You can posses exceptional talent, drive and skill - in sport and life - but one of the hardest and most crucial survival skills is rebounding from adversity and being able to develop a resilient mindset.
SiSu Life performance coach Dwayne Nestor who, with his partner Kelly Holliday, offers mindset, resilience and physical performance coaching services, works with anyone from a 13-year-old aspiring Matilda to a surgeon wanting to overcome exam anxiety to pass fellowship exams, with a single goal: to help their clients to expand their horizons to achieve their absolute best.
Nestor is a former coach of the nation’s women’s rugby union team the Wallaroos. Holliday is a qualified yoga and pilates instructor, and meditation teacher.
As well as a commitment to physical performance, the duo’s SiSu Life works with athletes to develop their capacity to respond to injury, disappointment and decisions they disagree with.
Brilliant sportsmen and women, boys and girls may have exceptional technical ability but few have learnt mindfulness, strategic thinking skills or developed a sophisticated self talk that can help them crawl their way out of a slump created by injury, not making selection or an umpiring decision that does not go their way.
The aim of this resilience training is to enable young and not-so-young athletes to crawl their way out of a performance hole rather than slip into free fall.
“A significant amount of any sport is played in people’s heads,” Nestor says. “Imagine if you could learn those mental skills that help you develop techniques to deal with disappointment, to shift a black mood, to stick to long-term goals when injury or poor performance get in the way.
“If you knew how to do that before you got injured, it would be incredibly powerful.
“Mindset allows you to reframe bad things, execute your potential. To stay focused on your big goals.”
Nestor says the biggest benefit he sees for his clients is the recognition that games are played in the mind as well as on the pitch, court or field. That and greater self confidence and sharper problem-solving skills.
If you know someone with brilliant sporting potential who needs to overcome self-doubt, injury or a performance slump, visit sisulife.com.au to find out more.