Many of you know I participate in a number of coaching networking sessions. Interestingly last month we were discussing mental strategies include concepts of “flow”, mindfulness and various philosophies that are linked to those concepts.
So where does Pooh bear come into this? Well if you want an old (not as old as some of the texts on these topics) but interesting read, maybe add “The Tao Of Pooh” to an Xmas list.
The key messages in the book is looking to explain how thoughts and our interpretation of them can shape our actions and reactions. It’s written in a light, chatty style to introduce concepts and provide examples using Pooh bear and various characters from those stories. The basis of the concepts are on Taoism.
For me as a coach, its an interesting concept as to when to take a more mindful, present moment, feeling based approach or a more data centric, factual, “brain” based plan and execute route.
Maybe it’s situational?
An excellent series of podcasts is from Jonny Wilkinson, https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/i-am-with-jonny-wilkinson/id1610549437. These have a wide range of guests which Jonny manages to pull back to make it sport relevant however sometimes the conversations can become quite abstract.
The recent podcasts from Olav Aleksander Bu and other sessions I’ve flagged with Dan Lorang seem to be great examples of finding a good balance between the time / data centered – review the past, measure the current, plan the future and the more holistic focus on the whole and the present.
Very unusually, last weekend at my first-aid training course, the instructor had us all practicing breathing techniques as a performance optimisation approach to learning and bringing us into the “now” with voice cues on focus and mental body scanning. It is something they regularly use with the French police force in their training.
As always super interested in hearing your thoughts and own reflections on mindset, how it influences your enjoyment and performance.