Welcome back to our limited blog series, where we embark on a journey towards achieving your performance and wellness potential in every domain of your life. This week we are exploring the third category of the PERFoRM Score™ – Rehearsal.
What actually is Rehearsal?
In the PERFoRM Score Assessment, the Rehearsal score measures your ability to create powerful mental images, feeling states, and internal self-talk that allow you to prime your brain (and body) for learning and performance.
Top achievers use intentional thoughts, feelings (sensations), and mental images to help them learn and master difficult skills, overcome challenges, and perform in pressure filled environments.
Rules for Mastering Rehearsal
1. TREAT REHEARSAL AS A SKILL TO DEVELOP
Often people see mental rehearsal skills as an innate ability - you either have them or you don’t. The reality is that rehearsal skills are like any other skill and can be developed with focus and effort. Create regular time and space to build and practice your rehearsal skills. Make them part of a consistent routine and you will quickly see improvements in your ability to use rehearsal skills to enhance learning and performance.
2. REFLECT ON FEEDBACK
Critical to any skill development, including mental rehearsal, is to gather feedback to assess progress and make adjustments to improve. After each mental rehearsal session, take time to review and reflect on your experience. Identify areas where you felt strong, where rehearsal enhanced your performance, and which aspects of your rehearsal need further development. Use this feedback to identify specific ways to get better and refine how you use mental rehearsal over time.
3. UNDERSTAND YOUR PREFERENCES
Get clear on your learning and information processing preferences so you can use them to your advantage to speed up learning and enhance performance. You may have a bias to learning or processing information either visually (seeing), verbally (thinking/talking), or kinesthetically (feeling). Build these preferences into preparation strategies and routines for key work and activities, and incorporate them as part of learning new skills and knowledge.
4. BE INTENTIONAL WITH SELF-TALK
Develop a positive and constructive internal dialogue. Be mindful of your thoughts and use self-talk that reinforces your strengths and abilities to help you perform. Incorporate positive affirmations and gratitude into your daily routine and learn how to replace self-doubt with constructive thoughts and beliefs. Your self-talk should act as a source of motivation and help fuel your confidence.
5. REFRAME NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
We all experience negative thoughts, when feeling overwhelmed by negative thoughts or challenges, learn to reframe them as positives or opportunities. Ask yourself how you can flip your thinking from negative to positive. What is the opportunity here? What strengths can you tap into to face this challenge? How can you frame this challenge so you can get into action and focus on things within your control? Transform self-doubt or fear into a belief in your ability to overcome obstacles and grow through adversity.
6. TAKE A MULTI-SENSORY APPROACH TO VISUALIZATION
Create vivid mental images of desired outcomes and visualize yourself successfully accomplishing challenging skills and achieving important tasks and goals. Engage all your senses (sight, sound, smell, touch) and pay attention to details such as colours, textures, scents, and sensations to make your mental rehearsal more immersive, impactful and as realistic as possible.
7. DEVELOP YOUR INTEROCEPTION
Interoception is the ability to perceive and understand the internal sensations, signals, and physiological responses of your body. Cultivate this awareness to better understand how you respond to pressure, stress, moments of relaxation, and various mental states so you can use this knowledge to help you perform when you need to be at your best.
8. CULTIVATE A STRONG MIND-BODY CONNECTION
A strong mind body connection will strengthen your mental rehearsal abilities and enhance your performance across domains. Think of the mind body connection as a muscle that will get stronger with more use. Regularly engaging in activities that encourage the mind body connection is a great way to develop this muscle. Meditation, yoga, martial arts, pilates and tai chi are a few examples of activities that reinforce a strong mind-body connection. Developing this connection in other activities will make your mental rehearsal more vivid and effective.
9. ANCHOR YOUR EMOTIONS
Connect positive emotions to your mental rehearsals. As you visualize success, feel the emotions associated with the actual performance or achievement, such as confidence, determination, joy, or satisfaction. This emotional anchoring can reinforce your motivation and readiness when facing actual challenges
10. CREATE MENTAL SIMULATIONS
Visualize yourself in the exact situation where you need to perform. Whether it's a presentation, a sports event, or a job interview, recreate the performance environment as vividly as possible in your mind. Visualize the venue, the audience, potential distractions, and practice how you will respond to a variety of scenarios. This will help reduce anxiety, increase confidence and improve your ability to handle real-life situations.
Stay in Touch
Thank you for joining us as we explore the PERFoRM Score™ and what it means for you and your performance journey. If you have not yet completed the PERFoRM Score™ assessment, we encourage you to do so here.
Stay tuned for next week's post about Focus.
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