"Great performers focus on what they are doing, and nothing else.... They are able to engage in a task so completely that there is no room left for self-criticism, judgment, or doubt; to stay loose and supremely, even irrationally, self-confident...They let it happen, let it go. They couldn't care less about the results." ~ Dr. John Eliot from Overachievement

Reminds me of Krishna's advice to Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita. He says to his tentative warrior: "The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results."

Brilliant.

When you sit down to write or to negotiate a deal or to program a piece of software or to paint or to parent or to do whatever it is that you do, are you focused completely on what you are doing? Or are you focused on the results of the action—and all the ways you can slip up here or slip up there?

As Dr. Eliot advises, don't worry about the results and just "...stay loose and supremely, even irrationally, self-confident... let it happen..."!!

And, he says: "I have found that the top players in every field think differently when all the marbles are on the line. Great performers focus on what they are doing, and nothing else... They are able to engage in a task so completely that there is no room left for self-criticism, judgment, or doubt; to stay loose and supremely, even irrationally, self-confident; to just step up and do what they're good at, concentrating only on the simplest nature of their performance."