Fear Hides Here: Four Thoughts To Examine Closely Before Believing Them
By Shannon Thompson
In the world of performance psychology, fear is the primary foe. The examples of this are numerous and fairly obvious. Athletes can be afraid of performing badly at an important event, of becoming injured in a risky sport, or of letting their teammates down with a poor performance. Very similar fears are rampant within non-sporting domains. Executives might fear an important presentation, the failure of a risky initiative, or a disappointing performance review. Fear is present in relationships. We fear rejection when we pursue a love interest, and sometimes how our partner will react to a mistake, or perceived personal failing. Fear is everywhere in our lives.
A great deal of my work is centered around helping people overcome fear. Often fear of a poor outcome causes someone to alter their behavior so that the reality of a poor outcome actually becomes more likely. My job is to teach people how to recognize their fear, it’s effect on them, and...
The Real Trip Finder
By Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener
People often think of vacation as an opportunity to relax. Instead, it can be an opportunity to develop.
Have you ever heard the following sentiment expressed? “I wish everyone could experience what it’s like to work as a server in a restaurant.” I’ve heard some variation of this expressed often; perhaps even on an annual basis. To a person, my friends and colleagues who espouse this idea have worked in restaurants themselves. When they imagine a world in which everyone takes a turn carrying dishes and taking orders, I wonder what—exactly—they are trying to say. I think that some of them are wishing that restaurant patrons would have more empathy for the tough work of serving. I think, for others, that this notion is based in social class: they wish that middle- and upper-class people could appreciate what it’s like to be underpaid. Whatever the reason, they seem to want to promote a greater...
Inviting: How Hospitality Can Improve Everything
By Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener
“It is the host’s job to make the guest feel at home. It is the guests job to remember that she is not.”—Common Saying
Part One: Welcome
My earliest experience as a well-being researcher was studying the happiness of people living in slums in Kolkata, India. I can vividly recall my first day visiting one of these settlements. I stepped across an open sewer and into a cramped courtyard. Clotheslines spanned the space like prayer flags and children darted in and out of various doorways. A stray dog tore at a discarded rag and—inexplicably—a broken plastic chair leaned against a crumbling brick wall. The lack of privacy, the non-hygienic conditions, and the lack of material abundance were all expected. What was unexpected was the level of hospitality offered to me.
As I conducted my interviews, I was led to a house—a two room concrete shack, really—and was offered both tea and lunch. This was largesse coming...
Iterating Quickly, Iterating Perfectly
By Angela Duckworth
Do you want to do things perfectly?
I do. Striving for perfection is what high achievers do. The good is the enemy of the perfect: high achievers are never satisfied with what they’ve done. No matter how good they get, they are constantly searching for ways to get better. The Japanese call this kaizen— “continuous improvement.”
As legendary basketball coach John Wooden put it, it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
But more commonly, it is said that the perfect is the enemy of the good. This is also true. How so?
Because the secret to kaizen is short cycles of full-throated effort, followed by feedback and reflection, followed by an adjustment, leading to another round, and another, and another. In each cycle, you try your very best to reach perfection. You do as well as you possibly can before the clock runs out. You scan your email for typos before you send it, you think and rethink your strategy...
How to “Not Know”
By Shannon Thompson
“How will you go about finding the thing totally unknown to you?” – Rebecca Solnit
“I’m worried about my future,” he said, she said, so many of them tell me, with differing looks and a wild variance between excitement and fear. “I have no idea what I’m going to do.” My work as a mental performance consultant for athletes provides me with numerous opportunities to discuss the unknown:
“The doctor doesn’t know what it is, “ the soccer player tells me about her knee pain, which has plagued her for weeks now.
“I don’t know when I’ll play,” says the basketball freshman, who has yet to start in a game.
“I don’t know where to focus,” explains the tennis player.
“What are my values?” The coach asks, exasperated as he tries to articulate his coaching philosophy.
“Who do I want to be?” so many repeat back to me, eyes wide at the breadth...
How to Improve Achievement and Performance on the Job through Purposeful and Deliberate Practice
By K. Anders Ericsson, PhD and Robert Pool, PhD
We’ve all heard it. “Practice makes perfect.” But in the real world things work somewhat differently. Indeed, it is often the case that a person will work at the same job or carry out the same leisure activity—playing the piano, for instance, or golfing—for ten or twenty years and not be much better than after one or two.
The reason is simple: When people are first introduced to a job or a leisure activity, it takes them a certain amount of practice to reach an “acceptable” level of performance—one where there are no obvious failures and no glaring areas that need improvement—and then it takes a bit more practice to reach the point where they can execute that performance relatively effortlessly. But once they have reached this level of rather effortless achievement, improvement stops or slows to a crawl. We see this, for example, in school teachers who teaching...
