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(This
blog was originally posted on February 9, 2014)
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| Gina Miles, 2008 Olympic Silver medalist (individual) Photo by Sara Fogan |
To
get really good at something, you must often learn and practice other skills
that will complement and improve your primary vocation or avocation. We
typically hear and use the term “cross-training” to describe this philosophy in
a sports or athletic context. For example, many professional football players
lift weights to increase strength, run to improve endurance and even take
ballet and/or gymnastics to learn how to jump and tumble in a safe way. Gina Miles, an equestrian who won a silver medal in eventing (“combined training”)
at the 2008 Olympics, must focus on three discrete equestrian
disciplines—dressage, cross-country and show jumping—as part of their training
and competitive repertoire.
Even
if you are not a professional athlete, you can still apply this philosophy of
learning new and related skills to improve your “performance” at work. If you
are a project manager or supervisor at work, you probably have to participate
in specialized workshops and attend conferences to learn, master and maintain
the skills you will need to do your current job. A reporter must maintain a
standard of writing and communicating to the reading/viewing audience, in
addition to keeping up with current events and research skills to produce an
accurate report.
The
great thing about cross-training in these contexts is that learning and
mastering new skills is a great opportunity to increase your self-confidence
and self-esteem. The more skills you possess, the better equipped you will be
to apply these abilities to achieve goals/solve problems in any area of your
life. Your conscious mind possesses the logic, reasoning, decision-making and
will-power to learn those new skills; your subconscious mind internalizes this
information in that will enable the conscious mind to apply the skills and
succeed in your new goal. Best of all, the excitement and pride you feel when
you master these new skills creates a new, powerful “known” message in your
subconscious mind: I can do this, too!
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in
Southern California. She graduated with honors from the
Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about
Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
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