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You’ve mastered your talent down to an art. But today it’s vanished! It's as if you’ve forgotten the motions that used to come naturally. Take a lesson from sports performance research: Quash the distractions of perfectionism and let your love for the craft guide you back to your natural brilliance! There’s a sports theory that perfectionistic performance anxiety can lead to “the yips,” a near-permanent inability to perform the motor skills of a talent, like pitching a ball. The yips appear to be caused or exacerbated by a mind-body interaction. A demand for perfection and anxious thoughts that don't help you meet your challenge override your abilities and reduce pleasure from playing. That decrease in dopamine, a pleasure chemical, disrupts activity in the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that controls movement. Watching yourself underperform adds to your obsessive thoughts and anguish. According to Nick Siegel, a baseball coach who studies the yips, it's best to forget missteps, control preoccupations, and practice gratitude to avoid or break this destructive cycle. | Trust in your abilities | Clear your mind of distracting thoughts | Let yourself have down days | Nurture gratitude for the chance to do what you love

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Curing the Yips: Exchanging Perfectionism for Gratitude

Bybsheba26 August 2, 2023August 2, 2023

Embrace the wisdom of sports coaches by responding to down days with gratitude rather than perfectionism.