Managing your state

“Thoughts determine feelings, feelings determine states, and states determine performance”

Your state is extremely significant for achieving peak performance and for being productive, happy, and energetic in your everyday life. Therefore, it’s crucial to be able to switch your states in order to gain a “fit” mind. For example, if we look back in history, Winston Churchill was known for his ability to summon several modes with avidity and calmness. This helped him reset his mind and be fully alerted during debates or negotiation meetings.

How does it work?

Thoughts create emotions and feelings that are the cause of your state. So, whenever you’re tired, bored, hopeless, or depressed, it’s the result of how you react to situations, label them, and how you let thoughts and emotions take control over your state. Therefore, whenever you feel like you’re in a feeble state, you can adjust it by focusing on these elements:

• Self-talk:

This is your inner dialogue. You have to cancel the negativity and feed your self-belief instead. This will improve your concentration, and lower your level of tension, which will help you to perform better.

• Body language:

The way you carry yourself, talk, communicate and gesture affect your state of mind. So, whenever you feel sad or hopeless, your emotions send a message to your body, and thus your body language is powerless and lousy.  However, this can be reversed! If you display a dominant body language even when you’re upset, the movements affect the brain and you feel empowered.

• Breathing

The way you breathe represents your emotions as well. When you’re nervous, your breath is shallow, whereas when you’re relaxed, it’s deep. By noticing and managing your breath, you can change your inner environment.

• Asking yourself the right questions

Have you ever asked yourself negative questions such as: “Why is it happening to me?” “Why is everything going so bad?”…? These types of questions have an extremely negative impact on your mind too because you focus on the negative aspects and your lousy brain tries to find answers to these questions! Change the state by asking the right questions which make you focus on the positive things in your life instead.

• Identifying and learning from emotions

Noticing when emotions arise and looking for what message these give is critical. Instead of freaking out or ignoring them, you should be focusing on what else could these emotions mean.

Discovering the flow

The most optimal state both in sports and life is known to be the “zone” which has also been defined as “flow”. It usually occurs when there is a balance between perceived challenges and skills in an activity.

Here’re some characteristics of flow:

1. The activity must be enjoyable
2. The individual must perceive that they have the skills to meet the demands of the tasks.
3. Total absorption in the task
4. Loss of self-consciousness (ignoring the critics, etc.)
5. Movements and actions become spontaneous.
6. Full concentration on the task at hand.
7. A high sense of control felt
8. The mind is in a state of serenity.
9. Loss of sense of time.
10. You have a specific, achievable goal in your mind.

Now, recall the time when you experienced this state and remember how you felt. What were your body language and self-talk like? By recalling to the small details such as gestures, movements, the tone of voice, etc. you can bring up that state whenever you’re in a critical situation.

However, you can also manage your state by focusing on the 5 elements mentioned earlier. See tips and technics for more in-depth methods.