Today’s motivational meme:
The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.
All posts by Mental Toughness
Bouchard to Wimbledon Final
Eugenie Bouchard of Canada becomes the first woman to ever make a grand slam tennis final, in only her second full season on the WTA tour, and she did it in style beating 7-6, 6-2 over Simona Halep.
Just last year the Globe and Mail ran a story on Bouchard in which she described what she did to move into the pros full-time. Bouchard explained:
“In the past year I improved my mental toughness on the court and my footwork”.
What I love most about that quote is that Bouchard puts her mental skills on par with her physical skills, like they’re equally as important and she’ll develop them the same way, through repetition in practice.
So often athletes and coaches assume that the Mental Toughness just happens – yet if athletes consciously work on it, take it on as a priority as important as their footwork, look at the results that can ensue!
And it looks like her work has paid off. Congratulations Eugenie – Canada is very proud and the world is inspired.
Something to think about…
“When weeds come up in your garden, it does no good to say, ‘There are no weeds, there are no weeds, there are no weeds . . .’ It doesn’t help to pretend they’re not there. It doesn’t matter how much you focus on the beautiful plants that are growing. The weeds aren’t going to disappear until you get on your hands and knees and pull them out.
In your own life, you can’t just ‘focus on the positive, focus on the positive, focus on the positive’, and expect your problems to go away. If there are some weeds, you have to deal with them.”
– Nick Ortner, Philanthropist and Author of
The Tapping Solution
What weeds do you have that you need to go to work on pulling out? The first step is being aware, and then to share so that other people can help you. It’s much easier to de-weed a garden with help than do it on your own. Reach out if you want any support, or even just to share :D.
The Best Way to Get to The Top
There’s not much for me to say here. The arm chair athlete might have the best strategies and ideas to win, however it’s easy to know what to do when you’re imagining it and not so easy when it’s crunch time.
The only way to get to the top is to get off your bottom: to put yourself in that situation, that moment, under pressure and see what you do. That’s the only way to get better at performing for real, in the game.
Now, people who know me know I am a huge supporter of visualization – and so you might be thinking this Mental Toughness Tip opposes visualization (since you do visualization while sitting on your bottom), and that’s not the case.
Even visualizing is getting off your bottom, in fact it’s getting of your bottom more than most athletes do as most athletes and high performers do not train their mental toughness.
When I say get off your bottom, I mean get in action towards your goals. Whether that action be visualizing, doing your workout for the day, eating according to plan, doing extra technical repetitions, whatever it is for you.
And sometimes you won’t want to – I know I didn’t always want to – and that’s irrelevant. The point is to get off your bottom, do something, get in action, and with each step you’ll get closer to the top.
Every second counts….
I’m guessing that’s the last picture you expected to see after reading the subject of this Mental Toughness Tip. I know I’d be like ‘What? I can cut seconds by taking a nap? I don’t get it’ or ‘This is what mental preparation looks like, sleeping?’
Above is my CrossFit Athlete Virginia. Virg and I have been working together for about 8 months now, and her results both in the gym and in her life have been mind-blowing (and she can’t always see them as she’s so close and so competitive). Continue reading
They told him that he’d never make it to the NFL because he was deaf . . .
Never let anyone tell you that you can’t reach your dreams.
NFL scouts and coaches told football player Derrick Coleman that he would never make it to the NFL because he was deaf . . . Derrick showed them!
Don’t ever think you can’t. Read Derrick’s remarkable story and watch his video . . .
Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll remove your ‘I cant’s’ from your vocabulary once and for all!
You must fail! What?
In baseball, batting over 300 in a season is considered to be a great feat, as only the top batters make it there. Batting over 400 is seen to be almost impossible.
And, to bat 300, requires 7 failures in 10 tries. 7 failures!!!! You have to be ok with not getting on base in 7 of 10 at bats. Talk about failure on the road to success. . . .
So if a 70% failure rate = success, it begs the question, what is failure?
This is defined differently in each sport, and differently still in our own heads! I know for myself as an athlete, I expected every contact to be a success, and I would get very frustrated and upset with myself. I expected a 100% success rate and left no room for failure. How about you?
The only thing is that you will fail, it’s inevitable. In fact it’s required. In order for you to develop your skill level, you need to fail, otherwise you’re simply not pushing yourself to the edge of your ability, instead you’re staying in your comfort zone.
So it’s time for you to start taking responsibility for your failures. To start owning them. To start looking at the stats – what’s expected of you in your sport vs. how are you performing.
Because it could look like you’re failing as a baseball player if you’re only hitting 3 of 7 attempts at bat, when the reality is you’d be among the cream of the crop.
It’s time for you to give yourself the room to fail so that you can succeed at a level you never thought possible.
Failure is necessary. Go push out side of your comfort zone today.
