When agility competitors think about mindset, they seem to think first about their mental game in competition — their ability to perform under pressure and achieve competitive success. While these are among the benefits a mindset practice has to offer, they’re far from a comprehensive list.
Here are three things my mindset practice has given me that have nothing to do with competitive success:
The ability to meet my own standards for ethical participation in a competitive sport involving an animal. I only have such massive feelings about this because I grew up with a temper I couldn’t control and did things to my horses I regret. It is critically important to me that my dogs never suffer such things at my hands, and working on my mindset over years is what gives me confidence they won’t.
The ability to keep my passion for agility light enough to carry. I let go of my passion for horsemanship at age 31 and only then realized how impossibly heavy it had become. This happens when you pick up things like interpersonal drama, self-doubt, comparison to others, frustration, pressure, and burnout without knowing how to put them down. Mindset work taught me how to allow bitter things to flow through my experience, leaving no trace or weight behind.
The ability to pursue my goals for the fun of it. In the last four years I realized how much of what I’ve done in life was driven by a need to prove something or fix myself. It’s DIFFICULT to be patient and resilient when you make the stakes so damn high. This is regular work in my mindset practice — I am enough and I have enough (you too, by the way) — and it’s fundamentally changed the quality of the actions I take and the results I create.
To be honest I haven’t spent much time in my mindset practice working specifically on competing under pressure, but that ability has been a notable by-product of the ones I listed above. I suppose that’s why competitive success is one of the last things that comes to mind when I think about the benefits of a mindset practice. It’s so clear to me the GOLD is in the process and the person I’ve become.
Ultimately, this is how I wish to pursue competitive success. From a rock solid foundation of knowing it’s the last thing I need.
