Practicing Your Way To Better Performance

n "The Carolina Way" Coach Dean Smith, retired coach of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill basketball team, talks about the value of practice in creating better game time performance in his athletes. Running the plays over and over in just about every situation and in near game conditions prepared his team for the time when the game was on and the fans were watching, judging the results.

I have always found it interesting that people in the professions talk about their "practice". Physicians, attorneys, consultants, counselors all talk about their practice! Wouldn't you rather go to someone that knows what they are doing instead of practicing on you? Of course the meaning has more to do with the practical application of a profession than role playing or learning in a safe environment. However, doesn't practicing make sense?

The point of practicing is to lock in the behaviors that you want and to lock out the behaviors that limit your effectiveness. It becomes a matter of building the right habits, the right attitudes, which lead to achievement and improved results.

The question becomes then, how many times in your career and your life do you get the opportunity to practice? In the biggest game of all, the game of life, do you ever take time out to practice?

Here are a few simple ideas that will lead to changing behaviors for better performance in the areas that are important to you:

• Take time out to refresh your skills and knowledge. Most professions have continuing education requirements to maintain licenses or certification. Most of us don't have certification or recertification mandated, but we can all benefit from a fresh look at what we do. Take a look at your roles, both personally and professionally, and determine where you need to build your skills. Then do something about it! Maybe it is committing to an annual training class on your particular industry or position. It could be hiring a coach, taking parenting classes or going to a marriage retreat.
• Take time out to refresh your attitude. Are you full, but unfulfilled? Is the pace of your life so hectic that some days are an endless stream of stuff that fills it up without filling you up? Your behaviors are directly influenced by your attitudes, so if your attitude is not good, your behaviors will get in the way of getting you where you want to go. So, where is it you want to go? What do you want to do? What are the things you want to accomplish? What behaviors would you like to change? Are your activities getting you there? Read. Engage in a new hobby, or re-engage in one long forgotten. Dust off your dreams and dare to put them to use.
• Take time out to reflect. When we meditate, pray or just plain contemplate the vastness of the universe, we are taking time to visualize situations in our life and work. Visualization is a particularly powerful tool to practice our work or life roles. Take the time to see what you will do in a particular situation, what you hear around you and what you feel.

Take the time to practice your work and life roles. The amount of time that you take will yield tremendous gains in the most important game you will ever play—your life!

Do you wonder if your behaviors are helping or hurting you?

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What I hear I forget,
What I see I remember,
What I do I understand.

Confucius, 451 BC