How annoying is it, when you know what you are capable of and for some reason, you just can’t produce it? You do the same thing ten, twenty or thirty times and then fluff it, once, and that puts you off the next three times; after that you are behind and you get cross with yourself, loosing concentration and eventually, the game or match. Or is it that you practice, practice and practice, achieving excellent scores and then at the big competition, you just loose it; you can’t hold it together, for a reason that escapes you.

You try to analyse what has just happened to you and still can’t find a tangible answer. The resultant frustration, without you knowing it, causes a degree of depression and your efforts in training or practice seem only awkward and representative of, perhaps, three-quarters of the skills that are yours. Mild embarrassment in front of your sports colleagues adds to and prolongs the misery. You are lost in a dark fog, trying to chase what is yours, not knowing where it is, why you cannot repossess it and even less, how you lost it.

If this goes far enough, many will give up the sport which gave them such pleasure and self-esteem. They feel that they just cannot continue yet, once, they were very highly thought of in their club.

You have probably heard of something called “muscle memory”; try to think of it as a full recall, from the subconscious, of your training and development of technique. This is something you might get flashes of, more and more frequently, as you improve and achieve higher levels of results. This is what is happening when everything is going really well and you wish you could be like this all the time.

That is when things go well; the other area which can affect your performance is what happens when you make a mistake during a game or a match, or loose it at a competition – and what coldly embraces you after that. Here, we are looking at stress, anxiety and frustration; frustration as a result of the stress and anxiety.

Mark knows what he is talking about: at one time, his scores were inside those required for selection to the British Olympic team, in his sport. Ironically, now that he knows the answers, he doesn’t have time to enjoy what would be an incredibly rewarding activity.

If you think about it, at the higher levels of competition, obviously the winner has won but he has been allowed to win by his opponent loosing. Often players can be so evenly matched in skill that they have to rely on the other one making a mistake and then being unsettled for the next few shots. When you are at this level, you have to train in a new skill, one that nearly everybody overlooks; keeping your head, keeping your cool, staying in control – call it what you like but it is where so many sports are won and lost.

You have struggled to get the best out of one world and usually got the worst out of the other, how can you easily get the best out of both worlds, all the time? The answer is to change the way you think; control and improve what goes on inside your head.

Mark can guide you into deep relaxation, so deep that the subconscious part of your mind relaxes also. At this point, he can make positive suggestions in line with what you want to do and they will enter your subconscious. If you accept these suggestions, your performance will improve by a noticeable margin.

You cannot be made better than you are, you cannot do more than you can do but you can have all of your skills available rather than partially denied due to psychological reasons and you can stay in control. Imagine being able to do your best and imagine being calm and having clarity of thought, no matter what happens. Imagine winning.

More about Analytical Therapy : More about Hypnosis