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The Confident Champion How to create breakthrough confidence and BELIEVE in yourself so you can deliver amazing peak performance, become and star athlete, and dominate your sport.
The Confident Champion
How to create breakthrough confidence and BELIEVE in yourself so you can deliver amazing peak performance, become and star athlete,
and dominate your sport.
1. STOP losing your confidence, becoming passive and self-conscious, and over-thinking
sport. When this happens, you perform at only a fraction of your potential and really don’t enjoy
competing.
2. STOP competing overwhelmed with fear, choking, and getting worse and worse out there so that your performance goes up and down like a yo-yo and you lose playing time, get yelled at,
or let your team down.
3. Try to compete with sub-par skills or skills that have hit a plateau so you really can’t
accomplish your goals no matter how motivated you are because you don’t have the
skills.
1. Create breakthrough confidence for yourself so that you are energized,
confident, aggressive, and excited to perform whenever you go out there.
2. Transform yourself into a mentally tough athlete so you can deliver peak
performances, get instant respect, and win consistently under pressure.
3. Develop consistent confidence by mastering the art of persistence and the will to win so you achieve total self-mastery and
are in control of your athletic destiny.
Session 1How to Create Unshakable Confidence
and BELIEVE in Yourself in Sport
Session 2How To Express Your True Greatness & Transform Yourself Into A Genuine
STAR
Session 3The Magic Formula for Becoming Fearless and Super-Charged with Confidence BEFORE You Compete
Session 4CONSISTENT Confidence: How to Master the Art of Persistence &
the Will to Win
Session 5Relationship Mastery - How to Create
Happy Relationships for Ultimate Confidence
Session Three ReviewThe Magic Formula for Becoming Fearless and
Super-Charged with Confidence BEFORE
You Compete
Eliminate The Fear of Making Mistakes
• Learn the Code of the Samurai, which is the psychology of “winning beforehand” – once you know this formula, it will be like child’s play to take the lead early in competition, putting you in the driver’s seat.
Good Nerves, Not Bad Nerves
• What do to when you’re overwhelmed with nerves to become calm and energized, including how to transform “bad” nerves into self-trust and let go out there.
Becoming Fearless Before You Compete
• You discover how most athletes put massive pressure on themselves before competing and the most effective strategy for avoiding this trap to become fearless before you compete.
Creating A Winning Self-Image Using GAME FACE 2.0
• Detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to set yourself up from the beginning of your event to be a fearless, confident competitor so it is easy and automatic for you to handle “rough patches” and sail through the situation
EXERCISE – Creating the Proper RIGHT FOCUS for Correcting Errors
Let’s create the proper RIGHT FOCUS to correct the most
important error you are making. Here are the steps…
EXERCISE – Creating the Proper RIGHT FOCUS for Correcting Errors
1) Describe in the space below the error you want to correct.
EXERCISE – Creating the Proper RIGHT FOCUS for Correcting Errors
2) Describe how you would execute the skill three different ways.
EXERCISE – Creating the Proper RIGHT FOCUS for Correcting Errors
3) Practice the skill this way three times this week. Notice what
happens and make notes in your Athletes Journal. What is the
difference in feel?
EXERCISE - Your GAME FACE Psych Up Routine
In the space below, put together a 10-30 minute individual GAME FACE routine for yourself that includes the following
components:1.A physical warm up that activates you 2.At least one affirmation 3.Emotional visualization planning
Session Four AgendaCONSISTENT Confidence:
How to Master the Art of Persistence & the Will to Win
Crush Your Demon Stressors• Many athletes “fold” as soon as they
face stressors like an angry coach, poor conditions, or irritating teammates. You will discover a simple, three step process to banish your mental storm clouds and restores total composure to your mind and body.
The Magic of Killer Instinct
• The majority of athletes try to coast across the ‘finish line’ without offending anybody in the process. How to gut it out and win no matter who you are competing against.
How To Stay On Top After A Great Performance
• Believe it or not, many athletes lose their confidence AFTER a major triumph – discover why and exactly how to set up your mental game to avoid this trap (and keep winning day in and day out).
The Power of Self-Acceptance
• The step-by-step process for curing the perfectionism and low self-esteem that rob you of your confidence and enjoyment of sport so you can be proud of yourself whether you have a good day or a not-so-good day out there.
Stop The Performance Yo-Yo
• Can’t transfer practice confidence to game confidence? You’ll discover exactly what’s going on in your brain and exactly how to eliminate this tendency permanently.
Dealing with Losing
• Champions do lose, but they deal with losses differently than everyone else. How to effectively deal with losing so it does not sap your confidence or de-rail your winning mindset.
How to Unlock Hope• A clever, proven tactic to unlock hope
originated by Martin Seligman, the world’s leading authority on optimism. This is going “undercover”. Pulling back the curtain to see the Wizard to learn THE time-tested strategy for defeating fear and pessimism. With this simple tactic, you can create momentum literally out of thin air.
Confidence is the belief that you can cope with the challenges of
competition and fulfill your desires. It is a profound belief in your athletic self.
What is Confidence?
We develop confidence from continually defeating fear using the
three mental practices of the Confident Champion: Face It,
Master It, and Make It Happen.
Face It – The Practice of Consciousness
Master It – The Practice of Competence
Make It Happen – The Practice of Commitment
When you engage in these three practices every day, you gain more and more CONTROL over your performance, which triggers your Confident Self.
In Session one, two, and three, we focused mainly on the first two
practices of the Confident Champion – Face It (face your fear)
and Master It (master your sport). In Session Four and Five, we are going to bring in more of Make It Happen:
The Practices of Commitment.
The “Make It Happen” mindset is a pretty simple concept. Commitment is
the “state of being committed to a cause.” In sport, that causing is winning.
Make It Happen: The Practice of Commitment
“Make It Happen” is the will to win. It’s taking full, 100% emotional accountability for the win and committing to it in your heart.
Charles A. Garfield, author of Peak Performance - Mental Training Techniques of the World's Greatest Athletes and an athlete
in power lifting, reminds us that our will controls our bodies…
"The trained lifter knows that during the first few seconds before a lift, total attention must be focused
on the bar, and the degree to which this is done is largely determined by how much he really WANTS to
make the lift.
If his confidence is lacking or his volition not intensely focused, he simply CAN'T make the
lift; he just can't muster the necessary psychological control and
muscle power.
He can, however, turn away for a few moments, renew his confidence, reinforce his resolve, and rally with full force of his volition, and return to make the lift with relative ease."
In 1983, played the New York Islanders for the Stanley Cup
Championships and got swept, four-zip.
“I contributed almost nothing: no goals, no assists…Their big four—Bossy, Trottier, Potvin and Smith—danced all over us.
Smith especially. He slashed, dove, screamed, whatever it took. He was so fantastic they gave him the Conn Smythe
Trophy as the Most Valuable Player and they should have given him two.
After that game, I’d have liked to move to Fiji for four months. I knew what was coming. “He
can’t win the big ones. He disappears under pressure. He stinks.” And you know what? I
was almost starting to wonder myself.
Kevin and I loaded up our troubles and our junk and made our way to the bus. We both knew we were
going to have to walk by the Islander locker room and we were dreading it: having to see all the happy faces, the champagne shampoos, the girlfriends’ kisses, the
whole scene we wanted so much.
But as we walked by, we didn’t see any of that. The girlfriends and the coaches and the staff people were living it up, but the players weren’t. Trottier was icing what looked like a painful knee. Potvin was getting stuff rubbed on his shoulder. Guys
were limping around with black eyes and bloody mouths….and here we were perfectly fine and healthy.
That’s why they won and we lost…They took more punishment than we did. They dove into
more boards, stuck their faces into more pucks, and threw their bodies into more pileups. They
sacrificed everything they had.
And that’s when Kevin said something I’ll never forget. ‘That’s
how you win championships.’
Make It Happen: The Practice of Commitment puts you back in control because when you resolve to never give up, you will inevitably find a solution to whatever challenge you’re
facing.
On some level, you know this. You understand that every great athlete who has come before you has faced the
same challenges and figured them out. If you resolve to do the same, you have far more control over the
outcome, and this triggers your Confident Self, especially because no one else in your sport is doing the same.
The truth is, we are not made to persist. Human beings are built for instant gratification. I see this every day in my little
daughter, who is almost three. When she tries to do something new, like take a lid off a container, but she can’t, she’ll pitch a
fit and give up – and no amount of me saying, “You need to try again,” and “You need to practice,” makes much of a difference.
It’s the human condition. When we have setbacks and things don’t work out the way we expect, we tend to go off and find something easier and more achievable to do.
That’s why I suggest you master the art and science of Make It Happen: The Practice of
Commitment. When you repeatedly engage in it, you develop the Will to Win, and no one
can stop you.
EXERCISE: What Is The Practice of Commitment?
“You want on the team pretty bad, don’t you?” says the coach.
“Coach, you have no idea. I’ll do anything,” says Rudy.
EXERCISE: What Is The Practice of Commitment?
When is the last time you said this? When is the last time you meant
it? Write down in the space below and example of a time you were
100% committed to a goal or result and brought it about.
So what stops us from being persistent in the heat of the battle? Why do so few athletes display this
very rare mental practice?
Learned Helplessness – The Enemy of the Will to Win
Speaker Brian Tracy has a great little story that explains this phenomenon.
In ancient times, when a merchant needed to train his baby elephant, he'd wrap a rope around the elephant's leg.
Then he'd tie the rope to a stake and pound it into the ground.
The baby elephant would struggle and strain against the rope, but
he could never escape it.
Later, all the merchant did was tie a rope around the grown elephant's leg.
The elephant would instantly freeze and stay in one spot.
The adult elephant was strong enough to bulldoze an entire house to the ground, but he
would stand there as long as a rope was tied
to his leg.
The elephant had LEARNED to be helpless.
One breakthrough discoveries of psychologists in the 20th century is that we are just like elephants.
The moment we encounter a setback, most of us become
helpless. When I was competing as an elite athlete, it happened to
me all the time.
If I didn't score in my first few shifts, I'd lose my confidence, and
wam! Hello slump.
My teammates and coaches knew it. They'd roll their eyes and say,
"She's done now."
It happens to all of us. You try to score a goal, make a pass, cover
your check, stop a shot...
...and you FAIL...
...and you're suddenly infected by learned helplessness.
But, you don't know it. All you know is that you feel numb.
Learned helplessness is the secret cause of failure in sport.
It's a giving up response.
Most of the time, you're not even aware it's happening.
You're still going through the motions, but something is off.
Your edge, your confidence, and your motivation are slipping away from you, and you can feel it.
You may not feel SCARED (although sometimes you do).
You just feel blah. And you're worried.
Because blah is not going to get you winning and keep you winning. You cannot take
consistent, congruent action as long as you are feeling blah.
Giving in to learned helplessness vs. not giving in to learned helplessness
is what separates great athletes from superstars. In 1992, Pete Sampras
lost the U.S. Open to Stefan Edberg and started to question whether he
had the perseverance to win.
“Throughout the fall, I kept harkening back to the loss at the
Open to Edberg. It was eating away at my guts…I kept thinking, “If he didn’t play well, and I didn’t play that well, why did he win?”
And the answer dawned on me, slowly, over a matter of weeks. For the first time, I understood and could articulate the truth: I lost because I had packed it in.
And it was part of a pattern.
I didn’t tell anyone, not even my Dad.
It took me some years to come up with the answer, and here it is, in its most simple form.
Everybody has a place in this world, and spends a good part of his mature life carving out his niche – the zone where he is comfortable.
Some guys, they get to number one and they think, I don’t really like it up here, it’s too
lonely. Too stressful. Too demanding.
So they settle back a little. They find a comfort zone at number
three, or five, or whatever. I could have done that; a part of me was
doing that early in my career.
I can’t honestly tell you why my conversation with commitment
took this tack, but it did: I decided that I had this great talent and I
wasn’t taking care of it. I had the Gift, and I was turning away from it,
at least on some of the very occasions when it was maybe the
only thing that could pull me through.
EXERCISE – Learned Helplessness & You
Think back to a competition where you gave up on something,
whether it was scoring a goal, stopping your check, or winning
the game. Do you remember giving up? Why did you?
1. We become passive. 2. We start to feel sorry for ourselves.
‘Poor me’.3. We resent being asked to overcome
our fear because we believe it is unique and special. ‘No one else has had to deal with the obstacles I have.’
To create breakthrough confidence in yourself, BELIEVE, and make it happen, you start by
identifying the individual stressors that tempt you to fall into learned helplessness, have a
‘pity party’ for yourself, and give up.
How To Defeat Learned Helplessness and Make It Happen
These are called your Demon Stressors
It happens because your “demon stressors” cause you to fall into learned helplessness, start feeling sorry for yourself, and give up just enough to let the event slip away from you.
What Are Your “Demon Stressors?”
EXERCISE
Your very first job is to identify your stressors – those things that bother you most while performing. To do
this, you begin by listing in the space below your top 7 distractions. Here
are some examples athletes often cite…
EXERCISE• Getting a bad start• Opponents are annoying• Teammates are under-performing• Losing a period or rally by a large margin• Teammate, coach or parent says something negative
to me• Being given a role on the team I don’t like or want• Not being able to read the competition properly• Competing against a particular opponent• Opponent is playing obvious “mind games”
EXERCISE• Having a bad warm-up• Family member or friend is watching• Conflict with a teammate prior to sport• Being pre-occupied with life outside of sport, e.g.,
a problem at home• Equipment or weather hassles • Being late or given a schedule change• Feeling sick or unusually tired
EXERCISE
In the space below, list your top 7 distractions (things that trigger a
loss of confidence)
EXERCISE
Now, put your distractions in the following order from most
bothersome to least bothersome.
Now you know what your exact stressors are. Your “demon stressor” is the thing
that has the most potential to cause you to lose confidence, choke, or under-
perform. It is the first thing on the list. This is very powerful exercise, because
now you have the opportunity to transform your game by carefully working
with your reaction to your “demon stressor.”
Whenever one of your Demon Stressors show up, your #1 job is to get back in CONTROL and trigger your ConfidenT
Self using Make It Happen: The Practice of Commitment. For the rest of this
session, we are going to practice strategies for doing exactly that.
Courage is the ability to do something even when you’re scared, anxious, or afraid. In sport, there are many shades of it…
Make It Happen Using COURAGE
• Courage to take that shot in the dying seconds.
• Courage to choose the position you want on the team.
• Courage to speak up when you're being mistreated.
• Courage to make mistakes, publicly.• Courage to defy the pressure to fit in. • Courage to ask for what you need to excel.
• Courage to heal yourself of loss. • Courage to ask for help when you're stuck. • Courage to take control of your time and
training in the face of massive pressure.• Courage to shrug off unwarranted criticism. • Courage to forgo approval and trust your
instincts. • Courage to risk rejection and try out for the
team you want.
In the book Do More, Achieve Less, we get a unique glimpse into the
power of courage. The author says…
“My assistant, Tim, told me of an incident that occurred one night after a speaking engagement in Washington,
DC. Walking back to his hotel, he took a route that traversed a neighbourhood located on the fringe of an area known
for its riots. As he ambled along, he noticed he was being followed by about
a dozen gang members.
The faster he walked, the faster they pursued him. A chase ensued, Tim
found himself running deeper into an area of DC that was foreign to him.
Right on his heels, they were chasing him relentlessly. He thought to himself, “Well, this is it.` He began to accept the
possibility that tonight would be the night he would die.
In a flash of inspiration, he abruptly stopped running and turned and faced
the gang. An idea blazed luminously in his mind—if he must die at this moment, his
death was not his end. And since his death was not the end, it must at least be the beginning of some new experience. In short, quite possibly, death would not be
so bad after all. As the Sufi poet Rumi said, `Death is my wedding with eternity.`
The gang felt the fearlessness within Tim. With the intimidation element removed from the space, the thrill of experience their power to harm
him vanished.
The leader of the gang dropped his menacing stance, stepped forward, and stretching out his hand, said,
`What`s up, man?` They shook hands and went their
separate ways.
The principle that Tim applied on the street applies to life in general. The
more fearful you are about your survival, the more mistakes you will
tend to make. When you are willing to focus on the duty, risk, exhilaration, and
the fun of doing it rather than on the fear of making mistakes, you will begin to understand the meaning of thriving.”
In sport, courage is perhaps best expressed as aggressiveness.
If there was a list of top ten secrets for succeeding in sport, "be
aggressive" would definitely be on it.
“Be Aggressive
Basketball superstar Michael Jordan agrees. "I realized that if I
was going to achieve anything in life I had to be aggressive. I had to get
out there and go for it. I don't believe you can achieve anything by
being passive."
Of course there's good aggressive and bad aggressive.
Bad aggressive is when you get angry and out of control. When this happens you go berserk inside and
either take penalties or play a foolish, overly risky strategy.
Good aggressive is when you quiet your mind, channel your
determination, and just go for it in a show of total courage.
In the 2012 in the NCAA Final Four Championship in basketball in the US, the Louisville Cardinals won
their third national title overall and their first since 1986, with an 82-76
victory over Michigan.
There is no question that the key to the Cardinals' victory was their
aggressiveness. This was not a team of superstars (unlike their 1996
victory, which had nine NBA players).
It was a tough, aggressive team that chased down every ball and forced every play with relentless defence. Coach Rick Pitino said, "These are
the toughest 13 guys I have ever coached."
The poster boy for this style was Chane Behanan, who simply
overpowered Michigan's big men in the low post and helped Louisville
finish with a plus-7 rebound margin.
This was in contrast to Michigan's star centre, Mitch MgGary, who was
slightly "bad aggressive". MgGary tried to do too much, committing his fourth foul early in the second half. His team then had to reduce
MgGary's playing time to avoid taking a fifth foul.
Yet while aggressiveness is extremely powerful, very few athletes ever harness it, because they’ve never
DECIDED to become more aggressive. In fact years ago I owned a sports training camp for kids. Every day parents would
call up our office and say one thing: "Can you make my child
more aggressive?"
What about you?
How about you?
Could you be more aggressive in the good way out there?
You start by giving yourself permission to shine and go for it.
This is very important. You cannot worry about people-pleasing and be your very best self at the same time.
Next, you make a deliberate decision to cultivate aggressiveness.
Let’s do it now.
EXERCISE – Courage & Aggressiveness
1) Recall the last time you showed courage – the last time you did
something in competition or practice that frightened you.
EXERCISE – Courage & Aggressiveness
2) With respect to your Demon Stressor, how could you show
courage in your next practice or competition? How could you make a
habit of showing courage with it?
EXERCISE – Courage & Aggressiveness
3) Close your eyes and visualize what kind of athlete you would be if
you were 10%, 20%, or even 30% more of the “good aggressive” out
there. Then write down exactly what you’d do in competition
Make It Happen Using OPTIMISM
One of the best ways to cultivate the Practice of Commitment and defeat learned helplessness (the giving up
response) is good old fashioned optimism.
Optimism is not positive thinking. It’s not trying to find something
good about a setback or trying to find a silver lining.
Optimism is finding a way to believe that your setbacks are temporary. So, let’s
imagine you are a curler and you just gave up a steal of four points in one end. Your job is not to say, “That’s great because
now the opposition will be complacent.” Your job is to say, “Here’s why this is not
going to happen again in this game.”
Optimism gives you a sense of control by preventing you from giving up. Nothing makes us feel more out of control than giving up! In fact, when you give up on your goals, you are giving up on getting
back in control – which is one of the reasons why giving up is so depressing.
When you engage in optimism, you are making a firm, unequivocal decision to get back up on the
horse and try again.
EXERCISE - Optimism
Here are some questions that will automatically trigger optimism in
you. Please think about your Demon Stressor when you answer them…
EXERCISE - Optimism
1) Describe something you`ve given up on right now, e.g., if your Demon Stressor is losing your swing in golf, then describe
how you’ve given up on being able to re-create a consistent golf swing that
allows you to crush the ball 300+ yards straight down the fairway.
EXERCISE - Optimism2) What attempts have you made to reach your
goal (the opposite of your Demon Stressor)? For example, if you are a swimmer and your Demon Stressor is getting a slow start, then
you’ve given up on changing your start technique to be faster. Be extremely detailed
in your answer - leave no stone unturned when describing what you’ve already tried.
EXERCISE - Optimism
3) How are you being passive like the elephants with learned
helplessness? Be specific in your description – explain what you are
NOT doing to make it happen.
EXERCISE - Optimism
4) What do you need to learn to defeat your Demon Stressor and
succeed in your goal?
EXERCISE - Optimism
5) Who can help you reach your goal? (Include resources and
people here).
EXERCISE - Optimism
6) What’s your worst case scenario if you don't achieve your goal the
first time? How could you do damage control and come back?
Optimism in Your GAME FACE Routine: Why Not Me?
Mark Tewksbury, one of the finest swimmers in the history of swimming, used the Want, Not Need mindset to win an Olympic gold medal.
Mark says: "The world had become more competitive. The medals, which
used to be shared by 8 countries, were now finding their way to over
25 countries.
Even swimmers like Matt Biondi, the world record holder, were leaving
the pool without going to the podium. I thought, "Even silver would be good. I was not giving
up, but there were no guarantees."
The first thing Mark did was refuse to PRESS.
He set his sights on winning and being aggressive in the pool, but he did not try and control it.
Before the race, he said to himself, "Someone has to win this race.
Why not me?"
"Why not me?" is a beautiful thought.
It is optimistic, confident, and relaxed.
There is no PRESSING in this thought.
Never Predict The Outcome of A Game, Race, or Match
The Why Not Me? Optimistic attitude requires that you never predict the outcome of a game,
race or match.
I love tennis guru Brad Gilbert's confession about scouting.
Gilbert's a super-analytical guy who loves the technical side of his
sport, tennis.
So when he was an athlete, he'd keep a journal of his personal
scouting reports.
One day he noticed how emotional he was getting about his
opponents.
If an opponent looked bad, he'd think, "Hey, there's no way I'm
gonna lose to this guy. He's playing like a plumber!"
If an opponent looked good, he'd think, "Holy Cow, there's no way
I'm gonna beat this guy! He's playing awesome!"
The problem with these conclusions is that you can actually GIVE UP on
an event before you compete without even knowing it.
That’s one of the problems with learned helplessness. Half the time, we don’t even know it’s happening to us. All we know is that we’re a little less confident, and a little
bit passive.
Gilbert says we should never assume anything about a sporting
contest, and I agree.
You want to go in with the mindset that you have always have a
chance to win - as long as you give it the highest quality of effort.
It’s the Why Not Me? attitude.
Gilbert decided to delegate his scouting to his coach. All he
wanted was to know the strengths, weaknessness, and
patterns of his opponent.
Then he'd go into his match on high alert, with the Why
Not Me? attitude.
It paid off.
Aaron Krickstein was a player Gilbert had been losing to for years because of his powerful
forehand.
Gilbert had never found a way to neutralize it.
During their next match Gilbert noticed that when he hit a slice backhand short to Krickstein's forehand, the forehand he got
back was different.
It was just a routine forehand.
Gilbert quickly figured out that Krickstein loved to hit from the
baseline because the ball would sit up for him. But when Gilbert hit a soft slice, it would land short and
stay low.
So Krickstein couldn't crank his topspin forehand - there just
wasn't any pace for him to capitalize on.
Gilbert went on to beat Krickstein in straight sets.
The mental toughness lessons here?
1. Never assume anything about the outcome of a game, match, or
race. EVER.
2. If scouting makes you emotional, delegate to someone who can take the emotion out of it, but
make sure you get the information you need to compete in a smart
way.
3. Once you have the patterns of an opponent, stay on high alert.
Notice everything and wait for your opportunity to outsmart,
outwit, and outlast him.
EXERCISE – Why Not Me?
a. Write down the name of your next competition
EXERCISE – Why Not Me?
b. Write down your performance goal for this competition (winning,
scoring goals, winning the MVP, etc).
EXERCISE – Why Not Me?
c. Write down what information about your opponents, conditions,
venue, etc. that you will need to compete at your best and how you
will get it:
EXERCISE – Why Not Me?
d. List at least FIVE believable reasons that answer the question “Why Not Me?“
For example, if you wrote down, “I want to be the top scorer in my basketball
tournament this weekend by averaging 25 points a game,” list five reasons “why not me?” such as, “I have a wicked three point
shot.”
Make It Happen Using The Power of Now
To create breakthrough confidence and deliver amazing peak
performance using the Make It Happen mindset, you’ll want to get
very good at entering the NOW.
The most deadly, Make It Happen mindset in sport is to focus
completely in the Now.
I'm talking about total focus in the present moment...the kind where you drive across town, get there,
and suddenly realize you don't remember the drive.
This impenetrable focus is very punishing to opponents.
You get such a deep connection to what you're doing that tough things become effortless.
If you're playing tennis or golf, you get into a rhythm with your strokes
and swing that makes you perfectly consistent.
If you're playing hockey or basketball, the speed of the game
becomes just right, neither too fast or too slow. You're totally in sync
with the game.
If you're running or racing, you connect to your gait and
become completely smooth.
Getting into the Now also heightens your athletic genius because you
become aware of tiny nuances that give you the edge.
You make subtle decisions like when to suddenly change the pace of
shots during a rally - and mess up your opponent.
Or when to use a subtle fake and drive to the net with speed,
or pass off.
Or when to make your move or ride in someone's wake.
Helen Wills Moody, the American tennis legend of the 1930s, had a simple mantra that brought her
focus into the Now.
After every ball, she would recover her focus by repeating, 'Every point,
every point, every point.'
Simple, yet devastatingly effective.
Entering the NOW banishes doubt, because doubt comes from thinking about the future. The mind cannot
deal with the future. It can only deal with the present – so when you get
into the mental habit of entering the NOW, it would never occur to
you to give up.
Remember, you don't want to make mental training more difficult than it
needs to be.
Every point, every point, every point.
EXERCISE – The Power of NowFor the next 30 days, every time you practice or compete, enter the Now and stay in the present moment for as long as you possibly can. You can
select a cue word such as “NOW” to start the process. If your mind drifts to the past or the
future, gently bring it back to the present moment and re-engage in the present. Record in your
Athlete’s Journal how this exercise builds your ability to concentrate and stay optimistic
Make It Happen Using Self-Acceptance
To create breakthrough confidence and keep BELIEVING no matter what
setbacks you face, I suggest you learn to deeply accept all your
emotions, including disappointment, shame,
anger, and loss.
Most athletes are quite dismal at this. They hate having to feel bad,
especially about a failure of any kind.
What they don’t realize is that if we can’t deal with emotions like disappointment, shame, and anger, we can’t have the Will to Win.
Why? Because when the going gets tough, and it looks like failure is on the way, we’ll want to give up – just to avoid feeling devastated because we gave our all and did not succeed.
This is actually why most people get pessimistic and give up. We take a
“you can’t fire me, I quit!” approach because we hate being
disappointed.
The problem with this mental approach to competing is that it
doesn’t work. You can tell yourself all day long that you ‘don’t care’
about failing or losing, but you do.
So pessimism doesn’t save us from being hurt. All it does is make sure that we under-perform by causing us to give up and become passive.
I can really relate to this. When I was in my early 20s, I was very intolerant of having negative emotions of any kind
(which is a weird thing to say because I considered myself a very emotional
person). In fact, I was so adverse to letting myself any feelings of loss that my
teammates gave me a T-shirt that said, “Sometimes you just have to lose.”
I thought it was a joke. It was only years later did I realize what they were trying to tell me – that loss
was part of life.
Confident champions understand and accept the agony and ecstasy of sport. They know that failing and losing hurt, and they are prepared to accept this hurt.
I am not suggesting you should try to enjoy or approve of your bad feelings.
I’m merely pointing out that disappointment, shame, and anger are
normal and part of sport. The faster you can come to grips with them, the more able you will be to take a risk and give it
your all – even when things are not going well.
Accepting your bad feelings when they happen is the essence of
self-acceptance.
EXERCISE – Self-Acceptance
For the next 7 days, write 5-10 different endings for the
following sentence:
If I were 5% more self-accepting today—
Make It Happen by Dealing with Losing
To transform yourself into a confident champion with the Make It Happen mindset, you’ll want to eliminate the fear of losing from
your emotional life. How?
By realizing that you can heal yourself of any disappointment (and
fast) – if you know how.
From 2000 to 2004 (late in my athletic career), my team had to
play the same powerhouse team in the finals.
And for four years straight, we LOST.
In 2005, we entered the finals optimistically: "It's going to be our
year!" we proclaimed.
But our hopes were dashed AGAIN when we lost two games straight.
There was, however, an important wrinkle to this competition: if we
won our next game--against a different team--we could still earn a
birth into the National Championships.
We had exactly 45 minutes to re-group for this all-important game. It
was at this moment that my body took over and instinctively prepared
me for this next challenge.
Upon entering our dressing room, all the wretched disappointment
inside me over losing for four years came bursting forth. I sobbed
bitterly, and couldn't stop.
Images of old losses flashed before my eyes, and I sobbed some more.
At one point, I went to the bathroom and put my head under the dryer so my teammates didn't
have to hear me.
Three minutes before our next game, our goaltender (who knows me really well), calmly handed me
my helmet.
She looked me squarely in the eye. "You have three minutes," she said. I put my helmet on. Suddenly, I was
completely focused, and filled with energy.
We won, and to this day, my team insists it was one of the best games
of my career.
How To Heal Yourself When You Lose
Healing yourself means letting yourself experience your disappointment when
you lose. It's the same thing you did when you were nine years old. Your body knows how to heal itself, and it
will if you let it.
It's one of those secrets nobody tells you. Instead, your Dad, your
coach, and your teammates will try to cheer you up. They'll say things like, "Don't worry, it wasn't your
fault."
Or, they'll try to get you to focus on the next competition right away.
The problem with this approach is that you end up suppressing your
disappointment. You try not to think about it...but it eats away at you.
You start to doubt yourself, and you lose your motivation.
"Why bother?" you think to yourself.
Of course, you'll want to draw the lesson out of the loss. But you can't even think about that until you're
over the disappointment.
Of course, the reason dealing with losing is so important is because to
develop the Make It Happen mindset, you cannot live in fear
of losing.
The more scared of losing you are, the more likely you are to give up
when things get tight. We need to stare down losing in the face. “Nice
try, losing! I’m not going to give up!”
EXERCISE – Dealing with Losing
In the space below, record the most painful loss of your life.
EXERCISE – Dealing with Losing
Next, open up emotionally and let yourself have any feelings of loss
that are still inside you. Describe them below.
EXERCISE – Dealing with Losing
Finally, using the Sedona Method we learned in Session Three, let this
disappointment go using the following questions:
1.Can I let it go?2.Will I let it go?
3.When?
Make It Happen By Defeating Self-Pity
To create breakthrough confidence using the Make It Happen mindset,
you’ll also want to become masterful at side-stepping self-pity.
We think all our fears and problems are completely special and unusual to us and that nobody in the world
has ever dealt with such terrible problems.
Self-pity is a unique form of misery. It’s self-inflicted, brought on by the ideas that we “shouldn’t” have to deal with the setbacks that the Universe has thrown at us.
To outsmart self-pity, we need to remember that are setbacks and
problems are actually quite typical, and every great athlete who has come before us has experienced
them as well.
Here’s a great way to pep talk yourself out of self-pity when you’re wallowing in it from Shawnee Harle,
one of our Courage to Win coaches…
Lisa, you'll never guess what happened to Ashley, a fourth year player and starting shooting guard
for our basketball team.
She was having one of those nights where nothing was working.
We were playing the #7 ranked team in the country and the other team was keying on her and she
couldn't get a shot to drop.
Ashley is a natural talent but once she stops making shots, she gets discouraged and the rest of her
game follows suit...it is very detrimental to our team.
At half time, I calmed myself down and said to her in front of the
team…
'Ashley, you have a tremendous opportunity in front of you right
now. I know you are upset with how you played in the first half but you
have an opportunity to turn it around.
You are a much better player than you showed. You are one of the best shooters in our conference. You can
wallow in self-pity and give in to learned helplessness or you can
make another choice.
One of the most powerful things available to each of us is the ability
to save ourselves.
Once you realize you can save yourself, it is liberating, freeing and motivating because you realize you can depend on yourself. You don't need a coach or teammate to save you. You don't need somebody to
give you a pep talk or run a special play.
You realize it lies within you and all you need to do is have the courage
to step forward.
The choice is yours - you can remain helpless, frustrated and full of
excuses or you can use the tools that are immediately available to you.
The boat is waiting. You can sit there and let it sink or you can pull out the paddles and start rowing.'
Ashley came out blazing in the second half. She scored 15 points and almost single handedly got us
back into the game.
The next night against UBC, ranked #9 in the country, she scored 25
points including 7/11 from the three point line. She was the major reason we recorded an upset win against a
team that had more talent."
To repeat: when you are giving up, there are two things going on at the
same time.
First, you have learned helplessness. You've become passive because you tried to succeed, but an opponent
overpowered or out-smarted you in some way (or you messed up on
your own).
Second, you're feeling sorry for yourself. You think it's not fair that
YOU, someone so talented and special, should have to suffer the
agony of personal failure or defeat.
I'm here to tell you: Boo Hoo. No one cares
No one is even remotely interested in your self-pity. What they ARE
interested in is what you're made of.
Everyone fails in sport from time to time. There is an agony to competing that will always find you, no matter how good you are.
That's what Ashley figured out.
She figured out that it was time for her to grow up and make a choice: will she be passive or aggressive?
We can do the same.
EXERCISE – Shifting Out of Self-Pity
In the space below, record a recent setback you feel you ‘don’t deserve’
and are feeling sorry for yourself about.
EXERCISE – Shifting Out of Self-Pity
Next, write down exactly why this setback is actually TYPICAL for an
athlete in your sport, and TYPICAL for confident champion athletes to have
to deal with
Make It Happen By Channelling Anger
A secret weapon for creating breakthrough confidence and
cultivating the Make It Happen: Practice of Commitment mindset is to
channel your anger.
The truth is, whenever one of your Demon Stressors show up, you're
going to get mad.
Now most sport psycs or coaches will never tell you this, but...
It's ok to be angry and frustrated - as long as you CHANNEL your
frustration into GOOD ANGER – the kind that makes you persist and
never give up.
Boxer Sugar Ray Leonard learned this the hard way.
Leonard, the flashy Golden Boy, had breezed through every opponent since
turning pro and held the undisputed WBC Welterweight crown.
Until he met Roberto Duran.
Duran, nicknamed "Hands of Stone," gave up the lightweight
championship to challenge Leonard.
In the lead-up to the bout, Duran bad-mouthed Leonard at every
opportunity. "Leonard is not macho. He is a pretty boy who has
everything given to him; the money, the easy fights, the television
coverage. He will meet a real fighter for the first time."
By fight time, Leonard was so angry he foolishly tried fighting Duran's style, going toe-to-toe with him.
Duran won by unanimous decision.
Leonard later admitted: "I wanted to knock his head off. Stupid. I'm a competitor and a very proud man."
Leonard's mistake? He gave in to his Dark Side.
There is BAD and GOOD anger. BAD anger makes you panicky,
stressed out, and causes you to lose your focus. GOOD anger keeps you
focused and motivates you to persist until you prevail.
The good news is that Leonard learned his lesson. Barely five
months later, the rematch occurred.
This time, Leonard kept to his style of fighting, sticking and moving. Duran was
overwhelmed. "The whole fight, I was moving, moving," Leonard said. "I
snapped his head back with a jab, once, twice. He tried to get me against the
ropes, I'd pivot, spin off and Pow! Come under with a punch."
Near the end of Round 8, Duran turned completely away from Leonard and told the referee,
"No mas."
The fight ended in a TKO.
The third meeting, nine years later, was a debacle with Leonard winning easily. Duran finally admitted: "No man hurt me like Leonard. He is a
great, great fighter."
You see, BAD anger really is learned helplessness in disguise. You feel
overwhelmed and insecure, so you go wild.
Sometimes you get penalties; other times you just PRESS and make a
mess of things. The wonderful thing is it's easy to turn BAD anger into
GOOD anger.
All you need to do is tap into your pride as an athlete. This is what’s known as Killer Instinct, and it’s a
powerful Make It Happen weapon.
The bottom line? You don’t need to fear setbacks or the anger that comes with them.
Simply channel your frustration into smart, GOOD anger, do a better job
out there, and never say die.
EXERCISE – From BAD Anger to GOOD Anger
In the space below, write down the last time you got mad in
competition (tapped into your pride) and performed better as a
result.
EXERCISE – From BAD Anger to GOOD Anger
Next, commit to yourself that the next time you are tempted to give up and become passive, that you
will bring your anger forth and channel it into doing a better job.
Write down your commitment below
Session Three Re-Cap
I'll talk to you again soon.
