These cards are the culmination of over a quarter century of practicing and teaching mindfulness and mental skills strategies to athletes, coaches, educators, kids, parents, and professionals.
When I teach mindfulness, I like to use a framework called the 2BSET model of awareness.
This stands for the 2 B’s (Breath & Body), S (Senses), E (Emotions), and T (Thoughts). These are our five mindful anchors that we can use to bring us into the moment at any time. To be successful in your sport, you have to be set and ready to play your sport from the very beginning. The 2BSET anchors of awareness ground us in the moment so we can play or compete at our very best.
There are seven different categories of cards including five spotlight cards that introduce you to each one of the 2BSET mindful anchors.
57 total Activity Cards broken down as follows:
Breath (7)
Body (7)
Senses (8)
Emotions (6),
Thoughts (10)
Integrated Practice (11)
Scenarios (8)
Breath Cards
Breath cards focus on various ways to use our breath to manage stress, anxiety, and our overall energy levels to help us create an unshakeable core of calm.
Body Cards
Body cards highlight ways we can use and tune into our physical body to help ground us into the moment.
Senses Cards
Senses cards key in on ways to use all of our physical senses including our insight to help us expand our awareness and improve our court/field vision.
Emotions Cards
Emotions cards offer ways to use and better connect with our feelings to help support our play, confidence, emotional mastery, and performance.
Thoughts Cards
Thoughts cards dive deeper into our mental processes and imagination so we can gain more clarity of mind and space to propel us into a much more positive frame of mind.
Spotlight Cards
Spotlight cards highlight the overall concepts within each area.
Integrated Practice
Integrated Practice cards combine two or more of the mindful anchors in their application. These are a bit more advanced mindful practices.
Scenario Cards
Scenarios cards are specific situations for you to consider which mindful sports performance strategies would work best for you.
SUGGESTED USES FOR THE CARDS
There are 38 total 2BSET mindful anchor cards and eleven integrated practice cards.
It’s best to start with at least one of each category of the 2BSET mindful anchor cards -- breath, body, senses, emotions, or thoughts -- before moving on to the more advanced integrated practices.
Each 2BSET mindful anchor has their own spotlight card that highlights the overall concept. These provide a little extra insight into each of the different awareness anchors. Make sure to refer to these cards often when choosing from the different mindful anchor categories.
The scenarios cards are best used as application questions after you have already had experience with the 2BSET anchor and integrated practice cards. These cards are designed for you to consider which of the mindful strategies you’ve learned would work best for you in each of the different scenarios. There really are no right or wrong answers here, just some tools that might be more effective for different people in various situations.
If you are already familiar with some of the mindfulness and mindset skills as you look through the 2BSET mindful anchor cards, then feel free to start using the integrated practice cards sooner.
SELF-ASSESSMENT
Self-assessment is important for being able to fine tune our performance. We can use the analogy of a traffic signal with RED, YELLOW, and GREEN to assess any area of our athletics, academics, or lives. Ask: Where are we at?
RED: Indicates we’re stuck or stopped right now and need some immediate attention/action. Recognize what’s keeping us in the red and the steps we need to take to move out.
YELLOW: There’s a bit of caution in this area right now and we may need to slow down and observe more carefully. What can we do to shift into green?
GREEN: Things in this area are ok or moving along well. What’s working now? Anything we can add or stop doing to help us remain in green?
It’s possible to be in green in an area one day and red the next. For instance, you get injured. You can also go from red to yellow or green. Perhaps you had a conflict that was positively resolved.
COACHES/PROFESSIONAL PERSONNEL
If you are a coach, you may initially want to choose just one or two of the 2BSET mindful anchor cards at a time to share with your athletes. Then as your athletes get more versed in the different mindful anchors, you can start sharing the integrated practice cards.
You could also have small groups of athletes each work on one of the cards and then share/teach that mindful practice with/to another group or to the whole team.
Once your athletes have a good understanding of the main mindful concepts and practices, you can start introducing some of the Scenarios cards to your athletes or create a few of your own unique scenarios to your team and situation.
It is my hope that these cards help you to create an unshakeable core of calm, confidence, and optimism so that you can perform at your absolute very best and beyond both on and off the court/field/course/rink/pool/mat/track, etc.