4 Steps to stop doing apprehension in and around your sport

“How do I rewire my brain to forget or stop doing apprehension around cycling?.”

Apprehension is a state you’re DOING, and states are a result of feelings you’re doing. You're in one state when you're listening to rock music, and another when you're listening to classical. You're in one state when you're in the library, and another when you're out clubbing with friends. You're constantly changing states according to the situation you're in and how you respond.

You can’t forget to do a state, but you can rewire your brain to change its response to a situation. This means you can’t forget to do apprehension around cycling (or another sport), but you can create positive and powerful lasting transformation around how you feel about cycling (or another sport) by effectively re-wiring your brain.

Here are 4 methods to rewire your brain to stop doing apprehension around cycling (or any other sport):

Step 1: Add in Do, Doing, Did or Does

It's important to know that you’re doing this unhelpful response unintentionally and unconsciously, there’s no one at fault or to blame. It's just something you do and now you’re going to change what you're doing.

By adding in ‘do’, you’re recognising that this thought and state (which is the result of a feeling like ‘I’m feeling apprehensive’) is just something you’re doing and you can change it.

You’re not passive to it anymore, you’re active in its creation and if you’re creating this feeling, it means you can also stop creating this feeling and do something more powerful and positive instead.

By transforming ‘I feel apprehensive about cycling’ into ‘I’m DOING apprehension around cycling’, you give yourself two things:

You’re now ACTIVE in doing the feelings of apprehension around cycling - you’ve taken back your power to decide how you want to feel around cycling.
Space and time to pause and reflect; if you’re doing apprehension, what would you love to do instead?

Step 2: Hit Pause

Stop every single thought that is taking you away from achieving your competition goal and sabotaging your athletic performance, for example:

i’m apprehensive about cycling
I’m scared I’m going to fail
I’m not good enough
They’re running so much faster than me
I’m going too slow
I’m going to miss all the shots
I’ll be the weakest link
I’ll worried I’ll come dead last

To stop these thoughts in their tracks and prevent them from activating and strengthening any unhelpful neuropathways, in a very firm and compassionate voice, say ‘pause’ - either out loud or in your head.

My athletes are often apprehensive about this technique as it seems too easy, but it always becomes their favourite and most effective technique for peak performance and happiness.

Step 3: State how you’d love to feel in positives

If your inner dialogue sounds more like a competitor giving you smack talk than it does like someone cheering you on, it will have a similar impact on your performance as it would living with your smack-talking competitor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

If the way you speak to yourself is not taking your performance to the next level, e.g. activating doing apprehension, you can completely transform it.

Using powerful, positive and productive language is one of the tools that I have seen transform performances and results.

To stop doing apprehension and start doing performance-enhancing feelings around your sport, ask yourself: what would be really helpful to think and feel around my sport instead?

Really dive into detail the positive, powerful and performance-enhancing feelings, thoughts and actions you’d love to have around your sport. Writing this out and going into detail will fire up and strengthen the best performance-enhancing neuropathways, such as confidence and calmness.

FYI: it’s NOT positive language when you say, ‘I will no longer do feelings of apprehension around cycling’.

This is because your brain doesn’t here ‘no’, it only hears apprehension and will therefore still activate and strengthen the neuropathways connected to ‘apprehension’ and ‘cycling’, so every time you think about cycling or go cycling, your brain will unconsciously and consciously activate all of the feelings, thoughts and actions you associate with doing apprehension around cycling.

However, if you consistently and more often said ‘I feel more calm and confident around cycling every day’, this will activate and strengthen the neuropathways connected to ‘calm confidence’ and ‘cycling’, so every time you think about cycling or go cycling, your brain will unconsciously and consciously activate all of the feelings, thoughts and actions you associate with being a calm confidence cyclist.

Examples of positive, powerful, productive language:

I am fast enough
I have got this
I can do this
I feel calm and relaxed
I’m great at
I'm freaking crush it
I will catch them up
I am competing at my very best
I'm giving it my all
I have put in the training
I'm focusing on the right things at the right time to be the best athlete I can be
I am awesome

Once you’ve switched to THIS way of thinking, you’re going to be 10X-ing your performance and happiness, and achieving ‘mind-blowing’ results.

Replace every single, unhelpful thought you have with one of your performance-enhancing thoughts and you too will be taking your performance to the next level immediately.

Step 4: Brain Practice

To really activate your positive, powerful and productive brain pathways around how you want to feel in and around your sport performance, you need to visualise what you’re going to do and think in and around your sport:

FIRST, access the powerful, positive champion feelings you stated in Step 3 (e.g. calm confidence) by going back to a time when you felt these incredible feelings and immersing yourself in it.
SECOND, flow these powerful feelings into your sport and see yourself in the present going through the situation in your sport in the exact way you want to. How does it feel to have acted, felt and thought in the way you wanted to in and around your sport?
THIRD, take these incredible feelings and imagine you’ve felt this way around your sport for 1 week, 1 month, 6 months and then 1 year into the future. How does that feel knowing you’ve felt, acted and thought in this awesome way in your sport for 1 year?
- Doing this, you’ve effectively created 1 year’s worth of memories in which you’ve gone through your sport in the exact way you’ve wanted!

You’re now re-written your blueprint to think, feel and act positively and powerfully in and around your sport. Run Methods 1-4 consistently for lasting transformation.

Now it’s over to you! Let me know how you get on and if you have any questions post them in the comments below!

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