3rd July 2014 – The Telegraph – Why did Andy Murray fail and how can he recover?

A pressure cooker would be light relief for Andy Murray after yesterday’s match.

The morning after Murray was knocked out of the Wimbledon Championship, he had to come to turns with losing that precious trophy. To help him cope with the failure, here are a few tips on how to move on from psychologist Dr Nerina Ramlakhan.

Stay Calm

To cope with failure and move on to success, you have to learn to regulate your emotions. Dr Ramlakhan recommends breathing techniques, meditation and yoga as “power tools” to stay calm, but says that practice off the court will improve performance in the game. “When you’re playing a game and you’ve got the eyes of the world on you, you’re not going to be thinking, ‘What’s that mindfulness technique?’ It needs to become an unconscious competence.”

Turn off the negative voices

When you’re in a stressful situation, the part of the brain that handles stress – the flight of fight response – can disconnect you from logic. “You might start to listen more to that negative self talk,” explains Dr Ramlakhan. “A lot of athletes have got to their level of achievement because they’re perfectionists, they’re very hard on themselves. But one has to learn how to turn the volume down on that voice.”

Dr Nerina Ramlakhan is a stress specialist at Nightingale Hospital London and author of Tired but Wired, on how to overcome sleep problems.

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