Your days are all over the place running from home to school to practice. And, they’re a blur. When your head hits the pillow at night you can’t even remember what you did that day. Sound familiar? If so, keep reading.
Your mind is constantly running from scrolling Twitter to a real conversation to posting on Facebook — with no space in your mind in-between. It should’t come as a surprise that they average high school kid has the same level of anxiety as a psychiatric patient in the 1950’s. Yes, you read that right. So in order to lead — as a coach, parent or executive — from a place I know you want to, changes need to be made. Changes that are within our control. And ones that give us the mental space to lead from a place of thoughtfulness, compassion and intention.
We have thousands of thoughts going through our heads — literally all day long. And, even when we are sleeping our subconscious is running. Studies show that throughout the day we have 50-80,000 thoughts that run through our mind and 90% of them are repeated. And, I’m sure you can imagine how hard it could be to lead from the place you want to when you have these thoughts constantly running through your mind — which is only amplified by our culture of constant connectivity and what Janice Marturano calls partial attention. Plus, according to research anywhere between 80-95% of these are negative, fear-based thoughts. So if we don’t take time to create space between our thoughts we are leading from a place of negativity and fear instead of love and compassion. By implementing a mindfulness practice we can find the space in our minds to lead — from the place we need to — in order to make the impact we desire.
This year we’re leveling up our Coaches Academy by adding a leadership session. In it, we’ll teach you how to implement mindful leadership practices to communicate better, connect deeper and challenge your players to maximize their potential on the court and in life. I hope to see you May 20 in Milwaukee.