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The once invincible athlete Tigers Woods has his lost belief on both a professional and personal level.

Currently ranked 7th, while this is a truly awesome effort, for someone who was number 1 for 11 years, only missing out in 2004, one can hypothesise what lead to the current situation. Ultimately it’s all about your belief system.

Tiger’s belief system was constantly reinforced with daily affirmations made 3 times per day:

I will my own destiny
I believe in me
I smile at obstacles
I am firm in my resolve
I fufill my resolutions powerfully
My strength is great
I stick to it easily, naturally
My will moves mountains

So with 623 weeks at number one and Tiger’s nearest rival, Greg Norman at under half with 331 weeks, what went wrong?
Well Tigers extremely risky behavior was of a person who believed no matter what they did, they would succeed, even if this was of an unacceptable nature.

Tigers affirmation’s gave an indication of his resolve, that no matter what the situation, he cannot be beaten. Think about a time in your life when everything you did was perfect, no matter what you did, I liken it to playing a game of billiards. There have been times when no matter how I held the pool cue, the ball always went in. However once you lose your confidence, the situation can quickly change and the negative thoughts and self belief quickly spirals out of control.

Once you lose your belief, you lose that road map that shows you the way to your goals, it can be difficult to get back on the path.
At some point we all confront this situation, while some can prevail above the uncertainty, some never quite recover.

Your goal may be weight loss but once you lose that belief in achieving the goal, you can quickly lose your way. If you have changed your belief system, you need to change your mind set.

When people say it’s too difficult to quit smoking, I often wonder whether the person is consciously and more importantly unconsciously ready to take the next step. After talking to the owner of a local restaurant, she decided to quit smoking after 25 years of smoking one packet a day.

So the restaurant owner, lets call her “H” commented that the first 24 hours were extremely difficult with the regular withdrawal symptoms being experienced however once the discomfort passed she managed quite comfortably to maintain being smoke free. Whenever we set ourselves goals, be it giving up cigarettes or weight loss, we really need to be happy within our own life both emotionally and physically to undertake the change.

People trying to achieve the goals with everything in life is moving in the right direction, life is good, they find it easy, nothing is too hard and everything is very positive and bright. However once the situation around and the person is stressed, suffering from anxiety or the pressures of life, suddenly achieving the goal is impossible. Suddenly everything becomes too difficult, too hard and the energy and time involved to achieve a specific goal becomes unattainable.

The amazing thing is that since quitting smoking, H is looking fantastic and has become more physically active, she sold her motorbike and purchased a bicycle that she commutes with up to 30km per day. H looks a lot healthier and her complexion is noticeably improved with more vibrancy and energy.

The single most important factor in achieving this goal was that H was ready and everything in her life was aligned in a more positive light.

But often we will set goals for the wrong reason, in many cases people make peacemaking due to convenience their partner pressure from friends and family while really the person accepts the risk of cancer and is perfectly happy to continue knowing the risks.

So when you are really at a conscious/subconscious level then anything is possible

With only the draw one week earlier, the combination of physiological and the psychological preparation helped Collingwood very convincingly win the grand final.

The belief and the confidence in themselves gave them the mental armory to crush St Kilda. The draw only a week early indicated that both teams were fairly evenly matched, ultimately it came down to the their belief system.

“We’ve got a very young group and they had the belief they could go all the way”

With the help of an AIS Professor Allan Hahn, using medical based recovery techniques and with their sports science director David Buttifant the players were subjected to ice baths and recovery sessions in the water.

Ultimately it came down to eliminating any doubt or hesitation that they would lose, that every member of the team could visualise the win.

With St Kilda, a similar situation happened last week when they were behind but they had the belief they they could win the Grand Final however only a week later history wasn’t to repeat itself as Collingwood maintained there mental and physical advantage over St Kilda.

Some players had no confidence in their kicking while their defence fell apart.

So not matter where you are at whether part of an elite sports teams or someone trying to achieve their weight loss goals, ultimately it comes down to your belief system for success.

After last weekends AVL grand final draw, it’s going to psychologically challenging for both teams to maintain the energy and belief that they can win after the anti climax of a draw.

While both teams will be physically at their peak, granted with some injuries and fatigued muscles, the real challenge will be to have the mental strength to carry through with the game and win.

With the game last Saturday, even though St Kilda were behind in points, they made a comeback to equal the score as opposed to conceding defeat and giving up.

The real question is if one team takes an early lead, whether the other team will have the emotional energy and belief system to carry on.

Mentally they had pictured what was going to happen after the Grand Final, the ceremony if they won, the relief and the overwhelming feeling of success, the time away with their partner of family and achievement in reaching this awesome goal.

However after all the steps to achieve the goal were accomplished, it has lead to a need to re-evaluate their goals and create another step in the process.

It would be similar to what a person may go through say in a cycling event or marathon whereby they have miscalculated the finish line and focused entirely on finishing the race only to find out that they had another kilometer to go.

Mentally they would be devastated as they had given everything both mentally and physically to reach the destination only to find that the end point had moved or the goal posts had moved:))

After being at sea for 210 days, Jessica Watson miscalculated the distance to get the world record of 21,600 nautical but she continued on with the most treacherous seas experienced in the last leg of her journey.

So it will be interesting to see how the teams go with this psychologically challenging predicament.

While enjoying a relaxed ride (Bicycle) in Geelong to check out the UCI course, we cruised over to East Geelong to meet a friend who rode over from Arthur’s Seat on the Mornington Peninsula.

After a bit of miscommunication as to the meeting point and a few phone calls later, we suddenly realised that we only had 45 minutes to get to Queenscliff where the ferry terminal was located.
So we hand this micro goal of covering 29kms in 45 minutes, no problems if you were driving there in a car.

Given it was 30 odd kilometers we new it was going to be close to get to the ferry on time.

So what was going to be a nice gentle ride ended being a breathe gasping smash feast with all 3 of us taking turns at being at the front while the other 2 riders formed an echelon behind.

The point is that we never gave up, even when there was only 15 minutes left and it seemed unlikely that we would get there in time, we pushed through. Not that this was a life or death scenario but we were committed and all three of us had the belief that we will just make it on time.

Well with aching legs and fatigue as we had not sufficiently warmed up, so going hard from the very beginning was always going to be tough.

Well we just made it as the ferry was about to raise the vehicle loading ramp, so in the end we covered 29km in 46 minutes, so we were lucky that our watch was 1 minute fast.

How often do you have a goal or something that you want to achieve but it’s too hard, can’t be bothered or the likelyhood of success is low so it’s easier to give up than continue.

Everyday we are presented with situations or micro goals that we have created only to give up.

Keep focused and you we enjoy the rewards.