Leave the Judging to the Judges

Leave the Judging to the Judges 

Yesterday we had the honor of spending some time with a local competition dance team and had an information session with the parents of the dancers. Dance competition is similar to pageantry because it is a subjective grading sport. So the questions the parents had regarding the mental game for dance are very similar to questions I have been asked by pageant parents over the past several years.  I'll cover two of them quickly today.

Comparing Self to Others: In pageantry as well as dance or any other sport where you are graded on your individual ability there is a chance you will be tempted to compare yourself to the competition. Ask yourself this question: Who is given the job of judging this competition? Judges have a job to do - don't do it for them. Comparing yourself to the competition is not your job! Your job is to execute what you have learned. Your job is to HAVE FUN! Your job is to enjoy the process of showing your skills - the skills you have trained so hard to master. Your job is never to judge the other participants. That job belongs solely to the judge.  

See, comparing yourself to someone else takes the focus off of you and onto something you cannot control. You have no control over what another person does or how well they prepare or even if the judges like someone else better. Challenge yourself to focus ONLY on what you can control. 

Negative Talk After Performance: The owner of the studio mentioned that sometimes dancers will come off stage and talk about how terrible they did even if they did well, how can the parents and instructors help them focus on the positive?  Quick answer is to change the way you talk to them. Train your children and students to be solution based thinkers. Train them to always focus first on what went well by asking specific questions. What did you like? What was fun? What did you learn? Do not get caught up in their self-pity over a poor performance or allow them to elaborate in detail on how bad they did instead teach them to think differently by leading the conversation in a positive direction.

These are the type of questions we cover in our training in detail. We help our clients to change the way they view their environment and most importantly how they talk to themselves. The quality of your performance does not solely depend on how well you train. Your training only covers 1/3 of the mental processes nessecary to succeed. Training builds the Subconscious Mind and we want the Subconsious to perform. But performance is a function of 3 mental processes not one. So unless you control your Conscious Mind and you build your Self-Image, training alone is not enough. Our goal is to help our students understand how to manage all 3 mental processes. A well balanced performer has a better chance to win. 

Heather Sumlin
Heather@mentalmanagement.com

Product recommendation:  Mental Toughness for Pageantry Audio CD Set.