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Performance = Potential – Interference

Timothy Gallwey identifies Self-1 as your judgmental, overcontrolling and self-doubting inner voice, and Self-2 as your true self and potential. The inner conflict that arises between both selves represents the interference (in the above equation), which directly impacts your performance. This is where many people confuse it as their potential, hence creating self-limiting beliefs.

Forced focus is the attempt of your Self-2 to remove or mask the distraction coming from Self-1. Even if successful, Gallwey (1999) argues such focus is too difficult to maintain, hence not sustainable and ineffective in the long term. This is where the forced focus itself becomes a distraction, which directly impacts your performance.

Self-focus, on the other hand, is a more long-lasting and efficient focus that naturally results from motivation and desire. When Self-2 is fully engaged in the task at hand and connected to your genuine motivation to achieve your innate goals, this occurs. Self-focus is caused by three main factors, according to Gallwey:

• awareness
• choice
• trust

“There is no easy trick to staying focused. It takes awareness, choice, trust, and a lot of practice.”

– Gallwey, 1999-

When approaching a task or situation, awareness brings clarity and enhances comprehension. This is in line with the main goal of coaching, which is to help coachees become more self-aware so they can better understand their situation and reflect on their choices.

However, awareness encompasses not only your desires and motivations but also your thought processes and actions throughout the process. Being aware of your own interferences resulting from your internal conflict between Self-1 and Self-2 is the first step toward focusing.

Choice is a smooth path to self-focus, but it also shows that there are options. In his book Predictably Irrational (2008), Ariely (2008) talked about how our irrational tendency to keep our options open can become a distraction. We can better identify our priorities when we have strong self-awareness, resulting in decisions that are less irrational and more effective.

Gallwey argues that we have the power to choose which self to nurture when he explains the concept of “choice.” This brings us to the third focus, trust, which Gallwey defines as having greater faith in our spontaneous Self-2 rather than listening to Self-1’s doubts.

To put it another way, it implies having self-confidence by acknowledging that we cannot possibly know everything. This, in turn, encourages us to focus more on what we are learning. We are reducing the interferences and resolving our inner conflict, which is between our two selves, resulting in a performance that is closer to our true potential (Gallwey).

In a nutshell, ignoring our internal conflict and covering up distractions may help us focus for a while, but it won’t last and will make the gap between your actual performance and potential wider. The key is to train ourselves to do a lot of self-reflection so that we can better comprehend and control our inner game.