That apply to everyday life.

Last week I spent some time sketching bridges, particularly railway bridges. I'm very fortunate to live next to the river Thames and near two impressive railway bridges, Barnes and Kew. Whilst these are engineering necessities, they are also aesthetically compelling. They are demonstrations of strength and confidence. Engineering matched with architectural skill and economic prosperity. More than almost anything else, the railways, and particularly their bridges and stations, are symbolic of confident pride.

Railways are networks linking people to other people, and with connectivity and collaboration comes invention and innovation. It is a well-researched fact that innovation happens better when people share and exchange ideas. Connectivity, linking diverse people and ideas, is the key to how innovation happens. Ideas evolve naturally by connection, collaboration, piggy-backing on existing technologies and knowledge.

Exposing yourself to different and diverse influences enriches your associative imagination and is the engine of development and progress. Sketching every day, which wasn't my regular practice until a month ago, exposes me to skill development and to consider and contemplate all sorts of things that I may not have considered if I'd just kept my head down. By spending time looking at these fabulous structures, I am drawn away from my usual world and led to consider their design and what they symbolise (even if they are faded and rusty).

Progress and change are difficult if you don't absorb new information from other sources. If you always do the same thing and surround yourself with the same influences, why would anything change? As far as I can see, change and progress only happen when something different happens, and we are a sufficiently restless species to seek out change constantly. This is why we always need to replenish our stock of things that might influence us. Where nothing changes, things remain stagnant. With new information, observations and experiences, we change.

The paradox is that at the same time as seeking change and novelty, we also want to make things simple, automatic and repetitive. We form habits so that we can save precious mental energy. We form beliefs and mental models so that we can formalise our attitudes to how the world works.

Daily sketching, as enjoyable as it is, can also become routine if allowed to. The secret, I think, is to allow what you're looking at to influence what you see and what you think. Sketching, like anything, can become a vehicle for growth. We can use anything as a vehicle for growth; mine, at this moment, happens to be daily sketching.

Sports psychology and sport science have a lot to say about how we can move from competence to mastery and how we might apply their lessons to our everyday lives. It requires effort and grit, but it needs to be done in the right way.

Deliberate Practice

In his book, "Peak", Anders Ericsson outlines how elite athletes achieve mastery and continuous improvement by using a method he calls, Deliberate Practice.

Deliberate practice is restricted to fields where there is already an accumulated knowledge of effective training techniques. You would need to have gone through the beginner stage of Naïve Practice, where you learn the rules and basic skills to a level where you can perform adequately. Naive practice is doing the best you can with the skills you already have.

It's not the amount of practice you do that will move you forward; instead, it's how you do it that makes the difference. What Andersson says is that anyone who trains in the right way could achieve high-level results.

It might be tempting to think that outstanding achievement requires natural ability, aptitude or gifts. But Andersson says that these skills are learnt. For some, this is learnt at a very young age, and he cites the examples of Mozart and Tiger Woods. Training alone could not explain their prodigious performances. If we look more closely, there is a nurturing parent that helped the child at a very your age in almost all prodigious cases.

Some congenital physical, mental and health conditions are apparent constraints. Likewise, height or body size may also be contributing factors.

To progress beyond naïve practice (what most of us do), an athlete would need to have immediate and actionable feedback and the assistance of a coach or mentor.

The price of elite performance is very high, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some things we can take from sport psychology that are useful to us in our everyday lives.

1. Nervous is good

Most of us become nervous at the thought of performing. Particularly in competitive or very public scenarios. The trick used by elite athletes and performers is to use those nerves but to reframe those feelings.

When the nerves or anxiety kick in, it activates changes in your body; your heart beats faster, you have a strange sensation in your stomach, your body seems to be preparing you to run away by heightening all your senses. The more you tell yourself to calm down, the more it escalates.

The influx of adrenaline before you perform, causing anxiety, is normal. The trick is to reframe the feeling from panic to excitement.

Reframing

Mel Robbins, one of the most booked speakers globally, uses this technique every time she goes on stage to talk. She explains that her brain gets into a state of hyper-alertness and wants to interpret the way the body feels as anxiety. The mind finds a reason why the body is agitated and explains it as a danger. Anxiety is a state of arousal and is very similar to excitement.

Simply repeating: "I'm not nervous, I'm excited". It reframes the nerves and feelings and allows you to perform at a higher and more positive level.

Chris Hoye, the six-time Olympic Gold medalist, never uses the word nervous but reframes it as "exciting" or "adrenalized". He says the feeling never goes away, but it can be used to advantage if it's re-directed to positive emotions.

2. Mentally rehearse – Visualisation

Most elite athletes will use some form of visualisation to see, in their minds-eye, their performance. They rehearse how it will go in their mind before they actively take part.

This involves using all the senses as vividly as possible, what it sounds like to succeed, the smells, the taste, the emotions, what you see as you pass the winning post. Or sail over the bar at 2.45 metres. By using all the senses and as much emotion as possible, athletes "frame" their mind for the feeling of success.

Visualisation is mentally rehearsing an event and has been shown to influence outcomes. Musicians use a similar technique, mentally rehearsing the piece they are about to play.

Visualisation has also been shown to increase confidence and motivation, making success a self-fulfilling prophecy—the more visualisation, the more belief in the ability; the more self-belief, the more confidence. The more confidence, the more you stack odds in your favour to succeed.

"I might visualise the final… I run through it as if I'm running it. It's quite fun. You kind of have to win, or else there's no point."
Dina Asher-Smith

3. Self-Talk. Find your mantra

Mohammed Ali always said, "I am the greatest". His self-talk convinced not only himself that he was the greatest but often also his opponents. He repeated this to himself long before he became a world champion.

Negative thoughts reduce confidence. The technique that elite athletes use is self-talk, which helps them reduce anxiety, build confidence and provide focus.

Elite athletes learn that their self-talk, which must be positive and affirmative, will persuade their minds that this is the truth and help create greater motivation and confidence.

Self-talk can also be highly destructive. Allowing negative self-talk to dominate your mind will undermine self-belief and, therefore, performance.

Many athletes will develop a mantra that they will chant to themselves before they compete. Some will keep this posted somewhere where they can constantly see it.

Daily affirmations are simple, positive statements declaring specific goals in their completed states. The technique you use to do this begins with daily affirmations, which are simply statements that describe a goal in its already completed state. Although they sound rather basic, these empowering mantras have profound effects on the conscious and unconscious mind.

4. Think Forward

Too much retrospection, if not constructive, can cause a lack of motivation. Sports scientists advocate using past experience to inform the future. Focusing on a future outcome instead of a past failure allows the mind to frame the future.

Converting feedback into a positive, objective future rather than allowing the future to be shaped by mistakes and errors.

5. Don't do the work yourself; let others help you.

One of the foundations of deliberate practice is working with a coach or mentor.

It isn't easy to be objective about performance when you don't have someone outside yourself to see what you are doing and give you constructive feedback.

All top sports stars get a lot of help and coaching, not just physical, but also mental.

Kenyan long-distance runner, Eliud Kipchoge, broke the two-hour marathon record. He achieved this feat with the help of 41 pace-makers and a crowd cheering him on to help him succeed. He knew that his performance would be boosted by his pace-makers and by the crowds.

6. Switch off clear your mind

Finally, athletes will be encouraged to "switch off" before a major competition to relax and clear their minds. Some will listen to music others will walk

Relaxation and taking a break will also reduce anxiety and help concentration.

Being an athlete isn't like having a regular job, of course. It requires mental toughness, resilience and grit. Years of training can culminate in less than one shot lasting no more than 11 seconds; even with the perfect training and coaching, some never win.

Sports science has made considerable strides in the last few years, and many of its techniques and discoveries are highly applicable to everyday life. We can learn a lot about ourselves by using knowledge and practices that take us away from our daily routines.

Six things we can learn from railway bridges and elite sports