Devotion
Devotion is the capacity to complete the execution, evaluate the performance, learn from the experience, recover from the effort and make good decisions for moving forward.
This process includes the ability to:
- Use breath-holds to establish a balance between the awareness of expectations and the acceptance of the results of your efforts to get the job done.
- Establish a lens that allows you to see and seize the opportunity to improve your performance in the best possible way.
- Debrief the performance in question, capture the positive energy, release the negative, and make good decisions based on what you have learned.
- Reframe the negative aspects of your performance, refine the boundaries of your engagement in terms of the need to increase or decrease your efforts to prepare, execute and complete the task.
Kalani Rivero, 22
I picked Kalani to represent the positive effects that the devotion process can have on your ability to get better. I have been following his career since he was 10 years old. Born and raised on the North Shore, he started surfing the shore break at Sunset Beach. Now he charges massive PipeLine. When the surf is down he free dives. In both activities he has found a way to link fun and passion with getting deep to push the limits of what’s possible.
Kalani has learned to focus under extreme pressure, to express his passion to compete with power and precision and to have the mental strength to deal with the challenges he has faced in becoming a World Class Ocean athlete.
Get Real
The challenges in working to get better at some aspect of your performance revolve around your ability to make good decisions: to know when to step up or turn down the preparation, to improve and add new skills and seek coaching or counsel.
Layne Beachley, 55
In this regard, Layne a seven time World Champion surfer has some great advice. “If you have time to whine or complain about something then you have time to do something about it.” Layne is no nonsense, she tells it like it is and she speaks from experience.
Layne was and is one of the most intense and competitive surfers I’ve ever known. To win her seventh world title she had to learn how to breathe and settle–down during the competition and she did.
Devotion and Gratitude work together
The passion and sensations that come from the execution get recorded during the debrief and then become part of the preparation. In this way, the capacity of the devotion creates motivation to be transferred into the confidence needed to perform at a higher level. The intention of the HLH:GED process is to generate the energy to perform at your desired level while producing the rewards that contribute to your over–all well being.
That’s HiLevel!
Photo: Courtesy of Bernie Baker