My Story

I’m going to share a little personal story with you. On the day of my college graduation at age thirty (yes, I went back when I was older and was determined to get my degree) I received a gift watch. On it was engraved, Romans 12:2:

“Do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewal of the mind”

Why? Because for many years after my return to the United States from a long and trying time living in Warsaw, Poland, I recited this verse every single day. I had to. I came home feeling very negative about life and the things of this world.

But instead of dwelling in the events overseas or life in general, I decided to be proactive and to change my mindset. I would get up early and I would walk or run. I would count my blessings, one by one. After some time, I began to renew my mind. I didn’t even realize it at the time, but I became not only a more positive thinker but also, more importantly, a very grateful person. At that time in my life I had days where blessings to count were few and far between (or so I thought), yet by continual and faithful practice, I began to see things differently. My mind was changing and in turn, it changed my heart, my passion, and my drive to succeed.

This is not to say that this is the only way for everyone, but I wanted you to know that this is not only a scientific piece or some self-help crap of some sorts, but a personal piece I want to share with you as a fellow athlete and as a coach. I am here to tell you firsthand that anyone can renew his or her mind.

Here are some helpful ways to change your perspective. Whether you are an athlete or not, you might just find these tips are applicable to you as well.

Count Your Blessings – One by One

Transforming the athletic mind means proactively listing positives. You might not be in the mood to do that after a failed effort, but feelings don’t matter here. Crummy performance on the platform or a poor sprint time, it doesn’t matter. Yes, it stinks but you must count your blessings anyway.

Let me clarify here, though, and tell you that this is not the same thing as making excuses. There is a big difference between saying, “Well. It’s okay. It was hot out there on the track and my legs were sore from yesterday,” and realistically and positively saying “Hey, you know what? Despite the heat and my workout yesterday, that was still a better time than last year – and I ran that one in the winter!”

Track Your Way Through

Write things down and record them. Feelings are not the same as results. For example, feeling like you had a crappy lift and seeing that it was a fifteen-pound personal best are very different things. But in order to know that, you have to record it. You have to know where you were previously to realistically see where you are now. From those two things (not “feelings”) you can set realistic goals for where you want to end up.

I am a fan of Garmin watches and scales, log books, and goals. Many people aren’t, and more and more these days people are relying on feelings more than reality and results. Let me dare you here. I dare you to take an honest look today at where you really are and I promise you that a month from now (as long as you are putting in real work) you will thank me. One of two things will happen: you will see where you are slacking or you will see where you have improved. Both can and should be great pushes forward toward success. “Feeling” fat or like you had a poor workout will look different to you when you see what you did or what you weighed the last time you tracked yourself – on paper. It might just renew your mind.

Execution

So here we are. Now that we have a log of where we are or have been, we know where we either need to improve or what specifically has or has not been working. Based on these things we can move forward the right way and with a concrete plan. To do that you must get after it. You can write down a life plan, training plan, meal plan, or business plan over and over again, but the execution of that plan is quite another thing altogether. That is the real test. Plain and simple. You have to really want to change and you need to understand that success, improvement, change, and new mindsets do not come overnight. This is not a one-night transformation but a renewal and by renewal I mean a continual and constant state.

The Go-Getter

“Oh forgive me Bill, I forgot about your left arm.”

“Say, look here, sir, “ Bill Peck retorted, “I’m big enough and ugly enough to play one-handed golf.”

“But have you ever tried it?”

“No, sir,” Bill Peck replied seriously, “but-it shall be done!”

 (From The Go-Getter by Peter B. Kyne)

We know where we have come from and where we are now. Let’s go forward. And let’s not just go forward, but let’s get to where we want to go efficiently and with the right mindset. We must train the mind systematically to keep going. We will have bad days and discouraging days. It is inevitable, but how we recover is vital to our success so let’s train the mind as we train the body. When one is failing or close to giving up, the other will take over. Systematic training involves mindfulness and awareness.

Mindfulness

Being mindful means asking yourself: “Where am I right now at this particular moment?” and “What real gains have I made?” Reframing this view of yourself and your training is important especially if you have had a long history of defeat or negative events. We can eliminate emotional feelings and thoughts by being mindful and seeing things just as they are. Be careful not to be overly thrilled with progress but also do not be overly depressed by a lack of “progress.”

Awareness

Being aware is also key. “Failure” is a thought about the experience and not the experience itself. Again, how you recover is the key to succeeding the next time. The bad situation (even though you might not have lived up to your own or someone else’s expectations) is not to be labeled “failure” forever but instead should be called a learning experience. You are not the failure. Awareness will help lead you away from the emotions and sensations you have tied to disappointment (and yourself) and instead towards acceptance of what actually happened. There is far more turmoil and suffering with emotion than from a realistic perspective.

Note: Being mindful and aware are not bulldozers through resistance. It just doesn’t work that way. You have to systematically practice this mindset and in that way you can begin to chip away at the issue starting with the edges. Keep your hope and vision alive – especially during some of the greatest pain and trials

The body is stronger than the mind, but the mind is the motor.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post The Athletic Mind, Part 2: Training Yourself to Be a Positive Thinker appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The mind is weaker than the body; so just imagine what the body could do with the right mindset. Fears and self-doubt can stop an athlete in his or her tracks long before the body quits. Mental fitness is absolutely key to performance, and without it there can be no true optimal performance of any task or skill.

The Pessimistic Athlete

When something bad happens, pessimists and optimists respond differently, and they do so particularly in the way that they explain bad events (personal defeats, injury, setbacks, or loss) and the impact these events have on their lives.

Pessimists tend to use an attributional style of explaining events by attributing everything that happens to themselves. Pessimists believe that the event will forever impact their entire life. You might hear a pessimistic athlete say, “It’s me. I am terrible at this and now I am injured. I will never recover and my entire career is over.” Failing at a task or an event can lead someone who catastrophizes events to think they were just always bad at something and now the event proves it or that they are indeed failures and always will be.

Risk of this mindset: Depression, physical symptoms of stress and depression, hormonal and immune system changes.

The Optimistic Athlete

How the optimistic athlete views the same bad events is a different story. The optimists don’t blame themselves or, even if they do, they only see the setbacks as temporary events that will soon pass or be resolved. Optimists cope with bad events and they move on. In the optimistic perspective, it is the specific consequences and not the impact on your entire life that are important. You might hear the optimistic athlete say, “I really blew that event, but I will figure it out for next time. A few adjustments on technique and I can nail it.”

Benefits of this mindset: Protection from depression, disease, illness, poor eating and/or health habits.

The Renewal of the Mind

So then, is it the world or is it how we see the world that moves us to experience it in one of these two ways? It boils down to how we think about the things that are happening to us. We are responsible for the decisions we make, the training we do, and the lifestyles we choose to live. This is true. It is also true that we don’t always make the best choices. When that happens, we are faced with what I call recovery mode. How do we recover? One thing I learned when I first began Olympic weightlifting was that you have to bail to get better. There will be lifts (and many of them) that won’t work out the way you planned. It is inevitable. There are days when that bar just won’t fly. Yet, we lift it again and we figure out ways to make it better the next time around.

Hint: A strong belief in your ability to make something happen and to succeed highly influences the amount of effort you put into it.

Recover Well

By believing in their ability to do something, athletes build up their bodies, in the strength and power that comes from training to get better, and in their minds, in confidence as they go forward. Recovering well means more than ice baths and saunas. It means believing in your ability to move past a momentary setback and to come away from it stronger and with confidence to do it better next time.

Don’t Be a Pollyanna

What being optimistic does not mean is to falsely or unrealistically assume or even pretend that everything is great when it is not. You might genuinely be bad at something. You might actually have a career-ending injury. Nope, denying that is no good. Losing stinks, injuries hurt, failing when you thought you were prepared is a great ego-buster, and messing up can be really embarrassing. What being optimistic does mean is that by renewing our minds to see things differently (more positively) we can take a failure, a weakness, or an injury and learn from it. From there, start building one small success on top of the next and with each step toward positive gains, you move closer and closer to succeeding. Out with the bad and in with the new. One day at a time.

Control – Commit – Challenge

You can only control the things that you can control; you cannot control others. With that control however comes personal responsibility and accountability. Take responsibility for the decisions you make and understand you are accountable for the consequences, good or bad. If you want to be a better athlete, you must train. You can choose your coach, your gym, and your training regimen. If you aren’t getting good results, change something up. You have an influence on your surroundings from your training partners to your coaches and everything in between.

Hint: Commit to giving your best effort day in and day out, and see challenge as a natural part of life and as at least some chance for change or improvement.

Turn Failure to Success

“I’m here to tell you that the fear of failure is the engine that has driven me throughout my entire life. It flies in the faces of all these sports psychologists who say you have to let go of your fears to be successful and that negative thoughts will diminish performance.”

– Jerry Rice, Hall of Fame speech

We are all afraid of failing at one point or another. Even if we aren’t in it for ourselves, we all at least have a fear of letting others down nonetheless. If it isn’t a fear of letting your coaches, teammates, family members, or friends down, we all want to be seen as having been at least somewhat successful in what we set out to accomplish.

There is no need to let go of that fear, but the value is in letting that fear make you a better athlete or competitor. It is important to remember that everyone fails. The best athletes in the world have and still do. Again, it is how we recover that matters. Make the setbacks work for you. Become stronger, fitter, and healthier in your mind as each challenge comes and passes. That kind of positive perspective through challenges or failures will show in how you live your life, in how you conduct your business, and in how you train.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post The Athletic Mind, Part 1: The Role of Perception in Athletics appeared first on Breaking Muscle.