When a sporting great is ‘in the Zone’ it’s an experience of pure athletic alchemy. All the doubts thrown up by the conscious mind disappear, allowing all the long years of practice to soar back out in a blissful moment of apparent magic.

This is when things just work – indeed the outer world seems to cooperate with every inner whim. At extremes, time obliges by slowing down. Space can also flex as you become one with your equipment, your surroundings and even the entire universe.

No matter how pressured the occasion or how huge the crowds, it’s usually a peaceful experience too, hence the spread of techniques like meditation to help sportspeople find this elusive nirvana when it matters.

Over seven years of research for In The Zone I met hundreds of legends of everything from athletics to boxing, gymnastics to skydiving. For most, the secret is to find calm amid all the intensity. Yet there are exceptions, and the most high-profile of all comes from sailing.

‘They’ve made me angry and you don’t want to make me angry…’

These words, paraphrasing David Bruce Banner in 1970s television’s The Incredible Hulk, capture much of what makes the greatest sailor in Olympic history tick. Ben Ainslie is a rare example of a sportsman who thrives on getting mad and usually even.

You’d imagine Denmark’s Jonas Høgh-Christensen might have known that. Six races into the Finn class of the 2012 Olympic sailing regatta, with Ainslie chasing a record fourth straight gold, the Dane had beaten him in every race. Then he ganged up with Dutchman Pieter-Jan Postma to force the home hero into a precautionary penalty turn. Big mistake. After Ainslie threatened to turn green, he began another stunning run for gold. Maybe Høgh-Christensen should have listened in on my chat with the Briton a month earlier…

‘Normally when I’m under pressure or I get angered by something, it seems to bring out the best in me,’ Ainslie told me. ‘I don’t necessarily know why that is. But it’s a good trait to have because that’s what often happens. For some people, if they get put off their natural stride they just fall apart. But anger works as a trigger for me. It just makes me want to do better or try harder and normally that’s the case.’

Ainslie first got ‘angry’ when he was herded to the back by Brazil’s Robert Scheidt in the penultimate race of the 1996 Olympics. Then something ‘clicked’ in the young debutant, who started flying as he seethed, gaining 15 places but falling short of gold – for the only time, as it turned out. Ainslie received death threats when he returned the favour four years later but ‘from then on the gloves were off…’

Anger management course? No thanks… it is Ainslie’s preferred route to the Zone. Competitive sailing is so tactical it is rarely about just getting as quickly as possible from A to B by sea, yet even this game of maritime chess doesn’t stop the magic.

‘That peak performance comes when everything comes together at the same time, when you’re really at one with the boat, the conditions and yourself,’ adds Ainslie. ‘It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s a great feeling. It’s definitely possible to get in the Zone in a tactical battle too. That’s when the training comes in and you sail the boat on autopilot because your mind is so focused on the tactical ramifications of what you need to do next. You might not sail at 100 per cent but you can be at a very high level even without thinking about it.'

The Briton has already won the America’s Cup once, having sparked one of sport’s all-time great comebacks as tactician for Oracle Team USA in 2013. His home nation has never matched the feat in 173 years of attempts, despite its long-time claims of ‘ruling the waves’.

Ainslie has himself led British teams twice before without success but this week he is finally aiming to rectify that, skippering the Ineos-backed Britannia in a best-of-13 series against reigning champions Team New Zealand in Barcelona.

How revved up is he already feeling at the prospect? Funnily enough Ainslie is known for his placid personality on dry land; it’s only the sea that fires him up. Yet he insists age and experience have blurred the edges between his Jekyll and Hyde.

‘When I was younger I was a bit of a hothead on the water,’ adds Ainslie, ‘but on land I was so shy I wouldn’t speak to anyone – partly because of the problems I had at school, where I was bullied. That had a marked effect on me: I felt I needed to prove myself and it made me fiercely determined to be successful. As I’ve got older the two personalities have merged. Now I’m more confident on land and I’m calmer on the water, which helps.’

After decades of sailing solo, Ainslie acknowledges the biggest challenge in the team environment is getting everyone to peak at the same time.

‘It’s no good an individual trying to do one thing on this own ten times better than the rest,’ he adds. ‘It’s a collective output so it’s about getting everyone working together to a similar level where they can all operate. Then you start getting somewhere.’

One final piece of advice for Team New Zealand: try not to make them angry.

Ever since I read Ayrton Senna’s words describing his surreal out-of-body experience during qualifying for the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix, I’ve been on a quest to find others who have found the same magical place.
 
Over the years I’ve met many great sports stars who have been there too: moments in the Zone that bend time and space and transcend reality as we know it. Occasionally I get really lucky and the human being telling me the story is still at the absolute top of their game, and the world.
 
After Novak Djokovic collected his fourth Laureus World Sportsman of the Year Award in 2019, I grabbed my chance to enquire about his description of going into ‘another dimension’ during his near-perfect Australian Open semi-final earlier that year.
 
Appropriately we were in Monaco so I brought up the similarity with Senna’s words. The Serbian superstar’s reply was as wonderful as I’ve come to expect from one of sport’s true class acts – and definitely, unmistakably Senna-esque. Here it is in full…
 
‘I actually watched Ayrton Senna’s documentary so I did hear him speaking about that,’ smiled Djokovic. ‘In my case there were several matches where you just feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience. One of them was in the final of the Australian Open in 2012 against Nadal when we played almost six hours. It’s really hard to explain when you feel like you’re present but somehow you’re also not present – because the physical pain is so big that you don’t feel your body any more, but you’re operating on some kind of autopilot that is taking you to your desired places, which you determine mentally.
 
‘It was one of those experiences where you just feel like there is a higher force that is driving you forward. I’m also a big believer in that, and I always rely on my faith and try to be grateful and understanding of a creator and a greater power and a universal help that we always see. So I try to remind myself of that, of how blessed I am and not to take things for granted because ego is a strange opposition at times, and it can play with your mind.
 
‘In this process of evolution as a human being I’ve learned a lot more about these things because I’ve become more aware of them. Before it was just… I hit a tennis ball and it was in or out, and I won a tennis match. But throughout the years it became much more than that. It became a spiritual journey. And because the tennis court is a place where I’m probably most vulnerable but also very confident and strong, a tennis court is a school of life for me: where I get triggered most and where I can understand myself on a deeper level. That’s because everything I maybe suppress outside of a tennis court surfaces there.
 
‘That’s probably one of the biggest reasons why I keep on playing tennis. I don’t see too many different places where I can actually evolve as a human being better than on a tennis court.’
 
Wow. To learn more about Djokovic’s approach to his art, read my earlier interview with him about his 2012 epic against Nadal which is a highlight of In The Zone - or check out the wonderful speech he gave while collecting the 2019 Laureus award…

Austria’s Franz Klammer prevailed over a golden era for skiing, sealing a record five World Cup titles plus gold in the blue riband men’s downhill at the 1976 Olympics after a truly wild ride (see video below…)
 
The secret to ‘The Kaiser’s’ success, which included one matchless run of ten straight wins, was that he didn’t consider his opponents to be his rivals. No, his main adversary was about a thousand times taller.
 
‘I won every race in one season – except one when I lost my ski,’ he gleefully recalls in the book In The Zone: How Champions Think and Win Big. ‘That means you have to be better than the best one of the others. You always know one of these guys will have a very good run because they’re all after you. But I’m not racing against any person, I’m racing the mountain.
 
‘When I was winning all the races, I just knew I was ahead of everything. So you’re the boss in the ring. You know how you want to do it and you can just conquer the mountain. Then you get into the Zone. This happened to me a lot, and those moments almost always led to victory because you’re the leader. It’s not the skis or the mountain telling you what to do. You’re mastering the mountain.’
 
It takes a big man to take on nature but Klammer offered his mighty rival the highest respect imaginable. He didn’t just show up on the day and expect mastery to fall into his lap; instead it was a steady build-up that began in the privacy of his mind.
 
‘The most important thing is to figure out what you have to do to perform,’ he says. ‘It’s not up to you when you have to race so you have to be totally consistent. If the race is at midday on Saturday you cannot afford not to be on form then. You have to be spot on. So I had a mental build-up during the week, like gradually pulling back a bow and arrow. When I arrived for the course inspections on Wednesday I started pulling the bow back, building up the tension more and more until you are ready to go. Then on Saturday I let the arrow fly.
 
‘I always used to visualise the course too. When I went to bed I lay down and went through the downhill, then again the next morning, visualising what I was going to do. You learn that as you go through your career. Once you really have the feel the hard bit isn’t the turns, because you’re always in action, but the flat. If a flat section takes 20 seconds you don’t know how long that takes without a clock. Still, when I was really in my heyday I could imagine the whole course within three or four tenths of my actual racing time. Then when I got to the start I’d do it all different because if you stick to the line you are too slow…’
 
If a relaxed attitude sounds like a chink in the armour for the other competitors to exploit, they will be sorely disappointed. Such a playful mindset allows the legends to set their subconscious free. That’s when they really start to fly.
 
‘For me being “in the Zone” is when everything is in slow motion so you have all the time in the world,’ adds Klammer. ‘In skiing you have certain crucial sections of the course when you really have to get it right. Afterwards it is flat so if you make a mistake you will lose a lot of time and you won’t win the race. But when you’re in the Zone, you have a very clear picture ahead of you and you see all these little details. So you can go for it. It’s a special feeling when you’re in full flow…’

This is an exclusive extract from the book In The Zone: How Champions Think and Win Big

If we want to understand the power of dreams – and how greatness always starts in our own heads – the all-time greats of sport provide all the evidence we need.
 
The world’s most decorated Olympian Michael Phelps collected 28 swimming medals over a record-shattering period lasting a day shy of 12 years. Of those, 23 were gold: he won his first on this day (August 14) at the 2004 Athens Games and his last in Rio on August 13, 2016.
 
The foundation to his success was a brutal training schedule of countless repetitions – averaging seven miles a day, 365 days a year. Phelps started young too, spending his early years permanently around a pool. By the age of 11 he was swimming two and a half hours every day. He was just 15 when he made his Olympic debut at Sydney in 2000, reaching the 200-metre butterfly final but missing the medals. Just months later he broke that world record and the deluge began: his total now tops the entire collection of over 150 Olympic nations.
 
The American was fortunate to grow up into the perfect physique for swimming – a long trunk and a wide arm span – but it’s in his head that he shines brightest.

Such a staggering, history-altering career would never have come to fruition if Phelps hadn’t worked tirelessly to create vivid images of his races in advance, then steer his future accordingly. Thanks to rigorous mental training with coach Bob Bowman he learned to write his goals down, specifying each target time to a hundredth of a second. Even in his early teens he soon found himself hitting them precisely.
 
‘I started visualising when I was about 14,’ Phelps tells me in the book In The Zone. ‘It was all about thinking how a race could go, how you want it to go and how you don’t want it to go so you’re ready for anything. I found it could really help me to prepare. Visualisation is important so you don’t have any surprises. That means you can always stay relaxed. That was a big key in everything we did. Starting it at a very young age really helped me throughout my career.’
 
Visualisation is not just about being prepared for anything, it’s about shaping the future to fit the mould of your private vision. The greats start with a big vision, then they map out their route towards it by dividing it into smaller, more manageable goal-sized images.
 
It helped that Phelps was also taught never to believe in limits. As such he always dreamt big, not settling for gold alone: ‘It’s crazy when I look back on my career because to me it feels like I’ve been living a dream come true,’ he smiles. ‘This is everything I thought about and dreamt of as a kid. It’s like: “This is real?” And it’s wild. Everything I’ve been able to accomplish is something I’ve always wanted and I’ve done everything I ever wanted to achieve. I wanted to change the sport of swimming and take it to a new level – and I have.’
 
Before his racing retirement Phelps, now a father to Boomer, started a foundation aimed at promoting water safety: ‘I still swim, but now it’s more for peace of mind. But there is still a lot I want to achieve. Spending time with kids is a passion of mine. Putting a smile on a kid’s face and seeing them having fun always puts a real smile on my face too. Now I want to help kids accomplish their dreams.’
 
The fact these successful ‘dream achievers’ are so keen to share out the secret is a lesson in itself… One thing the greats can’t help but learn en route to the top is that we are not merely passive beings being battered around the universe. Now they are desperate for the rest of us to realise we all - without exception - have the power within us to shape our own future.
 
So where will your dream take you?
 
Click here to hear more about the power of visualisation in Clyde Brolin’s interview on the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show with Chris Evans - five years ago today

It was 30 years ago today that Ayrton Senna passed four cars on lap one of the 1993 European Grand Prix at a drenched Donington Park, ending up in the lead. Legendary commentator Murray Walker classes it as the best lap he ever saw and few disagree.
 
Senna’s former race engineer James Robinson recalls: ‘Everyone quotes Donington in the rain, but you only have to watch classic examples like that to see what Senna was made of. Even with such self-belief you just don’t overtake four cars on the opening lap of a grand prix in the pouring rain at a track where there are guys who have driven more laps than you.
 
‘But while the rest were thinking, “If I go any faster I’m going to fall off because I haven’t been round here for fifteen minutes and it’s rained heavily since then,” Ayrton could judge the grip level on the outside. He would say: “I’ve driven Donington in the wet so many times in earlier formulae I know where the grip is. It’s not on the racing line when it’s raining. In this corner it’s here, in this corner they resurfaced it two years ago and it’s here.” He’d just put that information together. That’s what made him special.’
 
Senna’s explanation was simpler still. That Easter Sunday, hours before golfer Bernhard Langer declared his US Masters victory was extra special, coming as it did ‘on the day my Lord arose,’ Senna nipped in first. When Brazilian TV asked him how he’d managed to destroy the Donington field, he said: ‘God is great and powerful and when he wants nobody can say anything different.’
 
Einstein was right. God doesn’t play dice; he drives fast cars and plays golf. Moreover Senna had enjoyed another intervention from above a couple of years earlier, as the Brazilian maestro finally took his first ever win at his beloved home circuit of Interlagos…
 
‘Ayrton finished the last seven laps with only sixth gear,’ adds Robinson. ‘Riccardo Patrese’s Williams was chasing us and they didn’t know. Over the radio I heard a couple of comments in Portuguese and Ayrton was sitting in the car praying.
 
‘That was a new experience for me but you soon understand that’s him. His thought process led him to conclude somebody could help him through this and sort it out. That’s what set him apart – his sheer belief in his own ability, that he could do what other people couldn’t do. And, though he’d probably hate me for saying it, the belief that somebody else was looking after him. I’ve never experienced that with any other driver.’

This is an adapted extract from Overdrive: Formula 1 in the Zone

The loss of YouTube legend Ken Block earlier this year in a snowmobile accident is still being felt by motorsport and stunt fans all over the world.

I was once lucky enough to interview Block at the Goodwood Festival of Speed to ask about what went through his mind at the many peak moments he enjoyed in such an intense career. The below exchange has never been published before and I hope as it serves as yet another worthy tribute to a great man…

Block gained fame by ‘hooning’ rally cars around the world’s most unsuitable locations in his gymkhana videos. His final creations are true works of art but pushing these limits inevitably means you go beyond them too. It doesn’t take much to go out of anyone’s comfort zone on four wheels but the likes of Block spend their entire careers chasing such moments – to the point where they can almost seem pre-ordained or self-inflicted. He was about to recce a WRC special stage in Portugal in 2011 when he was tipped just over the edge.

‘There was a delay and one of the local drivers asked if someone had crashed,’ smiled Block. ‘When I said I didn’t know he said, “Someone goes off big on this stage every year.” I was like: “What? He hexed me!” Then I thought: “I’m going to crash? No way…” So I start the stage and I’m driving really well. I’d just done some really good testing in Mexico so I’m feeling good. Then I went slightly wide on a corner, got onto the marbles and the rear end just kicked out and flipped something. I rolled three-and-a-half times, two of which were in mid-air.

‘So we were in the air for a long time but in the middle of that I was so mad, thinking: “That guy hexed me.” When something like that happens you know there’s a big impact coming. Then it’s just like, “Oh shit…” You just say, “Uh oh…” But time really does slow down. I had time to go through all those thought processes before I thought, “Aarrrggh…” It’s a unique feeling being in a racing car. I wish more people could experience it because it’s very cool…’

Convinced? Me neither. This feeling of time slowing down is a classic report in ‘everyday’ road crashes too, another sign of the human brain’s ability to work at its absolute limit when it most matters. Understandably, most of us don’t feel any strong urge to check that out for ourselves. The payback for those who routinely push to the limit in their day jobs is when the same phenomenon occurs at calmer, happier times. It was in competition rather than gymkhana that Block most frequently found the balance of factors necessary to make it to the ultimate driving bliss.

‘Being in the Zone is a serene thing when everything aligns,’ Block told me. ‘It feels amazing and happens when you’re comfortable with everything, so it is hard when you’re in a new environment as it’s about getting used to things. But when you get enough time and practice in the car and you can just focus on what you’re doing it’s great. Then you have that feeling of total comfort and everything just happens in a subconscious state. There are days when you just can’t be beaten.

‘It can happen in a shakedown but you feel it most when there’s a baseline to compare against. I don’t feel it very often in the World Rally Championship because I’m not so familiar with the car and the events. But back home in America I won the 100 Acre Wood Rally seven times. There you get in, you’re winning and you have that feeling. Then you build on it with confidence and comfort with the car.

‘You don’t really focus in on that feeling or know what it is until you compete at a high level. If you’re playing football with your friends you’re not going to feel it because you’re not at the level of intensity and competition to really experience it. It needs the right situation and the right amount of pressure to be in that moment. That’s when the feeling for me as a car driver is unlike any feeling I get anywhere else.’

Thank you Ken, and happy hooning in the great gymkhana in the sky.

‘The last second is what’s most special and addictive: when you stand on the edge, you look down and you still have the chance to turn around and walk away. That last particular second when you step off. Then you know you are on the way. You cannot return. You pick up speed and you accelerate so fast. A couple of moments later you pull your parachute, you land, you look back up at that big mountain and you’re still alive. For me this is total freedom.’
 
Some people really do seem born to fly. When Felix Baumgartner was just five years old, he drew a picture of himself parachuting to Earth with his mother Eva watching on from ground level. Felix gave Eva the drawing, only for her to hand it back to him when he did his first real skydive, aged 17, at a club in his home city of Salzburg.
 
Felix then spent five years in the Austrian Army’s parachute exhibition team, building up his mastery of freefall. It was when he switched to BASE jumping that the haul of records began. His 1999 leap from Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers was the highest from a building and Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue was the lowest. This constant quest for greater challenges led to his big finale: the world’s highest ever freefall – from 24 miles up – in a bid to become the first human to break the sound barrier without an engine.
 
This one wouldn’t come easy. Five long years of preparation for Baumgartner and his Red Bull Stratos team may seem excessive for a mere ‘stunt’ but this is the discipline required to go to the limit and beyond. The Austrian worked his way up with practice runs from 15 and 18 miles. Most crucially he was busy breaking the sound barrier over and over again – away from the public gaze.
 
‘I visualised this jump from the moment I heard about it,’ Baumgartner tells me in an interview for In The Zone. ‘I did it a thousand times in my mind – just like every other jump I’ve ever done. I lie in my bed and come up with a proper game plan.
 
‘I’m really good at pre-programming my mind and I always do this. I think about how it will feel, what it will look like. The more I think about it, the more it becomes reality. When I finally do it for real, 99 percent of the time it works exactly like I’d visualised and it feels the same way it felt in my mind.’
 
The aim of visualisation is more than just preparation; it’s about taking control of the future and tailoring it to our liking. By continually dreaming of his freefall from the edge of space Baumgartner painted a vivid picture and created a momentum in his mind that made success all but an inevitable consequence when he finally took one small step out onto his capsule’s external platform on October 14, 2012.
 
‘It’s the power of will and the focus you have,’ he adds. ‘When I was standing out on the exterior step it felt almost how I expected. This is the key. The more you can turn thoughts into reality, the better you are. Mental preparation is crucial: you have to ensure you find the right mindset for that moment. Then when you are finally in that position there will be no surprises. You pre-program your mind and it works exactly the way you expect. Most of the time…’
 
Pity the question Baumgartner is most often asked is: ‘What it was like up there?’ because the view was the last thing on his mind. He was in the Zone…
 
‘You’re so focused and determined you don’t see or hear anything around you,’ says Baumgartner. ‘In the first part of the jump I spun five times anticlockwise and 22 times clockwise. I didn’t think about anything else because I was so focused on stopping that spin. It was a lot of work and took almost a minute. For the rest of the flight I was more relaxed. At 5,000 feet (1.5km) I had to pull my parachute. Then I realised I’d broken the speed of sound.’
 
Ready for your own big one? The good news is Baumgartner insists we all have the ability to rise to any challenge, as long as we can silence the doubters: ‘I’ve met Neil Armstrong, Muhammad Ali, Sir Edmund Hillary – and it wasn’t easy for any of them. When they came up with their idea everybody looked at them like “What the hell is wrong with you? This is impossible. You can’t climb the highest mountain in the world…” So you have to focus on one goal and make the judgement: “Am I willing to go the extra mile and invest all the blood, sweat and tears to reach that goal?” If the answer is yes, go for it. That’s what I did and this is where it brought me. Everyone said I could not break the speed of sound. But I proved them wrong…’
 
To find out much more about how Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking jump – including how he conquered his fears and coped with his mental demons along the way – read In The Zone: How Champions Think and Win Big

It was a treat to visit the studios of Premier League Preview earlier this week to talk about the climax of the 2021-2022 season. Focusing on Manchester City's match away at West Ham on Sunday, we talked about how Pep Guardiola calls on the power of belief to turn in such an impressive string of strong performances when it matters.

The London Stadium has been a happy ground for Manchester City in recent years but this time the pressure is magnified as they aim to get over the line in the title race - potentially with a makeshift defence after a run of injuries. West Ham also head into the match on the back of a European semi-final disappointment of their own so they will be looking for a high at their last home game of the season.

Make no mistake: when you get this close to a title it's ALL about the mind. But if either team needs any more inspiration they can think back to all the peak performances at the very same stadium 10 years ago at the 2012 Olympics - as described by the likes of Jessica Ennis-Hill and Usain Bolt in the pages of In The Zone: How Champions Think and Win Big.

You can watch the final cut today on BT Sport at 6pm or Sky Sports at 7pm.

‘There is so much untapped potential in people it’s just incredible. It’s almost beyond belief, really. I feel it and I sense it through what I’ve experienced in my own journey. I’m from a humble beginning but the message of my story is that great things grow from small things.

'The magic lives inside every one of us, despite our environment, our struggles and our doubts. It takes courage to realise what that magic is, then to actually go out and try to achieve it. It’s the power of loving yourself, I suppose, and giving yourself a chance.’
 
In my years of researching the human being at the limit for In The Zone I’ve been privileged to meet over a hundred of the world’s biggest sports stars. But every now and again one of them sends me away with my head swimming. This time it is Australia’s national treasure Cathy Freeman, who has just summed up this entire book in a hundred words.
 
The magic of elite performance is that it always starts out small: with a dream. By nurturing it, crafting it and loving it, sport’s champions show us all the untapped power of the human mind. When we believe in what we conceive, the Zone can guide any of us to achieve anything. And it’s not just about sport.
 
More than simply a cliché, the Zone is the mental state required to perform at our own absolute limit in any field. This is the home of ‘genius’: where artists are at their most creative, where musicians produce their most sublime performances, where scientists make their breakthroughs. This doesn’t stop with the stars. Whether you’re a teacher, a chef, a nurse or an astronaut, if you’re taking an exam or cracking jokes in a pub, to find the Zone guarantees you hit your absolute best. You may not even recall how or why it went so right. Put simply, it all goes like a dream.
 
The Zone can kick in at every level from a kickabout in the park to the World Cup Final. It is just a blissful state where all internal chatter disappears and we truly go with the flow. We assume conscious thoughts drive us on, but it is when we give our subconscious free rein to do its natural thing that we truly shine. That often leads to a performance at the maximum of our potential, albeit beyond what our conscious minds ever imagined possible. This limit rises in proportion to the hours of practice in the bank and the intensity of the occasion. Blend the Zone with supreme ability and a packed, expectant arena and you get fireworks. This book features plenty of those but the good news is that we all have enough spark to match any of them, if only we take the trouble to live the dream.
 
‘The great achievers, winners, inventors, musicians and painters have all been great dreamers,’ says mind coach Don MacPherson. ‘What’s exciting is that anyone can visualise. We can use it in life’s everyday challenges like school exams or a driving test. If you have to make a best man’s speech, first picture your audience in as much detail as possible, using all your senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch. See yourself delivering your speech feeling relaxed and confident. Hear the audience laughing and clapping, then coming up to congratulate you.
 
‘These mind movies turbo-charge your confidence because the subconscious doesn’t know the difference between the real thing and something imaginary. Like all skills, the more you practise the better you get. But your brain loves a target so give it a big one like a great success. When you have it burned into your subconscious mind, switch focus to the process by visualising how you’re going to get there, step by step.’
 
This book draws on the testimony of the cream of the world’s brightest dreamers and most focused schemers to show we all have a chance to be a magician. Anyone with a dream can follow these greats all the way to the top of the world by setting their mind unflinchingly on their own specific quest.
 
How do champions think? They don’t. The original dream comes not from the head but the heart: conceive. No matter how long it takes, they don’t think they can, they know they can: believe. Finally, to truly peak they stop thinking at all: achieve.
           
We all have this potential if we can stop suppressing it ourselves or believing others who haven’t yet learned this universal truth. When we finally pay dreams the attention they deserve, the payback is a sea change in everything from self-belief to self-discipline, self-knowledge to self-esteem. Then a realisation dawns that buried within each of us is the power to make any dream come true, even if the process may initially seem more of a nightmare…
 
This extract is from In The Zone: How Champions Think and Win Big, out now

The sad news has reached me of the death of Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose seminal Seventies work Flow details how we are most alive when we’re fully engaged in what we are doing, whether it’s work or play.

In flow we live totally in the moment and are so absorbed in our task nothing else matters. We lose all sense of time along with real-life concerns such as hunger, ego and money – allowing our true self to flood out, along with any skills we have acquired along the way. Csikszentmihalyi first felt the sensation for himself in sport, rock-climbing as a teenager. He later found it painting, writing short stories and through decades of scientific research into his passion, which is to get us all living our dreams and finding flow for ourselves – throughout our lives.

I was privileged to interview Csikszentmihalyi five years ago for In The Zone. He was already into his eighties and I will be forever grateful for his kindness and generosity, not to mention the insights he shared with me after a life of chasing this magical state.

‘Of course we need to have something to live from,’ he told me. ‘If we are on the edge of starvation it’s more important to secure a good meal than to be proud of our musicianship or chess playing ability. But assuming our livelihood is taken care of, the added value of living comes from self-chosen challenges. That builds up our notion of who we are and what we can do, and it seems more conducive to a well-lived life than external or material success.

‘In my case climbing, painting and writing used to be almost all-consuming activities. Now I get most of my flow from my work and family. Luckily my wife and I have been married for half a century, we still enjoy doing things together and spend as much time as possible with our children and grandchildren. In the summer we go to a mountain retreat to go hiking, cook, talk, listen to music and make music. So there are lots of sources of flow, none of which I chose because they were flow. I only started cooking because I had to – when I was living alone and had no money to go out. But any activity can become enjoyable if you try to do it well. Then it becomes a flow activity.’

I’m delighted that Csikszentmihalyi could enjoy his final years, but it wasn’t always thus. He only embarked on his life’s work when he saw the end of World War Two as a child – and with it enough evidence to conclude adults had got life very wrong.

‘Most kids cope with such things with denial, waiting for it to go by and living in a pretend world where everything is okay,’ he told me. ‘I did that too, except I also tried to learn activities that were not related to the situation, but let me feel in control. While the bombs were falling in Budapest and people were dying in the streets, that’s when I learned to play chess. On a chess board I made my moves and felt in control. I might lose to a better opponent but it was logical: both parties played by the rules so I earned what I deserved. My opponent couldn’t just throw a rock at my pieces or pull the board away if they lost. So it was a logical world whereas the “real world” outside was falling apart into meaningless violence.

‘I was also helped by hiking and going out in nature, until the last years when it couldn’t be done. Some people learn a language or become versed in philosophy or religion. If we can find something to do that is under our control, it’s like an escape, not into meaningless consumer activity but into a world where rules make sense, we can learn them and we don’t suffer physically if we lose.’

In a world where the rules no longer make sense either, fear not. Csikszentmihalyi reckons these tactics – taking back real control of our inner world – can arm us with the capability to face even the worst forms of suffering the outside world can throw at us, adding: ‘In Victor Frankl’s depictions of the Nazi extermination camps, even there it was possible to carve out a little reality of your own by paying attention to people and being helpful to them. You remember the life you had outside and think maybe there is a possibility of returning to it one day. As long as you do it actively, it can help you overcome a lot of things that happen around you in real life.

‘The important thing is to realise that to a large extent you are in charge of what happens in your mind.’

The Olympics start tomorrow and elite athletes all over the world are dreaming big. For five long years they have dedicated their entire existence to Tokyo, regularly picturing the view as their national anthem sings out to a packed arena.

This is the justification for decades of focus on a single target: every early morning, every mile run through wind, hail and snow, every vomit-inducing gym session. All the pain will make sense when they reach the top of the world. Right?

Pity few enjoy this golden pay-off. The rest will fail – very publicly – in full view of their family, friends, nation and planet. That is guaranteed to hurt more than anything they’ve ever felt before.

“To fail to make a goal is one thing. To do it in front of two billion people is another. It’s heart-wrenching. When you work so hard and sacrifice so much… I literally felt my soul was being shattered.”

These are the words of Missy Franklin: the darling of the Aquatics Centre at the 2012 London Olympics, this ever-smiling 17-year-old American swam to four gold medals and charmed fans with her happy-go-lucky personality.

Cut to Rio in 2016 and it was a different story: she failed to reach the final of either of her individual events. Ouch. When I meet Franklin years later the humiliation remains etched in her mind.

“Throughout my life everything made sense to me: you work really hard, you make the sacrifices, you do everything you can, then you get faster and achieve your goals,” says Franklin. “That’s why Rio made no sense. I was in my best shape ever, I had my best trainer… and I had the most disappointing meet of my life.

“How does that work? It showed me the importance of mentality. Physically I might have been incredibly healthy, but mentally and emotionally I was in terrible health. That makes a huge difference. At 17 I was new; I didn’t have expectations. But now people knew what I did, and I started listening to their expectations. That was so hard, because before the Games started I felt I’d already failed. Even if I took home three gold medals it still wouldn’t be good enough: ‘Oh well, you got four in London…’

“I always swim my best when I’m enjoying myself, but that took all the fun away. I felt so heavy going in; so much pressure. They were the most miserable eight days of my life. It broke my heart to feel like that, because I was at my second Olympics and I wanted to enjoy every bit of the experience. But I’d rather have been anywhere else.”

Of course Franklin was not alone. The full scale of the mental health epidemic facing sport has only become apparent in recent years, as athletes come out with stories they may once have kept hidden. It’s not even limited to ‘losers’; the greats have their own demons to face, both before and after any fleeting euphoric high.

Franklin didn’t leave Rio empty-handed either, but she returned home with ‘only’ one gold medal – earned for helping her relay team through the heats; she wasn’t entrusted with a place for the final. This would be most people’s pride and joy but it serves only as a reminder of the week Missy’s world fell apart. She used to smile routinely before every race – partly to generate the positive attitude essential to performance, partly to remind herself ‘fun’ was key to everything she did. Now the smiles dried up.

The gloom was briefly lifted when she arrived home to find a sea of paper hearts on her front yard. They were covered in messages from local kids saying why Missy was their role model and why they still loved her. She began ‘hysterically sobbing’ out of gratitude to the people who stayed by her side. But it would not be the last time tears flowed as the magnitude of her failure hit home.

“The low went on for a while as I dealt with the confusion and pain,” admits Franklin. “I was so humbled by the whole experience, and it takes a long, long time. After that I went through bilateral shoulder surgery so I had to take time away from the water. I’d always been good at swimming, and it always worked out well, so it was easy to say: ‘My identity isn’t based in this.’ Now, for the first time, swimming was taken away – and I realised how much of my self-worth I put into the sport.

“When it doesn’t work out, how does that change your view of yourself? I had to take time to sit down with different people and work through: ‘Who am I? What do I value about myself?’ That was unrelated to what I did in the pool, but it takes a long time to grasp that. Now my relationship with swimming will never be the same. So it’s about accepting that; and that non-judgmental attitude towards myself is the most important thing I’ve been working on.”

It’s easy to see how an Olympian’s self-image can become so intertwined with what they achieve. Elite athletes live in a bubble where everything is measured, from every training session to every final. That’s fine when things are going swimmingly. When they’re not, self-esteem can sink as fast as their results. Sometimes it takes time away – enforced or otherwise – to regain any perspective.

In Franklin’s case her background studying psychology at the University of California gave her some backup. But there is no more brutally effective teacher than life itself. We all find this out at some point, but few of us honestly know how to treat triumph and disaster just the same. That’s why we look to learn from anyone who has already endured hardship and come out stronger on the other side.

This is where Missy Franklin has found her silver lining.

“My faith is important and one thing that stuck with me for the entire journey was that with God your pain has a purpose,” smiles Franklin. “There are times when you think: ‘This will never be worth it. Why am I having to deal with this? Will I ever get out?’ But everything I went through was moulding me into the woman I was supposed to become. It’s crazy to see how this has changed me. I’m a totally different person to what I was eight, four or two years ago; I’ve learned so much and I feel so strong.

“I now realise one of the main reasons we go through what we do is so we can help other people. Now I can talk to friends, athletes or strangers experiencing something similar, and share how I got through it. To see their gratitude and appreciation makes everything worth it.”

Still just 26 years old, Franklin made her official retirement from swimming late in 2018. She has since married fellow swimmer Hayes Johnson (and is now known as Missy Franklin Johnson) with their first child due next month. She is as bubbly as ever – but armed with uncommon wisdom for one so young. As such she can expect a full inbox over the coming weeks as her fellow ‘failures’ make their own tearful return from Japan.

But why stop there? Let’s face it: we all fail. Often. And it hurts every time. Indeed this modern life of screens has taken things to a new level. It means we can all ingest a daily overdose of apparent ‘good times’ not just courtesy of the rich and famous, but our own friends and family. That’s all we ever show in public too, but Franklin knows it’s when things are falling apart that we really need help.

“The main thing I can do is be open about my failures,” she adds. “As elite athletes we feel we have to be composed, confident and tough all the time; especially with social media, people only post the best aspects of their lives. People go on and think: ‘My life isn’t anything like that.’ But nobody’s life is like that. You’re only seeing the good, and nobody’s life is only the good.

“We have to recognise it’s not real. If we want to follow an athlete or celebrity, fine, but it’s crucial to realise their lives are not exciting and wonderful all the time. This feeling that we have to constantly compare ourselves is dangerous. Comparison and judgement are two of the most harmful practices a human can do, yet it’s what social media is all about. And what we see can often be so skewed and wrong. It’s OK to be exactly who we are and not this ideal self we post to everyone else.

“When we are vulnerable and share the hard times; the bad, the shame, guilt, anxiety and depression, that’s when we impact people. Lots of athletes say to me: ‘I had no idea you experienced anxiety attacks before you raced. I have anxiety attacks, but I can’t believe YOU had them!’ That’s what they can relate to, and where they really need help. We don’t need to help someone get through a good time, right?”

We all start life as dreamers. Whether we picture our future selves as footballers, film stars or astronauts, we have a natural, effortless ability to transport ourselves into any reality we choose. Then we grow up – and most of us give up.

That’s not entirely our fault. Parents and teachers usually mean well but rarely grasp the power their words have. The world’s most effective dream destroyer is the phrase: ‘You’ll never earn a living doing that…’

Ian Cartabiano is one of the lucky few who slipped through the net. The son of a toy designer father and an artist mother, he once saw his Dad draw a Ferrari Testarossa and promptly started doodling cars for himself – until, aged 12, he knew this was what he wanted to do. Forever.

Thirty years later Cartabiano is still living the dream, having designed many of Toyota and Lexus’s most striking cars of recent years. And I was lucky to speak to him about his creative process, his moments in the Zone and more. Read the full article here.

As part of this interview series, which will continue over the coming months, I also enjoyed having a chat with Lexus sportscar ace Jack Hawksworth (pictured above). He described the work he puts in on visualisation and other techniques to make sure he finds the Zone every time he gets behind the wheel. Read the full article here.

The loss of boxing legend Marvin Hagler has capped off a sad weekend for sports lovers.

It was a huge privilege to meet the great man several times, most recently a year ago at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Berlin, where I gave him a copy of In The Zone to thank him for the interview he gave me for the book. I couldn't resist grabbing the chance to have another short chat, and I'm so glad I did. Thank you Champ. Here is what he told me…

How powerful is failure on the route to success?
I don’t think you think about failure. What you do is you feed the faith and you starve the doubt. That’s how you don’t fail. If you feel as though you are a winner, you are a winner. Nobody likes the fact of losing but sometimes by losing it can help you grow. The thing is that you have to learn from your mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes you’re not going to learn.

A lot of people feel that they fail a lot more than they succeed in life, I’m one of them…
You’ve got to realise one thing: it’s never too late. That’s what life is all about. You have another opportunity and it’s what you make of it. Life is what you make of it. That’s basically what I try to do every day.

Have you taken the attitude you had as a boxer to everything you’ve done since?
My boxing has been my best education in the world. I learned from my mistakes. A lot of times we make mistakes but one thing you don’t want to do is make a mistake in that ring… In boxing if you get knocked down, you’re going to have to get straight back up or you’re going to have to start all over again. Sometimes it’s a long road coming back.

On the way up, before turned pro, did you ever allow doubts into your mind?
I don’t think so. Again, you have to starve the doubt and feed the faith. I learned that young. But what helps is when you’ve got people like your family surrounding you who help and support you. Then when you feel down, family can help build you back up before you really hurt yourself or have any doubts about yourself. Family plays a really big part in growing up.

Did you have any specific mentor that helped you along the way?
I had my manager and trainer. They have both passed away but I think about them a lot. They were the ones who guided me in the right direction. That’s basically where you want to keep it. They’re the ones who really gave me the strength to keep going and be the person I am – because they gave me the faith.

And have you since passed on that faith to others?
Yes, this is the reason I’m here at Laureus right now. Because of all the things that I learned at the early part of my career, what you want to do is to be able to return something to someone else and see them grow in the right direction. So they are not living in fear but giving them hope, and saying that if I made it, you can make it too. What does it take? It takes hard work. It’s giving something back to the young kids – and hopefully one day you’re going to see them grow up.

When you give like that, does that give you something back too?
It does. It makes you feel good. I’ve given to a lot of kids – just a bit of a boxing lesson or something. What is a great feeling is if you see the kid again in the future. You never know if you will see them again but if you do bump into them and they say: ‘Do you remember me?’ And I say: ‘No, who are you, kid?’ And they say: ‘Well, you showed me a couple of punches. I used that – and you know what’s happening now? I’m getting ready to go for the Olympics.’ I say: ‘No…’ and they say: ‘Yes it was thanks to you. You really gave me that inspiration.’ That’s what makes me feel proud.

If you can get one kid off the streets, it’s a blessing…

It was a pleasure to speak to Ryan Hartley of the Always Better Than Yesterday podcast earlier this month. You can check it out in the video above, where we talk about the Zone and its relationship to everyone from Travis Pastrana to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi...

And if you're in the mood for a really good listen, check out this podcast by the Enterprise Sales Club's Adrian Evans with the irrepressible mind coach Don MacPherson, author of an exceptional new book How to Master Your Monkey Mind.

Huge thanks this month go to hurling ace Gearóid Hegarty, who was the man of the match as his Limerick team triumphed in the 2020 All Ireland final against Waterford - see video below.

While later speaking to the Irish press, Hegarty said: "I read a book, In the Zone, by Clyde Brolin, and it's all about flow and getting into flow...

"I got a bit of a slagging after the match because I came into the dressing-room and knew I was after having a really good game, but genuinely didn't know what I scored. So I got out my phone and texted my girlfriend who was at home watching it and she said, 'yeah, you got seven points'.

"I was really in the zone. I can hardly remember some parts of the game. I know it's a saying, but it was like an out of body experience at times. It didn't even feel like it was me."

Newspapers who published the quotes included the Irish Sun, Irish Mirror, Irish Examiner, Irish Times, Independent and Sunday World.

Mind blown. Thank you Gearóid, now officially my favourite ever sportsperson...