Leading with Your Mind

Mental toughness is abnormal, just as physical strength is abnormal. We are born without much muscle development. As we grow, if we don’t emphasize physical fitness, we will not develop appreciable strength. In that sense, it is somewhat abnormal to be physically strong. The same is true for mental toughness: most people don’t commit to replacing their negative thoughts with positive thinking. In my opinion, the essence of mental toughness is the ability to replace negative thinking with thoughts that are centered on performance cues or that contribute to improved self-confidence. The more often negative thoughts are replaced with positive self-talk, the more successful and mentally tough a person will be. An athlete’s body listens to what the mind tells it. If the mind has up to sixty thousand thoughts a day, and normal thinking is filled with self-doubt and/or negativity, imagine the impact on performance. It is important for athletes to identify the thoughts that produce consistently strong performance. Once players figure out what those thoughts are, they can train their minds to focus only on those thoughts during competition. George Brett, the Hall of Fame baseball player, used to tell himself, “Try easier,” as a reminder to use a smooth and easy swing at the plate. Although this process sounds simple enough, it can be difficult to pull off, especially while under competitive pressure. The mental workout is a structured and concrete method of identifying and controlling the positive self-talk necessary for peak performance. While it is not a revelation to most people that they should avoid negative thinking, how many of us truly know what we are supposed to think about? The most helpful method to stop self-doubt and negative thinking is thought replacement. Effective thought replacement occurs when you decide what you want to have happen and then think more often about what it will take to make it happen. Whenever unproductive thoughts (“don’t” thinking or mental clutter) infringe, replace them with productive ones. Replace all thoughts of self-doubt or negativity with thoughts of what it is that you want, and you will be much more likely to have those things occur. If you do this as often as possible, your life will be more enjoyable, and you will markedly improve your odds of reaching or exceeding your potential. It is helpful to construct some specific positive self-talk statements prior to facing adversity so that your mind is more practiced and able to use positive thinking when it is most needed.the three most important things in my life? Will my actions today reflect my priorities? Try to make decisions that will help you accomplish your product and ultimate goals for sport, as well as your vision for life, and your success and happiness may grow as large as Coach Lombardi’s. In the foreword to Mind Gym, by Gary Mack, Alex Rodriguez wrote about being nine years old in Miami and dreaming of one day becoming a major-league baseball player. He related, “The dream was a little blurry back then and it disappeared when I quit baseball and took up basketball. I wanted to become the next Magic Johnson or the next Larry Bird. Then one day I was talking with my mother and my older brother and I realized that there aren’t too many Dominicans playing in the NBA. So after a two-year layoff, I started playing baseball again and that picture in my head, that dream, came back to me. That blurry image started taking focus.”1 Rodriguez’s decision to go back and pursue baseball over basketball is similar to the process many young athletes go through as they are developing vision integrity. It is easy to look back at A-Rod’s choice and label it a no-brainer—he may one day hit eight hundred home runs and go down in history as one of the best baseball players ever. However, at that critical plateau in his life, he questioned whether basketball would be more fulfilling. By staying true to his personal vision, he prevented himself from straying too far from the sport he truly loved and in which he was destined to excel for a long time to come. Defining your personal vision is essential to selecting the right goals. If you do not invest a little time to figure out with some precision who you want to be and how you want to live, you may well select goals to which you will not stay committed. Being the athlete that A-Rod is, it is feasible for him to have become an all-star basketball player had he put the necessary work into it. All that hard work he put into becoming a top hitter could have been spent becoming a top basketball shooter. In the end, his pride as a Dominican and the encouragement of his family led him along the path that he’d envisioned for himself ever since he was in elementary school. It sounds like the logical outcome, but I can testify from personal experience that professional athletes do not always enjoy playing the sport they are paid to play. As a consequence, even success can be bitter. I believe the most important aspect of selecting goals is to make sure the goals you select go along with your personal vision.