The following post is an excerpt from Emotional Aptitude In Sports NOW available through most online retailers! Click Here to Order
Fifteen Solutions to Foster Emotional Strength
Nurture the Love of Competition
Studies show that experiences bring more joy than possessions. The energy of the event is contagious. Athletes should enjoy competing against their past, fatigue, opponents and against time.
Commit to Improving
Being the best of the best (even in your town) doesn’t come without extreme effort. Improve your performance by understanding emotional aptitude.
Recognize That You Can’t Be Normal …and a Champion
Champions lead very different lives than normal people. Being an athletic champion is a daily life style.
Customize Your Training
Realize that diligent customized training trumps social, group learning. Research shows, on average, group training takes up to six times longer than quality private training.
Adopt a Growth Mind-Set
Great skills are cultivated through continuous effort more so than initial talent or IQ. Without effort…you fail by default. Understand that success starts with the effort of optimism and a growth mindset.
Embrace Failure
Initial failures are the beginning of the long road to success. They are your teachers. It’s often through setbacks that your customized secrets to success are found.
Step Up and Take Responsibility
A challenge for many athletes is to not allow parents or coaches to routinely solve their problems for them. Solve your problems yourself versus tapping out when difficulties arise.
Take Competitive Risks
Being scared to leave your comfort zone stalls the growth you seek. Take the risk…or grow old wondering if you were ever good enough.
Ask Experts About Their Story
You’ll quickly realize that failing is what winners do often. Winners often don’t have the most physical talent. They most often possess the positive emotional qualities you seek.
Organize a New Developmental Plan
Success stems from spectacular preparation. A brand new deliberate, customized developmental plan along with intelligent game day preparation could make all the difference in the world.
Apply Positive Visualization
Winners use positive visualization by imagining themselves executing their best patterns and plays without hesitation. Less successful athletes are overcome with negative visualization, which of course overwhelms their thought processes with visions of failure.
Train Under Game Day Stress
Athletes need to train much more than just their physical techniques and athleticism in practice. They have to get comfortable… being uncomfortable.
Rehearse Tolerance
Overcome hardships and pain in practice. Simulating stress in practice provides you with the opportunity to conquer your emotional demons. By doing so, reoccurring game day negative thoughts are replaced by positive thoughts such as: “I’ve done this before, I’ve conquered this several times and I know I can overcome this again because I have done it often.”
Learn to Compartmentalize Emotions
Great athletes stay in their optimal performance frame of mind during discomfort by staying on script (pre-set protocol). This entails choosing to mentally focus on the job at hand by overriding the emotional contaminants, thus not letting emotions control the show.
Stop Feeding Negative. Emotions
Flip constantly feeding the problems, worries and fears with customize protocols which feeds optimism, courage, resiliency and fortitude. Athletes should have pre-set triggers (words and actions) that help them focus on positive plays and patterns.
