An Athlete’s Perspective

You choose your endeavor, travel through your journey and reach your highest potential. The goal is to master your endeavor physically and mentally while you ENJOY YOUR JOURNEY. If it was easy everybody would be doing it. The sooner an athlete or anyone striving for success learns this information, the better. While striving for success there is much to deal with. Success is not easy to deal with. Knowing how to deal with failure, expectation and pressure keeps us on a smooth and steady path toward reaching our individual full potential, while enjoying the journey. Failures must be turned into positives, expectation is negative and to deal with pressure the main answer is confidence is knowing you are prepared. You are prepared, therefore confident, so there is no reason to feel any pressure. Just go out and play your game, take what you get and go back to work. The goal of this information is to help athletes or competitors of any kind become less frustrated and get much more enjoyment out of what they are doing. This information helps to keep you on a steady upward path of success and eliminating big down times. When an individual finds their purpose or learns what it is they really love to do, it in a way becomes a positive addiction. It becomes all that you want to do. Life is busy and in order to have the time to do what we love we must have a plan to handle life and then spend the rest of the time pursuing the dreams and goals we have for ourselves. When any person has dreams and goals and is willing to work hard toward achieving their personal goals all of this hard work filters through your entire life, this creates a very fulfilling and positive journey with no regrets. It takes a team for one person to succeed. Learn from others, gain support from those you know, always take lessons, study and learn about your endeavor. This information is something that can assist you and give you sub-conscious and conscious confidence. Chapters in this book are Physical Practice, Mental Practices, Expectation and Pressure, Success and Failure, Keys and Key Phrases, Expansion of Keys and very motivating stories about two athletes. Obtaining proper equipment and dealing with injury are discussed. The Mental game and how to be in THE ZONE and stay in it are thoroughly described. How to think when you practice compared to how to think while competing is discussed and it is critical for success to know this information. There are important keys explained. Giving your best, honor, pride, learning FEEL, patience, discipline and self motivation are some of the keys discussed. Included are Key Phrases for the mental game and positive affirmations. A few are: When the student is ready the teacher will come, if you do what you have always done you will get what you have always gotten, failure is the fuel that strokes the fires of success, success is not a destination it is a journey, success shows you your potential-you learn more from your failures, quitting is the easiest thing to do because it requires no talent, CONFIDENCE IS KNOWING YOU ARE PREPARED. ALWAYS ENJOY YOUR JOURNEY. At 37, this author was ready to QUIT after 7 years competing at the Regional Professional level as a weekend warrior against National Touring Professionals. She could not win. The student was ready, the teacher came. He was there; on what Battles had decided was her last day. She chose to keep going and work with Larry Mathews. After working with Larry for 3 months, learning about equipment, the mathematical system Larry created for bowling and improving the physical game Battles entered another regional tournament with new weapons and new knowledge. She won and it felt EASY, AMAZING! She continued to compete for 3 more years staying within the top 3 on the regional tour, winning a State Title and several other scratch tournaments. At age 40, an arthritic hip forced her to retire from this sport. She felt she had reached her full potential and has no regrets about her 15 year journey with bowling. Able to compete with and against the best on the planet and being within the top 1% on the planet at this sport was fulfilling. This is quite an achievement for someone doing this after regular job hours. YOU CAN DO IT TOO! The first words Larry said were, “I don’t care what you have done or what you think you know. You don’t even know the questions, much less the answers.” He was 100% correct, to her surprise. Larry became this author’s best teacher, mentor and friend. He transformed her into a player, champion and much more importantly a better person. He passed away in 2010 and his knowledge combined with the author’s personal knowledge and experience is paid forward to you in a simple teaching form that can work for anyone. Do you know the answers to these questions? The answers are provided in AN ATHLETE’S PERSPECTIVE. How do I become appropriately confident? What is perfect timing? Ok, the answer: Perfect timing is doing nothing and getting everything. How do I deal with failure? Is expectation positive or negative and why? Do I know how to think when I practice as opposed to when competing? Do I know myself, my weaknesses and strengths? Can I feel what my body is doing; do I know how to feel something I can’t see? These questions will be answered for you within a couple of hours and then your job is to live by it, believe it and go out and reach your full potential following these suggestions. All of the answers are not in this book. There is a lot of information available to use to improve. Never stop learning and use what you feel is good information for you from your teachers, coaches, parents and mentors. Know who loves you, be thankful and humble. Valuable information that took a life time to learn is here for you. What have you got to lose for a couple of hours of reading time? You just might learn something valuable.