Basketball Tip
How Dreaming Can Improve Performance
"Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning."
How Dreams Can Improve Your Basketball Game
Sports psychologists have found a major link between great basketball players and daydreaming. Those who have achieved the highest levels of success in their sport, have a very high capacity for vivid daydreaming. Here is what they found:
Visualization. Daydreaming for the great athletes consisted of specific vivid images of succeeding in pressure moments.
Silence and space. Great athletes created time to be alone and rest the mind. Their thoughts were peaceful, restful and carefree. Think about that word, “carefree”. How would allowing yourself more of this type of thinking help you on the court?
Solidify what you learn. After practice or a game, daydreaming helps you move your experiences into long term memory. "Your brain wants you to tune out other tasks so you can tune in to what you just learned," says Lila Davachi, an assistant professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science. Great athletes take time after games to daydream. They use this time to allow their brain to record sequences, patterns and new understandings.
Value and respect your brain. It is more powerful than you can imagine. Take time to invest in your daydreaming. You know your dreaming is on the right track if it generates momentum to work hard, to follow through, to write down your goals, to become better. You know you are on the wrong track with your dreaming, if your dreams cause you to live in a false place of delusion and fantasy. Dreaming without working is escapism. Dreaming which leads to action is transformation.
How To Dream Great Dreams
1. Eliminate fear. Fear is a robber and a thief which steals your imagination and ability to problem solve. When you live in fear, you make choices that actually unconsciously germinate and bring to fruition what you are afraid of. You literally are dreaming fear into reality.
2. Operate in peace. This is a core principle for us at NBC Camps. We want to make decisions from a space of gratitude, abundance and joy. This mindset is a conscious choice and we postpone making a tough decision until we have a mindset of peace.
3. Cultivate wonder. Imagination, creativity and new perspectives emerge from a sense of awe. Overly rigid or “efficiency at all costs” mindset limit wonder. Conversely, the other extreme of pampered, constantly entertained lifestyle destroys wonder. Step out of the intensified disciplined regiment or the over-stimulated gluttony and spend time in awe, silence, gratitude and thankfulness.
4. Think like a great musician. Great musicians model the perfect balance between dreaming and achieving. The dream is the incubation of the skills, unique perspective, talent and discipline of the artist. In this mysterious crucible, genius is born.
5. Write down your dreams. Research on this is astonishing. Don’t talk about your dreams or tell everyone what you will do—research shows this actually causes you to not follow through. Instead, in private, write down your dreams and post them where you can see them every day. Spend time thinking and praying about these dreams.
Dreaming is an important part of becoming a great basketball player. The more clear you are about what you want, the better opportunity you have in achieving what you want.
NBC Basketball Camps offers intensive basketball training camps in many locations in the U.S., Canada, as well as camps in the UK, Austria, Thailand, and Italy. Check out NBC Camps at www.nbccamps.com.