The divinely valuable coaching contribution of former professional athletes BEYOND conventional coaching🎾💫
Why did you endure the superhuman physical effort of your sporting career? Simple answer: it was the divine moments of the FLOW experience that you never wanted to let go of - but had to. The FLOW retreats when the separate, time-bound part of ourselves (ego) claims power within us again.
I have recently started coaching former top athletes who, after their inevitable "retirement" at a comparatively young age, are looking for a sustainably fulfilling, authentic and truthful future career and life path.
What can these young "early retired world stars" learn from my visual talent for strategic insight (👉link) when they are forced to retire, for example, from their beloved sport of tennis?
Roger Federer, who retired at the age of 41 with prize money totalling 131 million US dollars, Andy Murray, who is about to retire at the age of 37 with prize money of 65 million dollars, or soon Rafael Nadal, now aged 38 with prize money of 135 million US dollars, who, like his great mentor Roger Federer, has to find the right time to retire:
Firstly, you really need to understand the true essence of your sporting career. You need to find out in your TRUE SELF why you have endured the almost superhuman physical effort of your sporting career for so long.
What was the profoundly happy essence of it all?
The answer is actually quite simple: it was the divine moments of the FLOW experience that you kept chasing after and that you didn't want to let go of - but had to, because the FLOW retreats when the dual-separated, time-bound part of our I (ego) claims power in us again:
Jeanne Nakamura and Csíkszentmihályi identify the following
SIX FACTORS as encompassing an experience of FLOW:
1) Intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2) Merging of action and awareness
3) A loss of reflective self-consciousness
4) A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
5) A distortion of temporal experience, as one's subjective experience of time is altered
6) Experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
Those aspects can appear independently of each other, but only in combination do they constitute a so-called flow experience. Additionally, psychology writer Kendra Cherry has mentioned three other components that Csíkszentmihályi lists as being a part of the flow experience:
1) Immediate feedback
2) Feeling the potential to succeed
3) Feeling so engrossed in the experience that other needs become negligible
Unexpectedly good news for these former top athletes: this FLOW state can be permanently stabilised within us using a 1200-year-old method 👉Link. As we reach this meditative FLOW background state in our daily existence, our inner serenity and joie de vivre become increasingly independent of external circumstances and the actions of other people. We also hear our inner voice from the area around our solar plexus more and more clearly - our "self-intuition", which guides us safely from within and allows us to make the right decisions in the long term. Gradually, a deep inner anchoring in a flow feeling of equanimity without external attachment sets in. Former top athletes can learn this divine method relatively quickly (approx. 3 months effort with 2 times 2 hours of exercise per day), as they have experienced this FLOW state very often in their sporting career and have already internalised that this divine state also correlates with mindfulness, inner letting go and humility. Every month I offer a free "Q&A session" on this method via Zoom 👉 Link.
Over 20 years ago, I spent 4 years part-time researching the success factors of this FLOW on the intrapersonal, interpersonal and inter-organisational level with the world's best German marketing professor (👉link). Since then, FLOW has been an essential part of my career and life strategy coaching (👉link).
As former top athletes have so often come into contact with this divine FLOW during their long sporting careers, in my experience these people are ideally suited to coaching other people - especially top managers.
And why? Top managers are by definition very successful financially, but in my experience they are often not really happy and satisfied. In my opinion, flow moments have the potential to encourage suffering members of this species to gain inner insight and self-reflection.
Why is that important? A top manager has a great responsibility - NO, not just opportunistically for his own salary, I have only ever met suffering examples of this species... For these peculiar top managers, Warren Buffett is usually the big hero. Warren Buffett is one of the most successful businessmen and investors of all time, and one of the keys to his success is the targeted selection of top managers (CEOs) in whose companies he intends to invest. His selection criterion is very simple: these CEOs must be able to set very clear priorities and use their valuable time almost exclusively to create added value for Warren Buffett. They must be able to turn down people and opportunities that do not directly serve their own EGO-centred growth. "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say 'no' to almost everything," says Waren Buffett 👉 Link. Investing in such EGO-centred psychopathic CEOs may be optimal from a purely financial point of view, but such an anti-life, self-centred world view is perhaps somewhat questionable in today's world... 👉 Link.
NO!, every top manager has an immense responsibility for his many employees, for his families and ultimately - from my point of view in particular - for the well-being of the children of these many employee families. When most of these many children can play and laugh freely in the playground every day because they are "carried" by an inner feeling of safety and security, then this is usually because this exceptional top manager senses within himself that life is not primarily about strengthening his dual ego, but about fulfilling his contribution required by life (karma).
With these managers, I SEE this insightful behaviour directly in their eyes, in their shining eyes (eyes are the direct gateway to the soul), which shine because life gives them many moments of this divine FLOW🤸♂️🍀💫.
Do you have a challenging question on this topic❓❓❓
I love challenging questions and answer ALL your questions every month VISUALLY via Zoom on the 27th here.
Related links
- My monthly online seminar "From ego to SELF - Strategic inspirations BEYOND stress, problems and worries", Open Mind Academy, Switzerland
- My visual strategic talent BEYOND the duality of your strategic thinking
- Genuine coaching that takes you BEYOND your supposedly big “I“
- Development of a free and agile mind BEYOND painful attachments to problems and worries
- SELF-Assessment BEYOND the separating duality of your thoughts
- The source of creativity BEYOND our mind
- Step-by-step coaching of "The Secret of the Golden Flower" far BEYOND meditative insights🪷🧎
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