Today is December 14 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you practice mindfulness, or staying in the present moment?”
George Mumford, author of The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance, has been helping athletes understand how to stay in the moment.
Mumford’s backstory is truly remarkable. He played basketball at the University of Massachusetts (where he roomed with Dr. J, Julius Erving). Unfortunately injuries forced Mumford out of the game he loved. The meds that relieved the pain of his injuries, however, also numbed him to the emptiness he felt without the game and eventually led him to heroin.
After years as a functioning addict, Mumford enrolled in Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program, and made meditation, on and off the cushion, the center of his life. He kicked drugs, earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology and began teaching meditation to inmates and others.
One example is the NBA team the Golden State Warriors.
During the 2015-2016 season the San Francisco Bay Area’s NBA team, the Golden State Warriors, broke the record for the best opening to an NBA season by going 16-0. After the decisive win elite point guard Stephen Curry told the New York Times, “You got to continue to just stay in the moment. When you stay in the moment, good things happen, because everybody’s just wrapped up in the process.”
The team is led by head coach Steve Kerr—who played for the Chicago Bulls during the Michael Jordan era—and was taught meditation and how to refine the inner game by Mumford.
Kerr told his players on Tuesday before their pregame shoot around that he wanted them to exude four qualities:
Joy
Mindfulness
Compassion
Competition
Not your conventional formula for athletic performance, but it seems to be working. The Warriors’ current streak comes on the heels of last year’s spectacular performance in the NBA Finals.
In his rookie year as an NBA head coach in 2015, Kerr led the Warriors to their first championship in 30 years beating the Cleveland Cavaliers 4 games to 2.
In his second year as an NBA head coach in 2016, Kerr once again led the Warriors to the championship round but loss to the Cavaliers 4 games to 3.
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