Archive

Chantal's story: becoming a full time professional athlete

Chantal Cummings shares her experience of giving up her full time job to become a full-time professional triathlete and gives advice to anyone looking to take on a sporting challenge

19 July 2019

Creating a profile for high performance

When looking to improve in any given area of your life, it can be helpful to have a tool to help you understand where improvements can be made. This is where performance profiling comes in. It is a strategy to help you understand what it takes to be a high performer. A performance profile is a technique which can be used to understand the key areas for performance and identify areas for development. This blog will take you through the steps for creating a performance profile and how it can be used to help set goals for improvement.

12 July 2019

Overcoming a fear of open water swimming

Ten years ago I took on a sprint triathlon. However, during the swim, I had a panic attack. After that, I vowed never to do another triathlon again. The idea of open water swimming terrified me. Despite this, fast forward a few years and I have just completed the Ironman Staffordshire 70.3 which comprises of a 1.9km swim, 90km cycle ending with a half marathon.

28 June 2019

Sustaining success

Maintaining high performance for yourself, within a team, or for a business can be difficult. Day-to-day life contains many hurdles and challenges. Whilst we often think of success as a straight line from A to B with linear progression, the reality is very different: People are subject to a cyclical process of ebb and flow, growth and decline. So what strategies can you develop to go after continuous improvement?

21 June 2019

Three good things

Very often our mind is focused on what goes wrong. We are quick to pick ourselves apart. We focus on the negatives rather than pay attention to what went right. Whilst it can be good to learn from mistakes, in general, we spend an unhelpful amount of time thinking about what is bad in life, rather than what is good. What’s more, this negativity bias has been linked with an increased risk of anxiety and depression. Read our latest blog on how to stop focusing on the negatives

07 June 2019

Developing a Growth Mindset

There is a lot of evidence out there to show how our beliefs about intelligence can have a big impact on our engagement with tasks and our achievement. Over the last few decades, a lot of research has shown that there is a powerful relationship between peoples’ mindset about intelligence and achievement. Your beliefs about intelligence can have an impact on your motivation levels, achievement behaviour (for example seeking help or studying), responses to challenges and setbacks and academic achievement. Read our latest blog on how to develop a growth mindset

27 May 2019

Why setting goals isn't enough

People often set goals in all areas of their life – whether that is in business, health, sport, relationships or hobbies. Goals can be effective to aid behaviour change. They can keep us on track, provide a source of motivation and are a good way to monitor progress. But having goals and targets can sometimes feel meaningless to people. The actions required to reach a goal can be difficult to do if lacking motivation and they don’t provide any reward until you actually achieve them. What’s more, goals have to be continually recreated once reached. So how can we stay motivated when goals alone aren’t enough? Read our latest blog to find out

18 April 2019

Using self-regulation to manage high-pressure situations

We all react to pressure in different ways and often our ability to cope with pressure can vary greatly from day to day. However, in modern society, many of us spend far too long in a stressed state than is good for us. Read the latest blog from Hannah Winter, Sandstone associate and sport and exercise psychology consultant on how to manage emotions during stressful situations

05 April 2019

Sandstone news archive of: 2019