How To Be The Toughest Competitor Out There And Triumph
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Let’s start this program by reviewing a video of a classic speech called The Will to Win by coach Vince Lombardi:
For those of you who want a copy of the speech, you click on the link below and download it.
The Will to Win by coach Vince Lombardi Speech.
Of course, the key element of this speech is when Mr. Lombardi says:
“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing.
You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time.
Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. You’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body.”
The Will to Win is so miraculous because in order to make it happen out there, you must first develop the habit of personal excellence. This is the habit of striving to be better every time you practice and compete.
The more you strive for personal excellence, the better athlete you become — technically, physically, and mentally. And each day builds on the day before, making you exponentially better.
When this happens, you realize the success that is supposed to be yours no one can take away, delay, or stop coming from you. You realize that delivering a peak performance or winning does not depend on you getting favourable circumstances.
You know that everything you have done will eventually and inevitably lead to success and winning.
In other words…
If you are not in the habit of developing the Will to Win every day, you are definitely going to under-perform in your sport. And once you start under-performing, you’re far more likely to suffer from repeated poor performances and humiliating losses in the future.
But you don’t have to resign yourself to losing, mediocrity, or eventually quitting your sport in frustration. You can take steps now that will eliminate your performance issues, get you winning, and transform you into an all-star and MVP athlete.
Let me ask you another question…
Have you ever felt like you could do anything out there?
Like you could hit every target, run all day without getting tired, weave through the defense with ease, or fire a goal in the net at will?
Most athletes have had at least a couple of moments like this – if not several.
Problem is, such moments are “happy accidents” for most athletes. They cannot create them for the simple reason that they have not cultivated the Will to Win…yet.
The Will to Win is a pretty simple concept. It is a combination of two things: COMMITMENT and CONFIDENCE.
When you’re committed, you will do whatever it takes to succeed. When you are confident, you believe in your talents and abilities.
Part I of the Will to Win: Commitment
You can sum up the experience of commitment with the sentence, “I WILL do it.”
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 it is our will that 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.”
The moral of the story?
Our bodies will do what they are told to do IF we know how to tell them.
Commitment is how you tell your body what to do.
Part II of the Will to Win: Confidence
Commitment is only part of the will to win. To truly attain the will to win, you must have confidence. You must have an inner state that causes success and winning to come running into your arms.
Let me explain…
Imagine you take two tennis players of similar skill levels and teach them mastery of the exact same strokes and shots. You give them similar opponents to play and train them with the same fitness and nutrition regimen. Both engage in consistent training.
They both play their opponents with a similar game plan. Both of them execute the same strategy and use the same equipment.
Yet their results will not be the same. One of them will walk away with the win, while the other will lose. The confident player will win; the player who lacks confidence will not.
Confidence is your Sun Energy. It’s your force of will. It’s how you feel when you are really in touch with your strengths, talents and abilities – and you don’t feel any need to apologize for them.
Perhaps the athlete who embodied confidence and the Will to Win more than any other is basketball’s Michael Jordan.
Every time I talk about Michael Jordan’s will to win, a few people yell at me over email.
Michael’s message scares them. It scares them because they don’t get it.
The reason most of them don’t get it is because they haven’t cultivated enough Sun Energy within themselves.
When you don’t cultivate your Sun Energy, you never really embrace your true greatness mentally, and your confidence suffers as a result.
So when guys like MJ talk about the will to win, it makes you cringe.
Instead you need to step up into the spotlight and claim glory for yourself. There is no shame in this at all, which is what Michael is trying to point out.
In his speech for the NBA Hall of Fame, Michael Jordan sums up how to embrace our gifts, even when other people are pressuring us not to:
“I could never please Tex [former coach, Tex Winter]. I remember a game, we were down 5-10 points, and I go off for about 25 points and we win the game…I remember we’re walking off the court and Tex looks at me, and he says, “You know, there’s no ‘I’ in team.”
I said “Tex, there’s no ‘I’ in team, but there’s ‘I’ in WIN.”
Now, don’t get me wrong here. Being a team player is important.
But equally important is summoning your confidence and sun energy so you can create the will to win within yourself.
When you do, you give courage to others.
This is what the word ‘en-courage’ means – to give courage to.
The truth is, it takes guts to stand out from the crowd and aspire to greatness.
You can face judgment, envy, and even outright rejection from peers who witness your accomplishments first hand.
You can still give yourself permission to excel — to show the will to win, even if it makes someone around you uncomfortable in her skin.
The bottom line is that you will never be happy dimming yourself down for others.
I’ve noticed there are three main reasons why athletes struggle with confidence and commitment:
1. We get caught up in self-doubt.
There isn’t just one athlete inside you. There are two: a confident one and a self-doubting one.
Your Confident Self is an aggressive, take-no-prisoners athlete with the Will to Win.
When your Confident self is in charge, you are steeled for competition. You know that bad stuff is going to happen, and you’re willing to face it.
You will try risky and even bold moves to win.
If your sport requires physical sacrifice or punishment, you’re happy to oblige.
If winning requires that you go outside your comfort zone, you’ll take a chance and do it, even if it means looking foolish or getting beat in the moment.
When your Confident Self is in charge, you are highly aware (in tune with) everything that is going on around you and you adjust in a fraction of a second to what’s going on.
Your Doubting Self is timid and likes to play it safe.
He or she fears mistakes and plays not to lose or fail. Your Coward self will only do moves, shots, and patterns inside her comfort zone.
Sometimes your Doubting Self even tries to “hide” in the middle of competition, hoping no one will notice!
Self-doubt erodes our Will to Win because when we are not playing to win. We are playing not to lose.
2. We become infected by learned helplessness (pessimism).
In ancient times, when a merchant needed to train his baby elephant, he’d wrap a thick 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 string 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 of the breakthrough discoveries in psychology this century was that most people give up very easily in the face of fear.
The moment we encounter a setback, most of us become helpless. Learned helplessness is a special type of fear that causes us to give up and become passive.
When I was competing as an elite athlete, it happened to me all the time. If I didn’t score a goal on my first few shifts, I’d lose my confidence, and Wham!
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.
The truth is that human beings are not built to persist. We 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 and can’t, she’ll pitch a fit and give up. No amount of encouragement (“Try again!” or “Let’s practice”) makes a dent.
After I heard about learned helplessness, I started to see it everywhere. Several years ago I was coaching in a scrimmage. There was a little boy there a full two years younger than the girls he was playing with.
About 10 minutes into the game he came onto the bench, threw his helmet off and said, “I quit!” “Connor, what’s wrong?” I asked. “I’m not doing anything out there! I never touch the ring!”
I had to think fast because he was right. Connor was so much younger and he wasn’t getting the ring much, if at all. “Okay, I understand. But, the thing is, your team needs you. If you don’t go back out, your team won’t have enough players.”
He couldn’t think of an argument so he went back out. The very next shift he passed the ring to his sister who promptly scored a goal. “Connor you did it! It was because of you that your sister scored that goal!” I high-fived him.
Even a five-year-old will try if he thinks something good will happen.
I’m not suggesting that we quit competing altogether when we have learned helplessness. I’m saying that we lose our confidence and our commitment.
We’re still going through the motions, but we don’t have the confidence or the commitment. We never get to the pinnacle of success, because fundamentally, we’ve given up. And you cannot give up and still have the Will to Win.
The third reason athletes struggle with confidence and commitment is…
3. We have the wrong motivation.
There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic.
Intrinsic motivation refers to when you are motivated to do something because it is rewarding unto itself. The behavior is intrinsically rewarding. You do it because you love it, not because you are getting money or praise or a reward outside yourself.
Extrinsic motivation refers to when you are motivated to do something because of external rewards such as money, praise, fame, or praise.
In my research and experience, most athletes want to win for extrinsic reasons. Their motivation is validation from parents, coaches, teammates, and fans.
How do I know?
I know because they tell me their fears every day. And their #1 fear is being embarrassed or shamed in front of these people when they mess up or lose.
Their secret desire is to gain the approval and respect of others. That’s why they compete, and it’s also why they feel good when they triumph, even if the good feeling is temporary.
The problem with extrinsic motivation is that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it’s a negative motive. It’s negative because it comes from a sense of incompleteness and inadequacy inside you.
One woman I remember well wrote me this:
“I have about 45-50 lbs to lose to get to the weight I want to be. A healthy, happy weight. I have been there before and my self confidence/self esteem goes through the roof when I feel and look good. So why isn’t it in me to start and stick with it?? Why isn’t that thought enough to want to get back there? I have a few conclusions, one being that I have tried every diet gimic under the sun and some have worked, but I gain it all back and then some when I quit…diet overload. Two, I’m too lazy to plan and follow through. Three, I’m afraid of failing again. Four, my husband told me I give up all the time and so now I’m afraid of failing and him saying I told you so.
The dialogue in my head tells me one minute, “just think of how amazing you’ll look and feel”…and then I find myself looking for something to snack on or eating something I shouldn’t and my brain goes, “guess you don’t want it bad enough”. It’s like I sabotage myself and punish myself all at once, but don’t feel bad when I’m eating the chocolate. ”
You can see why this woman cannot lose weight. She cannot lose weight because her motive is flawed. Her underlying motive to lose weight is to get the approval of others, especially her husband.
Her motive is rooted in a lack of sense of lovability within herself. When you are able to keep yourself at a fit and healthy weight, it’s because eating well and exercise is a reward unto itself. It’s rewarding because you love taking care of yourself. Looking good is the icing; the cake is feeling energetic and healthy.
The same applies to sport. You cannot reach the performance goals you have set for yourself when you are motivated by a sense of yourself as insignificant, unworthy, or inadequate.
Why? Because your best comes out when you are trying to EXPRESS yourself there, not trying to PROVE yourself.
When you are trying to PROVE yourself, you pressure yourself. Here’s how. First, whether you realize it or not, you pressure yourself to execute things NOT under your control. For example:
“I won’t let anyone score this period.” “I’m going to ace my serves and crush this set 6-0.” “I’m going to birdie at least half my holes.” “I need two points on that board today.”
Then, you love yourself when you succeed and you hate yourself when you fail. You might not even realize you are doing this, but if you observe yourself carefully, you’ll see that it’s true.
When you pressure yourself to accomplish things outside your control, you cripple your confidence and your commitment. You do this by asking yourself for something you don’t know you can deliver. This weakens your certainty and makes you want to back away from the challenge.
Compare this to pressuring yourself for something you can control.
Recently I travelled to the US to work with one of the top NCAA hockey teams in the country.
The star player was in a scoring slump and had lost her confidence.
The coach pulled her aside and said, “For the rest of the game, just do ONE THING for me. When you get the puck, drive to the net with speed. But, make sure you drive to the OUTSIDE – don’t try to deke, get fancy, or cut to the middle. Got it? Now GO.”
Star Player did exactly that and Whoop – got a goal on the very next shift.
Why?
Because she stopped pressuring herself to score – and started pressuring herself to drive to the net (in a better way) instead.
This she could absolutely do, so she did it with a vengeance.
When you stop seeking to win for all the wrong reasons – and answer the battle cry for the right ones – you will be sharply focused. Every cell of your body will be aligned, and you will finally have the commitment and confidence to create the Will to Win for yourself.
Now that you know WHY athletes struggle to be committed and confident, here is the 3-step guide for cultivating the Will to Win in sport.
If you want to deliver peak performances and win gold medals, you’ll need the Will to Win out there.
You start by removing any emotional programming you’ve gotten in your life to doubt yourself.
You do this by realizing that you do not doubt yourself because there is actually something wrong with you. You don’t have self-doubt because you are too slow, too small, or missing the net, or falling in competition, etc.
I know what you are thinking, “Lisa, are you crazy? Of course that’s why I doubt myself!”
Stay with me here.
I’m not saying that your mistakes or weaknesses don’t affect you.
I am merely pointing out that when you are your Confident Self, your weaknesses and mistakes don’t destroy your Will to Win.
They are simply an event that happens when you go about your day.
Only when you are your Doubting Self do they “mean” anything, such that you are a loser, or worthless, or letting your team down.
Let me repeat: you don’t doubt yourself because you have a weakness (or two). You doubt yourself because you’ve been emotionally programmed to do so.
A tennis player I worked with last year started playing tennis again in his 50s. He was a contender to be named to the National Team of his country in the 60+ age category. His particular self-image brainwashing was that he was “not very talented in tennis.”
Growing up, this man’s mother had repeatedly told him he wasn’t a ‘natural’ in tennis. Because of this brainwashing, he had decided that the only way he could win was by forcing his opponents to make mistakes. This approach worked fine at the lower levels of tennis. But when the players got really good, it caused him to lose. Only when he corrected his brainwashing was he able to play aggressive, winning tennis.
Not long ago I worked with a gentleman who had brainwashed himself that his golf drive was “unreliable.” Six years ago he broke his collar bone and for a time, his golf drives suffered. “The thing is,” he told me, “I can drive the ball now! My swing has recovered; it’s decent. But when there are people watching and it’s a big tournament, I lose faith, and my swing leaves me.” Intellectually, he knew his swing was fine. But because his brainwashing told him that his swing was bad and unreliable, it was.
Again, I am not asking you to ignore your weaknesses or mistakes. All I am asking you to do is let go of your brainwashing – your emotional programming – that causes you to flip from your Confident Self into your Doubting Self.
One of the best techniques for banishing self-doubt is to take an area of doubt (weakness) and go on a mission to turn it into a strength.
Tim Grover, Michael Jordan’s personal trainer for fifteen years, recalls:
“Michael’s mindset was unique…he always felt someone else was going to outwork him. He had a big thing where he’d say, “I’m going to turn my weaknesses into strengths.” Every year there was evolution in his game. There was something he added – whether there was a new shot, or a new move.”
Get a pen and paper. In writing, please identify a “weakness” in yourself as an athlete that triggers doubt in you. For example, perhaps you believe you “can’t score” in soccer because when you were young, you stopped being a prolific scorer.
Next, write down two goals that are under your control that you can achieve this season that will help you gain confidence as a goal-scorer. For example, “I will take 25 shots every night to improve my accuracy.”
Then, work on the goal diligently and note your progress in writing every week.
In this Action Step, you’ll be listening to the audio visualization session I’ve created for you. It’s at the end of this section. Make sure you listen to it every night for at least fourteen days. Ideally, you’ll do it every day for thirty days.
For inspiration on banishing self-doubt, I also like the story of Muhammed Ali. Ali, a 3-time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, was so successful that he was voted the Sportsman of the Century by Sports Illustrated.
Ali was famous for banishing self-doubt and believing in himself. He repeatedly called himself the Greatest. This was a deliberate strategy on his part. Ali has even been quoted as saying, “I figured if I said it enough, I would convince the world I really was the Greatest.”
Of course, the person Ali was really speaking to was himself. Banishing self-doubt doesn’t mean you need to tell everyone you are the greatest. But it does mean you should start telling yourself this.
In the space below, select a thought about yourself that is both true and believable that you can repeat several times a day, especially when you are training or practicing. For example, you might say, “I’m a dazzling figure skater who captivates judges and fans.”
Do NOT tone it down or try to be “realistic.” The more over-the-top you are with this sentence, the better.
Repeat this sentence to yourself every day in your workouts, several times.
This Action Step will help counter-act the emotional programming you’ve had to doubt yourself when the going gets tough. Here’s why.
Once you accept an idea in your mind, such as, “I’m fast,” your mind goes to work to find evidence for this belief. It happens without you “trying” to compile evidence. So, if you are a field hockey player who believes, “I’m fast,” you will race opponents to the ball without a second thought. And, because of your lack of hesitation, you will often win. This will further reinforces your belief that you are fast.
It works the other way around too. Therefore, if you believe, “I’m slow,” you will hesitate and perhaps not jump to the ball very quickly…further reinforcing the belief in your mind that you are slow.
When you repeat a thought in your mind, what you are doing is programming yourself to find evidence that this thought is true. You do not have to work at this; your mind will do all the heavy lifting, without you having to expend effort or energy at all.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. “But Lisa, what if my positive sentence isn’t TRUE yet? For example, Ali was able to declare himself the Greatest before he won. I don’t know if it’s fair to do that. You don’t know me; you don’t know that I really am slow.”
No, I don’t know you, but in working with over 7,200 athletes in the past few years, not one of them has ever asked me whether he is “right” to believe something negative about himself. Why is it that when the belief is negative, we don’t require proof to believe it? Yet when the belief is positive, we require an army of proof? It’s lunacy.
I am not asking you to ignore your weaknesses or mistakes. All I am asking you to do is let go of the brainwashing that is causing you to doubt yourself, because it is destroying your confidence and commitment – the Will to Win.
Your objections are your fears talking. They are “push back” from the person inside you who is afraid to believe in yourself in case you are disappointed. The technical name for this push back is called FRICTION. Now that you know about it, you can be prepared for it. Simply note that you are afraid, and keep repeating your positive thought every day. Eventually, your mind will find evidence to support it, and you will believe it. At this point, it will be true.
Here is a special visualization audio I’ve created for you that will help you free your mind of self-doubt. Make sure you listen to it every night for 30 nights in addition to doing the other assignments in this training.
To listen to or download your session, click on the link below:
Visualization Audio
Earlier I said that one of the reasons athletes struggle to be committed and confident is learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness, or pessimism, is a giving up response. You feel as though you don’t have any control, and become passive.
The opposite of learned helplessness is optimism. Optimism is a hopeful, confident mindset – the idea that you can succeed with some effective perseverance.
My sister, Cara, one of the best ringette players who ever lived, was excellent at creating hope in awful circumstances.
In the 1998 World Championships, we got clobbered 10-2 in the first period vs. Finland. In the dressing room in between periods, the players looked pretty shell-shocked.
I don’t think there was a shred of hope left among us.
Cara gathered us together and said, “Okay. This game is basically over. Now our job is to LEARN for the next two periods. We’re going to play them again tomorrow and when we do, it’s going to be different.”
That’s exactly what we did. We ended up losing the first game 19-5. It was the most humiliating loss all of us had ever experienced.
But the next day, we beat Finland 8-7 in overtime. In the parking lot after the game, one of the parents walked up to me and said, “I have no idea how your team came back like that.”
I smiled. I knew it was the magic of optimism.
How You Can Be More Optimistic
Optimism means creating hope for yourself when you encounter setbacks.
The starting point of optimism is managing your expectations.
One way athletes kill their Will to Win is they try to have positive expectations all the time.
They’ve been told by coaches, parents, and their sport psychologist that champions always expect to win because they are “positive people.” So they go into a game, match or race expecting it to unfold well.
This is a BIG mistake. Huge.
TOUGH competitors with the Will to Win expect to win, but they also expect major bumps along the way.
That’s because sport is a war, complete with an enemy: your opponent.
Wayne Gretzky, one of the greatest hockey players ever, understood that sport is a war.
After Wayne was traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles, he had to go back and play against his old friends. He recalls:
‘Sooner or later I had to go to the one place I dreaded. Glen Sather didn’t say a word to me because I was on the other team now….I thought Mess [Edmonton centre Mark Messier] would check me, but I was wrong. He steamrolled me, backed up and steamrolled me again.
Mark is a competitor and this was a game he wanted to win.’
Even sports like golf and curling, which promote sportsmanship with your opponent, are a war…a war of control.
You are trying to control something that can’t be controlled, like a ball.
You can be an extremely tough competitor by STEELING yourself for the worst on the path to winning.
In the Tournament Players Golf Championship several years ago, Tom Kite and Chip Beck were the final twosome. Chip started out horribly, making four bogeys on the front side shooting 40.
But then Tom did something interesting.
He EXPECTED Chip to improve. He assumed Chip would be as hot on the back side as he had been cold on the front.
Chip did get hot, shooting 31.
Tom stuck to his mental game plan. At the final hole, Tom teed off with a two-stroke lead.
Chip had a tricky, downhill putt of 25 feet.
Tom immediately assumed Chip would make that putt.
Sure enough, Chip did.
If Chip’s putt had surprised Tom, his next putt would have suddenly become much harder. But Tom was perfectly PATIENT. His emotional state did not change when Chip’s ball disappeared into the hole.
Tom holed his par putt and won the tournament.
The simple act of being patient — about circumstances, opponents, even your performance — will keep your focus on track. And the key to patience is this: you expect to win, but you also expect the road to winning to be extremely difficult, with all kinds of setbacks.
This way, you don’t become unglued when encountering obstacles.
Robin Soderling stunned defending champion Roger Federer in the 2010 quarterfinal at the French Open, winning 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4 in come-from-behind fashion.
It’s the first time Federer had failed to reach a Grand Slam semifinal in six years.
The story behind this match was Soderling’s unfailing optimism.
Even though Soderling had lost to Federer 12 times in a row, he still BELIEVED he could win.
“Even though I lost (to Federer) so many times, I always have a chance to win,” Soderling said.
Most players in Soderling’s position defeat themselves mentally before they even get on the court.
Not Soderling.
He stayed aggressive on the slow, wet court — conditions Federer doesn’t like.
After the match Federer admitted: “These were some serious, tough conditions, you know.
If you serve 225-230kms/hour, you can still serve through the court. I’m maybe lacking those 5-10 K extra to hit through a guy on the serve.”
In true professional style, instead of giving in to conditions, Soderling seized the moment.
The optimism Soderling displayed is not hard to learn.
The next time you are the underdog in a match, get your mental ducks in a row by visualizing yourself winning.
Every athlete who has broken through first started out intimidated.
Mark Tewksbury, one of the greatest swimmers of all time, scared himself the first time he visualized winning.
That’s because he had to imagine beating his HERO, legend Matt Biondi. He had to imagine Biondi behind him in the pool, not in front of him.
Quite a shock!
Set aside five minutes each night for the next seven days at bedtime. Before you fall asleep at night, I want you to visualize yourself in your very next competition. In this competition, visualize dealing with every possible obstacle: an opponent who is on fire, a coach who is unsupportive, teammates who are playing poorly, poor conditions or weather, being late, your equipment messing up – everything that could do wrong. (Do NOT visualize mistakes or poor performance, however).
All through the competition, visualize dealing with these setbacks in a very patient manner. See yourself staying calm and confident. And, see yourself rising above the circumstances and winning against all odds.
To become the star athlete you were always meant to be, you will want to find your purpose in sport to motivate yourself.
You will also want to make your skills better every time you practice, train or compete so that you have a lot more control over every outcome.
This will take pressure off you because you are no longer trying to win in order to prove yourself.
You are just trying to express yourself. And when you express yourself without the fear of failure, everything falls into place.
Every cell of your body will be aligned according to your higher purpose, and you will finally have the commitment and confidence to create the Will to Win for yourself.
Instead of pressuring yourself for outcomes you cannot control, like winning, you find a bigger cause. You find your purpose as an athlete, and you pressure yourself to fulfill that.
That bigger cause, or purpose, is evolving yourself as an athlete – making yourself better every time you practice or train.
Let us go back to Michael Jordan and what he said about evolving himself:
“It was like a tree getting taller.
As I grew upward my roots grew deeper and formed a foundation that kept getting stronger. When the wind blew, I was able to stay steady.
They could blow all the wind they wanted about Michael Jordan, but they never could take on my basketball ability.
I dug down deep into the layers of the game. I learned as much as I could about the game, every nuance, every variation. Some trees stop growing and they get blown over in time.
I never stopped growing.
As I continued to grow there was less and less anyone could say about my skills. Over time it became easier for them to understand what I became.”
In an interview with the world’s best musicians, their commitment to music and learning about it was always the focal point of their lives.
One of them, a world class trumpet player, says that he never really did anything he didn’t like to do, and he never liked to study. He lived to practice, though, and in college he practiced even more: 10 hours per day.
He remembers, “I was always having to take time off if I had an important concert coming up because I was practicing so much my lips were worn down to a frazzle.”
Using the simple strategy of evolving yourself into a better athlete, you become a rebel WITH a cause.
Winning, performing well, and feeling confident are still important to you, but now they are tied for first with another goal – the goal of becoming a new, different athlete, which is even more exciting. Think YOU, 2.0.
Improving yourself is something you CAN control.
This calms you down and gets you on the path to the proper focus for your competition or event.
Write a specific description of the ideal athlete you would like to become. What skills would you like to learn? What weaknesses would you like to correct? Which athletes would you like to emulate? Make sure you write about every aspect of yourself as an athlete, including your physical abilities, your mental abilities, your technical abilities, your strategies abilities, and your leadership abilities.
Next, set a goal for each of them here:
Physical Goal: Mental Goal: Technical Goal: Strategic Goal: Leadership Goal:
Next, write down exactly what you will do each week in training or practice this season to make your goal a reality:
Step 1 Banish Self-Doubt. Turn a weakness into a strength. Remove your mental programming towards doubt using a positive thought.
Step 2 Be Optimistic Visualize your next big event unfolding with setbacks and difficulties as you patiently manage them and triumph.
Step 3 Evolve Yourself Tap into your higher purpose as an athlete by making yourself better every time you train or compete.
Your friend,
Lisa B.
