A person may have 30,000 to 50,000 automatic thoughts per day, of which 70% to 80% are negative. Disrupting such thoughts can improve results, enjoyment and overall well-being.

That’s according to Russ Rausch, founder of mentoring and coaching firm VisionPursue.

“There is a direct link between emotional state, and performance and results,” Rausch said. “That emotional state is driven by our mindset. Most of us are on an autopilot mindset where we don’t think about the mindset. When you’re on autopilot you’re going to have a negative and volatile emotional state, and not be in control of it. When you’re not in control, you get volatility and not-great results.”

Rausch will speak at Markets Media’s Chicago Trading and Investing conference on Tuesday, Sept. 23. He will be joined by Jon McGraw, a founding member of VisionPursue and a former National Football League player, and Scott Podsednik, a motivational speaker and a former Major League Baseball player. Podsednik has local appeal, as he starred on the 2005 World Series Champion Chicago White Sox.

“VisionPursue is about creating the mindset that’s going to give you a positive emotional state, or state of being,” said Rausch, who is also chief operating officer at Emil van Essen LLC, a Commodity Trading Advisor. “An emotional state that is going to put you in the best possible position to get great results, and in such a way that you enjoy it and maximize your well-being.”

Rausch stresses mindfulness, which he distinguishes from positive thinking and says can be achieved by interrupting negative thinking. VisionPursue promotes mindfulness with its clients, which include professional golfers, tennis players and football players.

McGraw, who was a safety for the Kansas City Chiefs, Detroit Lions and New York Jets over a 10-year NFL career, sometimes fell prey to automatic thinking during his playing days. “It made him think about mistakes he made in prior games, and he would have performance anxiety about the next game,” Rausch said. “It was keeping him out of the present moment and hurting his training and recuperation.”

“Mindfulness takes you out of that and brings you to the present moment,” Rausch continued. “The last game doesn’t exist, and the future game doesn’t exist.”

Featured image via : Flickr/Trendsmap under CC