No limit thinking

Today it was time for another session with the England Performance Coaches. Performing under pressure was on the agenda. Dave Alred, the rugby coach, performance coach in numerous sports and perhaps most known as Johnny Wilkinson’s kicking coach is a true expert in the field. Having been involved in the set-up behind England’s winning team at the 2003 Rugby World Cup, studied the people that train dolphins at Sea World and worked with the RAF pilots to find out how the handle pressure situations, it is hard to think of what else there might be to know in this area. As a true scholar though Dave continues to study and of course this is why spending time with him is not just a traditional lecturing. It is a battle with all our conventional ways of doing things.

One of Dave’s trademarks is ‘No Limit Thinking’. Having listened to Dave I cannot help wondering what it is that makes us constantly put people into pigeonholes. Or to have to use scales of various sorts; On a scale from 1 to 10 – how good are you? What if there is no such thing as a 10? What if you could be a 15 or a 29? And what happens after you have become a 10? Do you stop? Find a new sport?

Of course the challenge must be to constantly strive to get better. I remember a conversation I had at my son’s school where schoolwork is now very ‘goal oriented’. There are goals for everything that the children should learn. I am sure there are benefits with this, but what happens when the goals are reached? A wise and experienced teacher once said to me
-”Children used to come to school, eager, asking ‘what will we learn here?’ Now the only question is ‘what do you have to do to get a certain grade’?”
Sounds like every limit thinking to me…