I wanted to take the time to share with you an experience I had on Sunday…

I was fortunate enough to be 12th man for Essex v Sri Lanka for the day and share the dressing room with the players and the coaching staff…

What I experienced was both fabulous and a surprise…

Why?

Because as someone who played semi pro cricketer for 15 years and 1st team club cricket for 23 years the preparation for the game with Essex was more relaxed than anything I had experienced in top flight club cricket!!!

That isn’t to say it wasn’t professional because it was, very…

It was just that the atmosphere was very relaxed and very little was said, no huge motivational team talks…

The attitude was very much; this is what you have prepared for now go out and execute…

The difference was startling…

I had a deeper realisation during the day, the reason for this is quite simple…

Sport isn’t played in the mind as popularly taught, it is played in the body…

Whatever level of sport you play your body knows how to do it and has executed successfully that skill in the past…

The ability to execute the skill therefore is therefore in the ability to let go of thought and allow the body to do what it does naturally (what it has been programmed to do)…

Rather than over-think we need to let go and instead get out of our own way to allow us to perform…

This of course applies to sport, business performance and any environment where we could experience anxiety or elevated levels of thinking…

The beauty of NLP is it teaches us to do just that to get out of our own way to allow us to operate at the top of our game…

Something which Essex where able to do versus Sri Lanka…