An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March / April 2024 www.military.ie/magazine 16 | PERFORMING TO YOUR BEST BY LT (RDF) COLM DOODY PHD, BA., TRAINEE CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST QUEENS UNIVERSITY BELFAST AND SPECIAL STAFF OFFICER, OFFICE OF THE DEFENCE FORCES ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST J1 TWITTER: @COLMDOODY EMAIL: DRDOODYPSYCHOLOGY@GMAIL.COM I f you've gotten past the title and are currently reading this, you're probably someone who's interested in getting that couple of extra percent, that extra edge: be it on the football field, in work or in life in general. My aim here is to equip you with some applied tools to help with effective goal setting, breaking the "fear cycle" and how to manage negative, self-defeating thoughts which plague us all from time to time. Before going any further I'd recommend going back to a previous article I wrote on practical resilience skills in the Jan/Feb '24 issue of An Cosantóir. Those skills will complement the ones I'll be introducing below! GET SMART WITH YOUR GOALS! If you're looking to improve, it's typically a good idea to have a realistic, non-emotive, objective assessment of what your current level of ability is now. As uncomfortable as an experience as it may be, a good place to start is to ask your manager (work or sports depending on your area you'd like to improve in), or a trusted teammate for an honest assessment of your strengths and weakness. This will give you a pretty clear picture of what's going well and what needs work. You're now equipped to develop some SMART goals to hone your strengths and bullet-proof your weaknesses. What does SMART stand for and how can we use the acronym to create effective, realistic goals? S-Specific, be as specific as possible with your goals. We want to avoid vague, undefined goals. If you're weak at shooting for points, you could set a specific goal of 5 minutes of kicking balls over the bar once per week. M- Measurable, your goal (and the progress towards it) must be measurable, for example if your goal is to run a sub- 45-minute 10km in a race in May, you could measure your best 10k time now maybe again at regular intervals until the race to chart progress. The benefit of measureable goals is that we can see progress over time or make changes if we aren't on the right track. A- Attainable and R- realistic. As a jaded junior level footballer it is neither attainable nor realistic for me to set a SMART goal of playing intercountry football but an attainable and realistic goal for me might be to focus this year on moving from the 2nds team in the club up to the senior panel. T-Time bound. We need to carefully set time constraints around our goals to make sure we give ourselves the best chance of achieving them. Referring back to the 10km PB example, if the goal is set without a defined period of time there is a greater risk that we may start to falter in our training e.g., "I don't have time, I'm too busy". Having a time limited specific goal helps us keep our goals to the fore. So, in summary, get SMART with your goals! Managing Fear In sporting performance and indeed life in general, success or failure is often mediated by how well we can handle unexpected situations, keep our calm and manage our anxieties (however they manifest for us). "Facing our fears" is an idea we are all familiar with but how can we harness the "Fear/avoidance" cycle and use it to build our resilience for life challenges, be they on the pitch or in the waiting room before an important interview? To start, I want you to visualise a time in your life where you avoided something stressful, maybe you came up with an excuse which got you out of a presentation, or you managed to "delegate" a daunting task to someone else. When we are faced with scary situations our stress level shoots up to a point where we may feel overwhelmed and to escape that PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL INSIGHTS PERFORMING IN SPORTS, WORK AND LIFE Performance Psychology is often used in high performance team enviroments

• Cover