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Good Stuff from an English Bloke

Tennis Tom

Tennis Tom

Beloved Grand Eagle
"Looking for the magic bullet, the one breakthrough that will make the difference is the equivalent of dreaming about the fairy godmother coming and miraculously fixing everything. There are many people who believe that one day "it will just happen", that somehow without consistent focus, discipline and work, success will follow automatically without the pain of understanding their own mind. The idea that progress happens logically without planning and execution on a regular basis is ludicrous. People do get better just because they are involved, but nowhere near the amount necessary to become an expert at anything. We need to be sure that no matter whatever we are doing, it is what we actually want and enjoy, because we all do much better when we are having fun. Certainly not every part of training and work is fun, but if the core ingredient is passion, then the tough stuff is palatable because we know that it will help our performance."

Page 75, LOCKER ROOM POWER, by David Sammel​
 
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Hi, Tom. Passion is such a great word, and so essential in TMS. If we have a passion for TMS healing, we will heal. It really is the magic bullet.
Forest has a great passion for TMS belief and has created this web site which takes a lot of his time and energy, but he and it are helping so many around the world, carrying the torch of Dr. Sarno.

Have a wonderful New Year! Think of it as your best yet!
 
LRP, page 99 :

Louise Scott (MSc; BSc; Applied Sports Psychology):

" Perhaps the most important facet of this brand of psychology (existential) is the acceptance that anxiety can be a positive experience. Existential theorists do not restrict themselves to purely competitive anxiety, quite the contrary in fact. These theorists look at and inspect the anxieties of life. They understand and accept that the anxieties of life can absolutely impact on the performance of athletes. However rather then try to disperse this emotion from our world the existential approach suggests that anxiety should be faced and used beneficially to aid decision making and to help the individual accept responsibility (caps mine). In-fact this belief that anxiety is predominately a negative emotion is being challenged by cognitive behavioural psychologists."

​
 
Great quote, TT. You may have already seen it, but the following TED talk builds upon these same ideas. I like how, rather than turning us into victims, it empowers us by building on our innate strengths. A worthy goal that is in line with so much TMS theory, showing us how independent we can be.

Here's the writeup: "Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others."

And the TED talk itself:

​
 
I like to think that my subC, which tries to divert my attention with pain, is really trying to serve my best interests by alerting me that there's an issue I need to address. So I agree that stress can be a good thing. Evolutionarily speaking, it's what kept our ancestors alive.
 
Forest said:
the following TED talk builds upon these same ideas
Click to expand...

I liked her talk a lot, someone posted it on the forum a while back. It makes sense, for sure. I agree @Gigi, we need to see what our minds are trying to teach us, that is very important. Healing, for me, has been about self-discovery, facing the fear and starting to just live my life again, finding joy in the small things and accepting what is.
 
Hi Forest, thanks for the like and the links. I bought her book and it's waiting in the stack with all the others. Hopefully I'll get to it before I expire from all the books collecting dust around me. I think she's at Stanford so I might be able to hear her talk in person someday.

Cheers,
tt/lsmft;)
 
LRP, page 99 :

Louise Scott (MSc; BSc; Applied Sports Psychology):

"Numerous researchers...argued against the 'myth' that anxiety is always detrimental to performance. Indeed the studies...indicated in their results that performance of some of the athletes who participated were shown to perform better when they were cognitively anxious leading to latest conceptualisation that anxiety can be either debilitative or facilitative on performance depending on the individual athlete." ​
 
LRP, page 99-100 :

Louise Scott (MSc; BSc; Applied Sports Psychology):

"Within the world of competitive sports we have all heard those stories from elite athletes who have been physically sick with nerves and anxiety before they compete, but they understand that is the right place in order for them to perform at their maximum. This development with regards to anxiety has brought the cognitive behavioural approach and the existential approach closer together. The existential also has two different types of anxiety; normal and neurotic. Existential psychologists believe that normal anxiety, which comes as a result of life's trials and tribulations, is healthy and contributed to personal growth. Neurotic anxiety is debilitative and occurs when a person fails to meet the challenge of normal anxiety. The main difference between the two approaches is that the cognitive approach would attempt to relieve athletes of this anxiety by using various mental skill techniques. Whereas the existential approach helps people face this anxiety and aid them in accepting it is part of everyday life. In order to face the anxiety of life, existential psychologists will encourage their clients to engage in self-examination of themselves. This self-examination will result in the individual having greater levels of self-knowledge and self-awareness (Nesti, 2004)."​
 
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LRP, page 100 :

Louise Scott (MSc; BSc; Applied Sports Psychology):

"...Within the sport psychology literature, the psychological state 'zone' has been defined as 'flow'. ...Flow is grounded within humanistic psychology and philosophy. Flow is an optimal psychological state that occurs when there is a balance between perceived challenges and skills in an activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). It is a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to a complete absorption in an activity an individual is undertaking. Ultimately flow is viewed as a peak performance state,...

...Enjoyment and intrinsic motivation are essential requirements for flow. Many activities have the
ability to stimulate the flow experience; however an individual needs to feel intrinsically rewarded by their activity in order to achieve the flow experience."​
 
From the wiki:

"Csikszentmihalyi is noted for his work in the study of happiness and creativity, but is best known as the architect of the notion of flow and for his years of research and writing on the topic. He is the author of many books and over 120 articles or book chapters. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, described Csikszentmihalyi as the world's leading researcher on positive psychology.[3] Csikszentmihalyi once said: "Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason."[4]His works are influential and are widely cited.[5]"
 
Tennis Tom said:
Csikszentmihalyi once said: "Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason."
Click to expand...

Love him, thanks for sharing.
 
LRP, page 103 :

Louise Scott (MSc; BSc; Applied Sports Psychology):

Self-Belief

...Efficacy perceptions are crucial to human processes because people's levels of motivation, affective states, and related actions are based on what they believe to be true rather then the reality of what is true (Bandura 2000).

...mastery experiences have the greatest impact on self-efficacy in sport.


 
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Page 105, "LRP", David Sammel:

* The aim is to own and believe in your own toughness.

* ...work hard and good things will happen, you just can't predict when.


Page 106,

* Work hard yet let things come to you: This is the hardest concept to master. Whether it is a point or a career you cannot force things to happen.

* ...trying to force things will increase the resistance. Trying to force a door down is tiring and stressful.

* People do change all the time: I hate the belief that people don't change.

* Everything is perception of actions... Perceptions change -so how you are perceived can be changed by different actions.

* Happiness is gratitude: If you are grateful for who you are and what you have then you are happy. Gratitude for your life is your perception of it, a choice.

* Trust in yourself is gained by knowing you will do what needs to be done.

* Feeling sorry for yourself is a sackable offence... Moving on after each disappointment is the key to getting stronger. Learn and move on without negative residue, which further drains confidence.

(end)
 
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Seems to me there is seemingly contradictory advice around on how to heal. On the one hand, as expressed here: you can't just wait for it to happen, you must do the inner work and be focused on it; on the other hand, the idea (which I've seen frequently on this forum as well) that if you do the inner work but then just try to get on with your life without trying too hard to heal, it will 'just happen' without your realising it. Easy to see these two as mutually exclusive, but I think what it amounts to is that you do the difficult emotional work without focusing too much on healing from the actual symptoms. That makes sense to me, but it seems that it's a difficult and subtle path to walk.
 
Thanks for reading and commenting on the conundrum you pointed out. LRP is a sports psychology book I just finished reading so when David Sammel talks about "getting better" he is speaking about better from an athletic performance perspective, not from TMS perspective. But, I found the book to have many ideas that were complementary and the same as Dr. Sarno's ideas--psychology is psychology.

I think the conundrum of the getting better, as Dr. Sarno mentions, may never be fully explained by "modern science" due to the complexities of all that gray matter between the ears and perhaps Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald had in right in their "ah sweet mystery of life" answer:

 
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Ah, so if we're talking about 'getting better' from an athletic performance point of view, I can understand the emphasis here. Thanks for clarifying.

It (the healing from TMS point of view) does seem a bit Zen, doesn't it? You have to want to heal so you need to try, but if you try too hard, it's self-defeating. Trying without trying, or something like that. :-)

Love the clip - thanks!
 
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