Perception, one mental skill for every situation

Sport, as like life, will always present different "challenges". A lot of the time, we are challenged by things outside of our control, an illness, injury, environment or situation.

What makes a big difference is how we view things.

As an athlete, husband, son, brother and now father, I was pretty quick to identify the negative of a situation and focus on it. What this taught me over time was to focus on the problem, it became a nasty cycle when attempting to perform and excel.

What I didn't realise was that developing and training this outlook on different "challenges" was not the best mental tool going forward.

We are very quick to identify the negative things and tell people what's going wrong. We do find it harder to tell people what's going well and how simple we are keeping things.

You can build your description of the situation good or bad depending on how you look at it.

There is a brilliant book from Victor E Frankl he was a Holocaust survivor. Probably one of the most challenging things a human being can be put through.

He didn't look at it as it was good or bad, he kept it as simple as he could and did what he could do daily.

Keeping the "challenges" presented to him in a simple format. He altered his perception.

Whatever you train, you'll get better at it.

You'll also nearly always find what you're looking for.

Remember you always have a choice about what you can develop mentally irrespective of what is happening around you.