We are conditioned to survive. It’s instinctual. The fundamental drive beyond the instinct itself is indiscriminate, it can either help you or hinder you.
Hard times survived can inform your confidence or promote your doubt and fear depending on how you frame it in your noggin. The issue here is that survival instinct can make us overcautious, doubtful and anxious.
It brings tension, so naturally, we start looking for safety in the known. The problem with that is, you are on an adventure that deals specifically with the unknown. Adventure is the operative word.
The war between seeking the known and dealing with the unknown. But here’s the thing, trying to make things safe and known makes you unsafe. You’ve got to let that go.
In sport we have to let go of control and train for what we can’t know. So we have to allow, or even invite, our own discomfort in order to learn how to respond to what happens rather than react to what we don’t want. Read that one again….
Safety-seeking and control are reactions!
Anxiety pulls us into repetition because it feels safe and familiar. If we allow that reactivity to become the norm, we go seeking safety in sameness, become apathetic and lose our mojo.
You’ve got to bring your juice, your passion, your will, desire and lust. Yes lust!
Now you are meeting the survival instinct with the juicy instinctual power that it brings. The survival instinct becomes a superpower, not a prison.
That’s going to require the courage to leave the safety of the known. Familiar is Superman’s Kryptonite.
It will smother your instinctual potential and steal your talent.
Rather than train for everything, train for anything!
Gilesy
