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- Fundamentals of Performance Course
Fundamentals of Performance Course
Early Bird Price £300 available till 1 September 2024.
This one year course is a self-study course that will enable you to achieve your highest level of performance by focusing on all of the areas fundamental to human performance, excellence and achievement.
Absorbing Information
One of the primary functions of the brain is to utilise information. It takes information from the external environment via our senses, processes that information, combining it with what we already know (our previous experiences and innate knowledge), and then comes to a conclusion, which might be some kind of behaviour, decision, opinion, belief or action. Our courses will help you perform more effectively at each of these stages.
Since one of the primary functions of the brain is to absorb information from the external environment, we have a number of units that will help you with that. We look at strategies to help you use your memory more effectively, using techniques that have been used by people for thousands of years, and combining them with modern psychological and neurological research. We also look at ways of helping you to read all the material you need in the time you have available including speed reading and intelligent reading techniques. Finally, we introduce mind maps, showing you the range of areas in which they can be useful and taking you through their potential in a step-by-step manner.
Processing Information & Thinking Skills
Taking in information effectively is the first stage in our brain's role as an organ for ensuring that we function effectively in the world. The second stage is processing that information in some way. We combine what's new with what we already know and then we either arrive at some kind of conclusion, come up with a new idea, reach an opinion or decide upon a course of action.
This stage is what we call the thinking stage. Unfortunately, few of us are taught how to think: it is assumed to be a skill that we simply pick up as we grow and learn, a skill that requires very little or no formal training. Often that will be true. In our brains, evolution has provided us with a powerful organ that enables us to survive and flourish in a multitude of situations. However, many of the problems of modern life are not the kinds of problems we would have encountered as our brains were evolving and therefore our brains are not ideally suited to handle them.
Certain situations require deeper analysis than our brains will naturally be inclined to provide. In these situations we tend to rely on experience, assumptions, prejudices and rules of thumb. Thinking through a situation thoroughly and accurately is difficult. It requires a great deal of energy (our brains use about twenty per cent of the energy we take in) as well as practice and the right kind of training.
No one would expect to be able to go for a long run without some effort to get fit beforehand, yet thinking about a problem requires as much, if not more, effort. Unless we have been trained to think properly, we can easily fall back onto our brain's default position, going for the easy answer, and this will often lead us into error.
We all like to think of ourselves as rational beings. Yet no matter how intelligent we are, we can all be prone to making mistakes in our thinking and limiting our ability to think in new and creative ways. The units in this module are aimed at helping you to overcome these obstacles, eliminate mistakes in your thinking and to generate new ideas. They fall into the following categories: - analytical thinking, creative thinking and strategic thinking.
Peak Performance Psychology
As well as taking in information effectively and the thinking skills associated with processing it, the next stage is concerned with acting on that information in some way. Our brains can be thought of as working a little like computers: computers receive information from various sources such as keyboards, flash drives, and so on; they then process that information internally; finally they output new information, whether to a screen, printer or other device. Each stage is vital and one cannot happen without the other. This is the same with our brains.
This stage, then, involves some kind of interaction with the outside world. However, the fact that we are now concerned with action does not mean that psychological factors are not paramount. Our brains are the primary instigators of physical action. They decide whether or not we act, how we act and physically control our muscular actions. In other words, all we do originates in the brain.
Therefore, the psychology of action and performance is a vital component in developing the mental skills necessary to perform effectively in the world. These factors are amenable to being taken under our control. The psychological techniques that allow us to do this can be used in a wide variety of situations to ensure that we perform not only effectively, but optimally.
The psychological determinants of how we act, then, can be used to ensure the highest levels of performance and effectiveness across the full range of human activities. We see this now in professional sport, where both individuals and teams focus as much on psychological performance as they do on physical performance. We have divided our courses in this area into four headings (goals & motivation, managing states of mind, effective communication and emulating high level performance).
Mindfulness
Many of the units in this course, such as memory or speed reading, focus on just one specific aspect of cognitive performance. There is one area, however, that is arguably even more basic, more fundamental, and which impacts on every other element: that is, simply, becoming aware of the mind itself. We call this mindfulness.
Cultivating mindfulness will help you be more engaged, alert, observant and thoughtful at all times. As you become more practised, you will learn to eliminate thoughts that are distracted, rushed or panicked. Instead, you will be calm, controlled, reflective and insightful. You will be able to bring complete mental focus to everything that you do in any situation and this ultimately means that you will become more efficient, more effective and more productive.
This can have further beneficial effects, for example, a more balanced perspective on life, increased confidence and the increased respect of those around you. You are likely to start cultivating new habits, re-examining your unreflective actions, doing things not simply because you have always done them, or because others around you do them, but because you have made a genuine, thought-through decision to do so. Thus, it is likely to impact on every area of your life, bringing more genuine joy and fulfilment and leading to a life fully lived.
Education in mindfulness will enable you to stay focused, relaxed, and concentrated on the present moment. Doing so has positive psychological and physiological effects such as enhanced concentration and attention. Over time, it can lead to profound changes in your life, making you calmer, more thoughtful, more relaxed, more well-balanced and well-rounded.
People who undertake mindfulness training for an extended period of time effectively rewire their brains. Different areas of the brain become active and brainwave patterns change. Memory improves, concentration improves, the ability to hold ideas in the mind improves, attention improves and observation improves. Furthermore, mindfulness training has various health benefits such as reduced blood pressure and a lower resting heart rate. Physical benefits such as reduced muscular tension lead to increased flexibility, better reaction times and better overall physical performance.
Brain Health
The modules that we have outlined so far are all concerned with how you use your mind, whether it is learning how to take in information more easily, analysing a problem more effectively through critical thinking training, or focusing on the fundamentals of how the mind works through mindfulness training.
However, to perform as you would ideally wish to, you should devote some thought to taking care of your brain as well as your mind. Your mind and your brain are not the same thing, although clearly they are intimately related. You will perform more effectively in any cognitive sphere if you take action to look after your brain as well as your mind. We look at three elements that can have a profound effect on brain function: optimal nutrition, rest & sleep as well as physical performance and fitness.