way to work. That surely is a tough start for the day. You can choose how you react to such an event. You can dwell on the damage to your car and the inconvenience that accident has caused you or you can be positive in the fact that you are still alive and just had a narrow escape. The event was the same but the way you react to it is up to you.

An internal example may be you are just not feeling well that day. Maybe you over exerted yourself on the weekend. Maybe you are just plain sick. Again, you can choose to let these feelings control you or you can choose to overcome them and decide to have a good day anyway.

The choice is yours.

There are definite things one can do to improve their attitudes and move them to a more positive view. You must simply want to change the way people see you, and at first you must believe a more positive attitude will in the end benefit you.

Remember, A positive attitude may not always work. A negative attitude usually has a negative outcome.

What you do to improve your attitude?