Imagine two identical twins standing on top of the ski hill, both muscular and fit, and neither of them has skied before.
Will they have identical behaviour and ski the same?If the twins have different thoughts then they will ski differently because it is the invisible world of thought that is responsible for creating what is experienced in the physical world.
Different thoughts will create different skiing experiences.
One twin is cautious about the idea of skiing, whereas the other wants to go for it.
Which one progresses fastest in skiing in your view?That's right, the courageous one.
With time they develop their own individual skiing style until a point is reached where skiing progress stops.
Having reached this point, they no longer feel the buzz of the early ski days and stagnation creeps in.
They've reached a skiing plateau where they no longer progress and the thrill of skiing is not what it used to be.
How has this happened? Skiing Knowledge Bruce Lee was perhaps the greatest Martial Arts Master who ever lived.
He would put his students in front of a glass of coke and a glass of water and and say: "I want you to look at that coke and let it represent your knowledge...
while this clear water is my knowledge, this is what you want from me but I can't give you my knowledge because there is too much of yours.
As long as you hold on to this (the coke) I can't give you this (the water)".
It is our "knowledge", or conditioning that is holding us back.
Our beliefs create our results on the ski hill, and in our lives.
How many times have you moaned about your bad skiing habits? Those ski habits find their origin in your normal life and they are all you've got when you are pointing your skis down the hill.
The speed of your progress and the degree to which you enjoy skiing depends on your ability to empty your metaphorical glass of past conditioning and on your ability to carefully choose what new beliefs to fill it up with.
Our culture tells us to horde material things even when we no longer need them and it appears that it has also taught us to pursue and horde thoughts that no longer serve us in positive ways.
Bruce Lee suggests that we discard our old ways and make the necessary room to house our future behaviour because there can be no other way if we want to progress in our skiing.
In the glass of every skier that I have known in twenty-five years of coaching, there is a very sticky thought process that does not empty easily.
In my experience, absolutely everyone, regardless of skiing standard is a victim of this process at some point.
The sticky thought process is FEAR.
With advanced skiers or even trainee instructors, the leaning back process driven by fear is almost invisible to the untrained eye, yet it is happening, and when I tell people what they're doing without video to back it up, they don't believe it because it is not something that they feel conscious of.
We are oblivious to many of our fears.
A way to bring the message into our awareness is with frame-by-frame ski video analysis.
Not surprisingly, the tougher and steeper the slope, the more obvious the process becomes.
My friend Igor who's an ex member of the Slovenian national ski team and a terrific ski coach once witnessed a governing body of ski instructors unable to agree about what was undermining the slalom performance of a promising racer.
With the debate still going on, Igor watched the racer in the gates, saw the problem right away and said, "he's too far back, he's afraid".
Interestingly, Igor's accurate observations of the effect - too far back - and of the cause - he's afraid - wasn't what was being debated by the governing body of ski instructors as none of them had seen it.
What can we do to overcome fear and improve our skiing? Now you know what to watch out for in your own skiing.
Even if you cannot feel yourself leaning back at the start of your turns, take my word for it you probably are.
The process is an emotional one, so look for the presence of this emotion inside your being.
The emotion is there, if it weren't there, you would not be leaning back.
Movements executed by the physical body always result from thoughts, whether subconscious or conscious.
This is empowering because it gives you something to act upon.
Action begins by perceiving your emotions when skiing, or on the ski hill; you'll be amazed at just how much is going on that you weren't aware of, and most of what you're unaware of is a disguised form of fear.
These hidden thoughts of fear left in the glass is what controls skiing and will continue to do so until they've been replaced with something else, which takes courage, curiosity, enthusiasm and responsibility.
Letting go of fear to make room for joy and performance implies breaking free from the mindset of the status quo, which stole your spirit in the first place.
To help skiers find their spirit, I wrote a book called "Ski as You Think".
The first five chapters focus on emptying the glass and propose a "faith based" system to generate results rather than the more usual "fear based" system.
Part two describes ski technique using faith-based principles.
Part three is about alignment.
Alignment describes the influence that ski equipment has on our body and why we should optimise it.