If you are interested in high performance, the power of the mind and like to be entertained, then I hope you managed to watch some of the tennis at Wimbledon. It was amazing to watch, highly entertaining and had me on the edge of my seat, at times. With the absence of any football on tv and with my wife working strange shifts, I found myself with time on my hands. Normally, I wouldn’t bother too much with the tennis and maybe just watch the finals of the men’s and women’s event, but this time I watched a few ‘battles’.
If you could bottle the motivation, determination and passion, to share with others, you’d be rich beyond belief. Obviously, skill and ability did also come into show, but it wasn’t always the person with the most skill that won. You could see people being mentally broken by another players determination and hard work. The look in the eyes, the behaviour on court and a desperate search for support from the crowd, was so obvious when failure was close by.
On the other side, you could see the confidence in a players face and body language to support their ‘steely’ approach to every point. Yesterday Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz were in the men’s singles final and what a match that was. One game took over 25 minutes to settle and I was glued to the tv, hoping it went to 5 sets. It didn’t disappoint.
All of these emotions play out in a matter of hours, elation, heartache and anger. It must feel easy to give up, at times, to stop trying and hold your tennis racket up in defeat, but neither of them stopped and the match took 4 1/2 hours to establish a winner.
I can imagine both Novak and Carlos are resting today and won’t go near a tennis court or do any exercise. It is time for them to recover, regroup before deciding what’s next. Today, the experience will be different for them both. I can imagine Carlos is feeling high and thinking about his next tournament and, maybe, Novak is contemplating retirement, who knows. The thing is they are both recovering today and the rest of this week, I’d imagine.
When we have a tough day at work, that drains us of all our energy, is emotional and really stressful, what do we do the next day? We go back to work!
We don’t take time out, have a massage, ice bath, replenish our bodies with good quality food and repair. We go again, and again and the fatigue and stress builds up until we get a warning sign! We get ill, agitated, impatient, start missing deadlines, don’t respond to our emails, let work build up and we then operate at a reduced level managing our time the best we can. We have that broken look in our eyes, no sparkle, our bodies are telling everyone there is something wrong, but we march on.
If you have ever looked behind the scenes at a high performing team, in sport or business, as an individual or a team, there is always a strategy for recovery and regeneration, some respite to rebuild our energy and our reserves back up. Sometimes this is missing, so we need to take responsibility for it ourselves.
A few tips that may help:
- Self awareness is the starting point – notice the signs early
- Take action – do something that helps you recover
- Get support – speak up, ask for help
- Look out for signs in others – notice subtle changes
- Help them take action by reducing the load or increasing the support
- Focus on balance – life should be balanced with other things, so set some goals for you
Can’t wait for the ladies world cup to start on Thursday, I think it will be another example of high performing teams and individuals maximising their potential, whilst looking after each other