Awareness

Awareness is the first step in understanding our own performance. It lets us know our strengths, our weaknesses, our areas of growth, our goals, and virtually every aspect of performance. The more aware we are of these aspects of ourselves, the more in control we become of developing consistency in performance. When we are unaware of what isn’t working in our performance, we have very little chance of fixing it.

Just think of how frustrating it would be to lose a skill and lack the ability to regain it after staying after practice for extra drills, hitting the gym for extra conditioning, and talking with your coach about your performance without finding out what’s wrong. On the other hand, how great would it be to sit down with a sport psychologist, talk about your performance, identify the areas in need of adjustment, and get back to consistent and confident performances?

Practice Techniques for Awareness: 1. Incorporate all senses into your awareness 2. Learn how the senses work for you 3. Use a single component of awareness at a time 4. It is all a part of yourself 5. Be aware that you develop and change as your awareness does 6. Become more aware of how external things change your awareness