Hello, and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents who are out there looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is a unique tool in your performance tool belt, and I'm your host, Dave Diggle. In this episode 60, we're going to look at recognising your performance patterns, and knowing our patterns and what we choose to do with them influences our performance, and so therefore our outcomes. Humans are hardwired to see patterns, to make connexions and meanings to those patterns that we think that we see. Those patterns could be shapes, how many times we've seen animals or cars or faces in clouds, in trees, in grass, even in pieces of toast. We see patterns because it's important to us to recognise those patterns. We even wear certain outfits fits might wear our lucky T-shirt because we think we see a pattern. When we wear it, our team wins. When we wear our certain socks, our certain undies, we win. So patterns are an important part of who we are and the decisions and choices we make going forward.
So let me give you a really brief example. I've got some children, obviously three of them, and they're all different ages at school. One of the parents groups at my youngest daughter's school, there was a comment that was made once. It was, Every time we turn up to pick up a kid, it's raining. Now, if we looked at logistics and we looked at statistics, we'd probably find the vast majority of the time living here in Australia, it doesn't rain. However, somebody had made the connexion that it had rained a couple of times, and they'd seen a pattern that every day at three o'clock when they pick up the kids from school, it was raining. It's now become almost a belief grief, a reality in people's minds that every single day, it's going to rain at three o'clock. Does it actually rain at three o'clock, or is it just a pattern that we think we see? Why is that important? What's that got to do with us as athletes? And put in our performance? This pattern recognition is a throwback from our early evolutionary days, where we needed to recognise friend or foe over mum leaning over us to give us a kiss when we was a little kid, as opposed to a lying about to lean over and eat you.
So pattern recognition has become an important part of survival and a part of our hardwired mental ability and cognitive ability to recognise key significant patterns, what they work for us and what they don't work for us. This is called paradoleia, the ability to see or recognise faces, and who's who in the zoo or on the Savannah. So this paredolia is our inbuilt evolutionary learning process. If you've had children or you've ever been around children or you've ever been a child, you'll know that you recognise people's faces first. Often, I know I find myself doing this, I know you from somewhere. I can recognise your face, and sometimes it takes a little bit of time to put a name to that face or a location to that face. You just know you know them. Being able to recognise these significant patterns has been an integral part of our evolution. As we grow, however, and our language skills develop, and our pattern recognition becomes less important to us. Hence that, I don't actually remember your name, but I can talk to you and ask you, Where do I know you from? So that pattern recognition isn't so much about recognising the face and not being eaten by the lying anymore.
It's just a throwback and a part of our human behaviour. And as it is less important to us, and we take a back seat, so we start to make connexion to other random, what we see as patterns. And when we see a pattern and we have an event that occurs and we look for meaning around that event. So if we've had a really good outcome in something, we'll look for patterns, what caused that outcome. Or if we have a really negative outcome, we'll look for patterns around that to try and justify and control that negative outcome. The reality of are those patterns real or are those patterns not real is what we're going to talk about today, and that's how it has a great influence over what we do as athletes and what we choose not to do. Because that facial recognition process isn't as critical these days as it used to be, because, to be quite honest, not many of us get eaten by the lines anymore, that critical early warning system doesn't trigger the call to action as quickly or as accurately as it used to have to. This is why as athletes, the train often needs to crash before we make any significant changes to the way that we approach things.
We don't take in the information and make connexion to any significant patterns as effectively as we could do or as we used to do, because today we're in this mode of keep going forward, keep doing what we do. Then when something goes critically wrong, say we lose a competition, we don't perform the way we want to perform, or we go out there and we completely bomb out. Then we turn and go, Oh, I need to do something different. Is that the best use of our approach, our time, our effort, even our finances? Probably not. So pattern recognition can be a critical tool to allow us to recognise what are efficient patterns and performance patterns, and what are detrimental patterns and detrimental performance patterns. If we can get in there early and recognise what's working so we can continue to do it, or what's not working, we can actually rectify it, that's going to have a huge influence on our outcomes. Humans have a bunch of patterns and triggers. The reality is we tend to follow a similar pattern to most things that we do, whether it be in training, whether it be in competition, whether it be with our friends, in school or at work.
Whatever we tend to do tends to follow a very similar pattern. Humans are quite lazy or efficient, depending on which way you look at it that way. If our patterns or our traits of patterns are inefficient, then the likelihood is we're going to make and continue to make mistakes unless we alter that. If our patterns are incredibly efficient and give us the best possible outcome majority of time, when the reality is we're more likely to be successful at what we do more frequently. We set up a path, which is a pattern, and we trigger that pattern based on the actions that we take Our ability to recognise and action the right pattern, or adjust or correct the wrong pattern, is as critical to our success as the skills that we learn or the processes that we do to become that athlete. So these triggers are the way that we compete, the way that we deal with success, the way that we deal with failure, the way we deal with our fears, can all have a inbuilt, hard, learned process or pattern that we've done in the past. I'm often called in to work with athletes who have deep patterns of fear.
They'll go to do something, they might be a fear of competition, it might be a fear of failure, it might be a fear of success, it It might be a fear of failure. It might be a fear of success. It might be a more innate fear of a specific skill. Or as I was a gymnast, and some of my clients are gymnasts, a fear of going backwards. So some of these core fears have a pattern associated to them. What we can do is learn to do that pattern and recognise that pattern before it gets to the stage of inability, where it stops us doing what we want to do and can do. Recognising patterns and our performance patterns and Our success patterns are critical to our ability to become successful athletes and champions at what we do. Like I said, you can often adjust at what point you adjust or what point you recognise that pattern influences the way that we have our outcomes. Do you see the wobbly wheels on the train before it gets to the stage of the train crashing and you having to make a change? The earlier you can recognise those wobbly wheels and correct them, or earlier you can recognise those really straight, true-lined wheels and they're going really well and push them, will have a huge influence on the outcomes that we have.
Being able to get in there and make critical changes and micromanage those changes on a really regular basis becomes an important part of performance success. You've heard me talk about before, the Holy Grail of any athlete is consistency. There's no point in going winning because then you just place a huge amount of pressure on yourself to perform that way again. If you don't know how you perform that way, then the likelihood is you're going to be unsuccessful because you won't be able to step up and do it again, and you won't know what made that happen. So patterns are incredibly important and also has a huge influence on our emotions. If we know what we do, then we're comfortable and confident in doing that again. If we don't know what we do, then we end up becoming really anxious about how do I perform that way again. So consistency relies on our ability to see, replicate, and own our patterns. Let me give you an example of how I see this. In the 1999 movie, sixth Sense, with Bruce Willis, a young boy, played by Haley Joe Osmet, had a gift.
I see dead people.
For me, it's fortunate for me, I don't see dead people. However, I do see particular patterns, and I pay great attention to those patterns, the cause of those patterns and the outcome of those patterns. When I turn up and I meet an athlete for the first time and we go through our assessment process, what I'm looking for is performance patterns. What are the success patterns? And what are the failure patterns of that athlete? What are the way that they think, the way that they believe, the way that their emotions are That stimulated. There's all patterns associated to those. So as an athlete, what are your success patterns? Do you know what you do to become successful? Now, you might think generically, Yeah, I need to train hard. I need to learn my skills. I need to go and perform them. That's very generic. If I ask you to replicate that each and every time in an accurate format, could you do that? With that generosism, probably not. What if I asked you about your failure patterns? In those times that you've gone out and you've not been able to perform, do you know the pattern that you followed to get to that outcome?
Because like I said, we're a bunch of patterns and triggers. If you're having a bad day, there's a pattern involved in that. If you're having a good day, there's a pattern involved in that. If you don't recognise those patterns, you can't control those patterns. If you can't control those patterns, you can't have that consistency or that level consistency. So recognition of patterns are important to me in the role as a mind coach and should be incredibly important to you in your role as a performing athlete. And not necessarily recognising, Well, when I wear pink socks, my team wins. It's all about the real cause and effect process. What do you do to cause the outcome or what are you at an effect of something else that goes on around you. What actions that I take cause the outcome? And what actions do I take that affect the outcome? Let me ask you a question at this point. When you, as an athlete, begin your prep towards an event, how much focus do you put on your last competition, your last preparation, the last time that you went or your competitors went to that venue? And are you looking for the correct patterns?
And are you gauging them on outcome or on process? So let me just quantify that. Sometimes when an athlete will go, I'm going back to this event and this event venue where I was last time, and That didn't go well for me. So already we're starting to recognise and follow a failed pattern. Or if you look at an event and you go, Right, last time I was here, I won. I did an awesome job. Are you looking at the outcome? Or are you looking at how you got to that outcome? Because the pattern is what will give you a replicated outcome, not the outcome itself. That's the end of the journey. How you get there is the controlled mechanism, the pattern. Do you know specifically what you did to get to that point? What actions you took, what thoughts you had, what information that you needed, what language you used, what mindset you had? I said We did at the start of this, recognising your performance patterns and how that has an influence over our mindset and thus our outcomes. Knowing our patterns have a huge influence over our mindset. That is a really deep and important statement, and something as an athlete, you need to be very aware of.
You know that going into your event, whether it be a state competition, whether it be an international national competition, whether it be a World's or an Olympics, your mindset has a huge influence over how you perform and thus your outcome. Recognising your performance patterns, what you need to do, what you need to take control of, is critical to giving you that mindset. So for those of you who've been to my trainings before or had one-on-one coaching with me or been to some of my clinics or just listen to these podcasts, I talk a lot about ants and their ant paths. Why is this significant when we talk about performance? Because if you think about what ants do as a colony, they'll find a perfect path between their home and their food supply. They'll lay that pheromone path and they'll follow it irrespective of what goes on. If you've ever walked through the forest or the jungle and you've looked at these line of ants that diligently follow that most efficient and effective path for them, as a performer, that's what we want to do. We want to set our objective between where we are and where we want to go, the most efficient and effective way that works for us.
We want to think like that ant. Now, when something goes wrong and it blocks that perfect path for the ant between their nest and the food, or between where we are now and where we want to be as an athlete, we respond in one of three ways, and we can look again to the ants to realise which camp do we fall in. Some of those ants, once it gets cut off, will revert all the way back to their home base, back to the nest, and send out those scout ants again and say, Right, that path doesn't work anymore. Go and find me another one. I like that to an athlete going, Well, this didn't work. Go back to the coach and say, Right, that didn't work, coach. What do we do now? Let's find another path to follow. Some of those ants will just scurry around and look lost. So they'll be the ants that will just fumble around for a long period of time until it fades off and they lose their direction. Again, as an athlete, are you the person that when things don't go right, you just fumble around for a period of time and you know what?
It is what it is. It happened. It wasn't my fault. This happened, that happened. You know what? Maybe next year. Or are you the ant that says, what's the one or two things I need to do to get round this obstacle and get back on my pattern? Because I know this pattern works. I know be going between here and there. This is the most efficient and effective way of me getting there. Something has blocked my path. I don't want to go back and redo it. I don't want to just fumble around for the rest of the season. I need to take an action to get round this, get back on track, and keep moving. So there's an inherent trust in that pattern. You know what calls that pattern, you know how to control that pattern, and you know what that pattern is going to give you. This trust, this in-depth trust in that, is critical for success. In order to be successful, in order to believe in that pattern, you've got to recognise that pattern. And that is what we're talking about today. What patterns do you do for success? How do you replicate those?
What patterns do you do in the past that have given you a poorer outcome? And how do you change those? Becoming the ant and recognising path and patterns, what you need to do to own and control them is critical. Within my roles as a mind coach, it's the first thing I look for. When I'm sitting in front of an athlete and we're talking about When they were successful, when they wasn't successful, what's going on in their world right now, both in their training, in their performances, in their world, both personal and professional, we're looking for patterns. Once we When we find those patterns, we look for what triggers those patterns. Is it a belief system? Is it a behavioural pattern? Is it a reaction to something outside of your control? Does something happen and you react to that? Looking for that trigger to that pattern gives you a sense of control. When you don't know the pattern, you don't know the trigger, you have no control over your outcomes. It's like the dodging cars at the fairground. Something hits you, you end up somewhere else. You You don't necessarily know where you're going, and you don't have control over where you're going.
You just end up there. And that's not productive for us as athletes. So recognising patterns, the importance of patterns, why we are hardwired to look for patterns, and the meanings that we give those patterns are important skill sets for us as athletes to recognise, control, and own. So how do we do that? Before we finish up on this podcast, I They want to give you a set of skills that you can utilise to better control those patterns. Now, again, if those of you have been here before, you'll know I talk a lot about calibration. And what I mean by calibration is being able to assess efficiently, effectively, and consistently what you're doing by having a set of processes that allows you to look at what you're doing and go, Is this working for me or is this not working for me? What areas of this is working? What areas of this is not working? Then what do I need to do to alter or replicate? There's a couple of key things we can do. We need to have that frequent calibration system. That could be journaling, that could be unpacking, repacking. That's where you sit down with somebody and go, Right, this happened, and this is what I'm going to do different.
That's what worked well, what didn't work, what would I do different? That process that we talk about, the language we have with ourselves, that shifts our focus from the broken to the replicable to then the growth mindset. Now, my philosophy on journaling or on calibration, it should be a daily or at least weekly. So you can micromanage any wobbles that appear on those rails as soon as they appear. Or you can look at and say, Wow, things are going really, really well. I can apply the pressure to get a better outcome to force this process along the path of efficiency. So calibration is critical and how we calibrate having a replicable system that works for you. And again, we talk about downloading and having a smart mind journal. So if you go to smartmind. Com. Au or you go to braininthegame. Com. Au, there's a button on both those websites that allow you to download the templates for journaling and all the other things that we cover on Brain in the Game. We want to have a focus on fact, not fiction. So that calls an effect and what is reality and what's not reality.
We We want to collect data. The data needs to be accurate. So if you were to do anything in life and you were going a false data, the likelihood is you'll get a false outcome. We want to make sure that we're assessing the pattern based on the pattern, not on our emotions. This is why when I said to you, When you think about the last time that you competed, are you looking at the end step and saying, Wow, that worked. I loved it. It was awesome. And then replicating that emotion or are you replicating the system that gave you the outcome. The flip side of that is if you didn't have a great outcome at the last event, for whatever reason, is that stopping you replicate a really successful plan, and maybe the application wasn't as diligent as it could be, or maybe there's something outside of your control. If you competed in a certain way and should have given you the outcome you wanted, but something came along and changed that, is the fault in the pattern or is the fault in the application? As an athlete, that's a really important and very interesting place to start to think from.
Does Does the outcome represent the pattern or the system I applied to get there? Because as athletes, we often look at, Well, success is when I win. However, success isn't always when you win. Sometimes you win and you don't have any control over that winning. There's a very famous speed skater here in Australia who won an Olympic gold because everyone else fell over. Does that mean what he he done to become Olympic champion was the right thing, or was it caused by somebody else's mistakes? If he, again, now went to try and replicate that outcome, the likelihood is he wouldn't be able to replicate the outcome because it wasn't based on His system is based on somebody else's failed system. When we look at outcome, we look at end-step success or failure, that shouldn't really be the only gauge or the only calibration on how we got there. Think about that as an athlete. Your systems you apply to get your outcomes, are they outcome-driven or success-driven? We want to recognise and know that our tipping point, when to push and when to change. I said you went, When the wheels are wobbly, at what point do you change?
When you know, When I get to this wobble, I need to do something different. Or, It's okay to have a little wobble as long as I stay true to my path. Also, when things are going really, really well, do I stay at the same intensity, or does that give me the opportunity to push and maybe accelerate my process and progress? Understanding what's working for you, why it's working, what you're doing to cause that, can allow you to increase the outcome or increase the pressure to get a better outcome. So again, knowing when to push and when to change becomes critical. What tipping point does That should be part and parcel of your strategy, of your patterns. Knowing when to be internally and when to be externally referenced. Now, again, if you've listened to some of my podcast, we've talked about internal versus external references. And an The external referenced person is someone who goes, I'm good at this. I know I'm good. I don't need anybody to tell me what to do. I know what to do. The external person is, What do you think I should do next? How do you think I went here?
Do you think that's right? We're all somewhere on that scale. Some of us are more internally, some of us are more externally referenced. When we're looking for data collection, we want to gauge off both. We want to know that, Yep, that's my gauge on this. I think we're doing the right thing, or I think this is not working. And always remember, everything that we see through our own eyes has a hint of emotion associated to that. So how our perspective on things is gauged and influenced by our emotions. When we get external information, so whether we go to a coach or we go to a specialist or we look at video with somebody else, what we're doing is getting external information. Again, that's going to have part of somebody else's emotion associated to that. As an athlete, we need to be able to take that emotion out and look at the data for what it is. Is that the right pattern for me? What they're giving me as information, does that influence the choices in my patterns that I choose to apply? So making sure we have a good balance between that internal referencing and that external referencing.
Making the input of data as good as it could possibly be. We want to make sure with that, we put the right team around us. So when you're collecting your team or your entourage around you, look for key people. Some people are going to challenge you. You might need that in your team. You need somebody who's going to turn and say, Hey, I know you're the champion here. However, have you thought about this? Or you might need somebody else in your team who goes, You know what champ, that was a bad decision. However, we're here to support you. Great. Let's keep doing what we're doing and we'll change this part and that part. So making sure you haven't got just conflict or just support. You've got a good balance in your team is critical. Some people are going to be more emotional supporters. Some people are going to be more technical supporters. When you think about your entourage, you need to think about balance. Again, on those two websites, you can download the Entourage Processing Template. The last thing I'll say to you is patterns can make or break your career. If you choose a poor pattern and then you choose to replicate those poor patterns, the likelihood of you being successful is heavily diminished.
If you choose the right patterns and then you choose to apply and own and control those patterns, your likelihood of success increases. Those patterns need to be recognised. Are they real and they're real data, or are they emotional and imagined data? Like the socks, do you put the socks on and your team wins? Or did you just see a pattern that when you had those pink socks on, they Hope you got a lot from today's podcast. It's a lot of information for you as an athlete. It's a lot of control you can gain over your outcomes by looking for the key behavioural patterns. Until the next time. Enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle, and I'm the mind coach.
