Hi, my name is Kris. Over the past year and a half, I have retired from a 15 year professional ice hockey career, finished a masters degree in sports management, moved from Sweden back to Canada with my wife, started a meditation and mindfulness company, bought an apartment and car on the same day (ouch), bought some Bitcoin and Ethereuum, and now I've arrived here on Steemit. I'm truly captivated with this platform where I plan to share my knowledge and experience participating in a revolution in how we exchange value of many different forms. Let's get right into it.
Developing a consistent meditation and mindfulness practice is one of the most useful mental skills an athlete, or anyone for that matter, can obtain. Why? Well, one of my favorite tennis players says it the best "Tennis is a mental game, everyone is fit, everyone hits great forehands and backhands." That came out of the mouth of Novak Djokovic when he was speaking about the ups and downs he had with his mental game at the beginning of his career. Djokovic, subsequently, is a meditating athlete.
http://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/13166973/wimbledon-novak-djokovic-power-meditation
Anyways, this statement coincides with my experience as a professional hockey player. I've played hockey in the NHL and AHL as well as the top professional league's throughout Europe, and there are so many talented athletes out there. They are everywhere, and what separates the cream of the crop from the rest is that these athletes have in on lock in their noggin. In the NHL, I skated alongside some of the greatest players in the history of the game and with certainty, what separated them from the rest was what was going on in between there ears. Of course, they had world class motor skills and coordination, not to toot my own horn here too much, but so did I. I went 7th overall in the 1999 NHL entry draft. I say this only to prove a point not to boast. Now, I went on to have what many players and people would consider a dream career, but it didn't feel like it to me because I wasn't doing myself any favors with the type of performance mindset I had developed. With all the physical and creative skill I had, I lacked the mental game required to excel at peak levels consistently and eventually the times I didn't enjoy that game started to outnumber the times I did.
Long story short, which I look forward to telling to the Steemian community. Negative thought and behavior patterns that I initiated as a young athlete eventually grew stronger, and it got to a point where I struggled with severe self-confidence issues that not only affected my performance on the ice, but they had serious ramifications to my well-being away from the ice. I started meditating out of necessity, I knew I needed to change how my brain worked, and through research found that meditation and mindfulness were the techniques that could take me there. As Geroge Mumford would say "Pain brought me to this practice," but what I've learned through my experience in integrating mindfulness into every aspect of the competitive environment is that well-being and peak performance are most definitely interconnected. By proactively taking measures to improve your mental game you maximize well-being and consistently extract the most out of your natural skill, ability and know how boosting your consistent peak performance.
Stay tuned for more as I offer you the fundamentals of establishing a regular meditation and mindfulness practice as well as other interesting and useful topics along the way. Steemit!!