Author: Arthur Coddington

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Why Practice is Essential for Mindset Training

What’s the one thing people fail at around mindset training? PRACTICE

 

A software engineer doesn’t take on an innovative challenge without having learned and practiced the coding techniques she will use. She studies and becomes so comfortable with her available skills that she can invent around them under pressure.

 

A presenter doesn’t walk onto stage without rehearsing his speech. He becomes so versed in the content that he can relax and weave a compelling tale.

 

An athlete doesn’t enter a competition without refining her skills and planning the way she’ll take on her opponent.

 

So why are we surprised when our unpracticed mindset breaks down at critical moments?

 

The Difference Between Attention and Mastery

 

Paying attention to mindset is an important step. It means you are moving beyond pure physical technique and upping your game.

 

To get to an elite level, however, it is critical to master mindset with as much rigor and intensity as you mastered all the other skills.

 

But how can I master mindset when it’s only needed at crunch time?

 

How did you master the idea of solving a seemingly unsolvable problem? How did you master the idea of summoning a commanding voice during a speech? How did you master scoring a goal?

 

You practiced.

 

It wasn’t minutes before your project needed to be delivered. It wasn’t live on TV in front of millions of people. It wasn’t in the finals of the world championships. You mastered the skills you needed in spite of it not being the critical moment.

 

You rehearsed, and sometimes you even created games to up the stakes. “If I make this catch, we win the world championships.”

 

Mindset training is the same. A winning mindset is not just going to appear at the perfect moment. It needs to be trained. It needs practice.

 

It needs learning about what works.

 

It needs failure, to understand how to recover quickly.

 

It needs variety, in order to know how to click into it wherever you are.

 

When I work with athletes and leaders on mindset training, practice is an integral component. Motivators and frameworks and visualization and even a robust support network have limited power unless we do the work.

 

Without practice, mindset is a just a nice idea, an untrained muscle.

 

It’s (Not) So Easy

 

What about those people for whom winning mindset is natural? They are far from their potential winning mindset. They are fortunate that it comes easy, and settling for easy is dangerous. They may continue to be fortunate, but just wait. Inevitably, any top performer hits a plateau or a dip. New competition emerges, performing at a higher level. Or their thoughts start getting in the way of their own performance. By settling, the natural gave up the opportunity to be nimble. They don’t know how to discover their next gear yet.

 

Don’t settle, however easy it comes to you. Do the work.

 

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Temper Temper

Have you ever gotten so angry that it seems you’re not in control of your own actions? So infuriated that it seems like you’re watching someone else have a fit?

In college, I lost my temper because I was behind in a friendly tennis match. I threw my racket toward the nearest fence. Except I missed. It flew up and over the fence and into another court beyond the fence.

A friend relayed another story of an athlete so frustrated by his performance that he intentionally ran into a tree.

At a sports event recently, I witnessed an athlete get so upset by a mistake that he broke his own finger.

As gruesome and comical as these outbursts can be, they highlight how destructive a loss of emotional control can be. When our winning mindset breaks, so do other things.

Constructive vs. Destructive Rage

Loss of mental control can halt progress toward our goals. It can hinder our work output – or destroy it. If we, for instance, slam a coffee cup onto a desk and drench a laptop, there goes weeks of data analysis. Bye bye to the family photos. That presentation? You’re starting again from scratch. After you spend hours or days replacing the laptop and getting it set up like your old, java-scented one.

Sometimes it’s not just a computer. Rage can damage our reputation and relationships. While being fiery or intimidating might be considered a plus by some, you’re more likely to lose your job, spouse or friends unless you manage your angry outbursts.

There is some thought that anger can fuel higher levels of performance. Watching the pure testosterone of a football team or a military unit, we see groups getting pumped up on adrenalin as they prepare for battle.

There is also some thought that expressing anger can help release it. An athlete might give a quick clap of her hands to dissipate frustration in an effort to move on.

It’s a fine line. When we embrace rage, we sacrifice calm and presence. Instinctual problem solving might work, but complex problem solving may suffer. Gross motor skills might thrive in the rampage, but fine motor skills may become unavailable.

In my own experience, adding a bit of intensity helps me tap into focus and access a higher game. Sometimes that intensity can take the form of anger, as in “there’s no f’ing way this skill is beyond me. I’m. Doing. It. NOW.” If I go beyond that, my performance suffers. I get caught in feedback loop of frustration and loss of confidence, and I need to reset. It takes an intentional effort to step away from the feedback loop of rage.

Temper as Proof of Commitment

This past year I’ve been playing a lot of disc golf and watching videos of the best in the world as they compete. It’s wonderful to watch the sport’s athletes make incredible and imaginative plays.

It’s not so wonderful to watch the athletes get angry. From local recreational play to the world championships, there is an undercurrent of unhappiness among players, borne of frustration. It’s the same frustration traditional golfers feel as they hit golf balls with clubs.

Sometimes it feels like people feel an expectation to be upset by mistakes, as though not being visibly frustrated is evidence that you don’t care. At the pro level, this can become a caricature. An outsider like me can understand disappointment when missing a shot within one’s wheelhouse. Often, the pros will throw a temper tantrum after barely missing a low percentage attempt.

It’s here where I see an opportunity for a mindset shift. What if the proof of commitment was brushing off imperfection? What if the most intimidating presence was the unbreakable, inscrutable genius?

We need a world-class and fully planned-out mindset strategy to get to that point. Frustration will inevitably tempt us. Our challenge is to be practiced in navigating it, so we find our desired experience.

Enjoyment in the Territory of Eternal Frustration

I gave up traditional golf as a teenager because the frustration was so unpleasant, and I gave up competing in disc golf many years ago for similar reasons.

I am approaching the game differently now, and as I watch disc golfers play, I wish they could find some of the calm I am feeling.

I wish the same for social change activists fighting against right wing extremism, confronting hundreds of setbacks for every victory, knowing that they may not even see the big win for another generation. That’s a lot of frustration to swallow, a lot of temper to manage. And it matters a lot more to the world than a missed disc golf putt.

Tempering Temper

So how do we not run into trees or break our fingers or fling tennis rackets dangerously close to fellow members of our communities?

Practice.

It’s that simple. And it’s as complex as you’re thinking it is.

Here are three starting points:

1. Focus on What Matters
Whenever we focus on the result, we risk focusing on things out of our control. Whenever we focus on the past, we reduce our ability to impact what’s happening right now.

One way around this is to maintain focus on the process. It’s not about saving America’s national treasures from greedy business people. It’s about meeting one more person who knows that Yosemite is a far more valuable asset than any oil well will ever be.

Another way is to maintain focus on the experience. If you are miserable playing a sport, why play? If you are miserable and a genius at a sport, how will winning change that misery?

How would you like the experience of playing to be? Find a way to cultivate that in service of performance. If you know you have an 80% chance of success with an action and that you did everything needed to reach that 80% probability, you’ll still fail 20% of the time. In this moment, temper is not going to increase your success rate, so why not find a different way to enjoy the experience?

2. Be a Refocusing Expert
Setbacks are inevitable when reaching for a goal, especially for those pursuing incredible, seemingly impossible goals. If you waste time losing temper in those setbacks, you are delaying the achievement of your goal.

We are emotional beings, so you’ll never hear me say “don’t feel frustrated.” I feel frustrated often. I want to see people get faster at recovery. Be resilient. Feel the pain, and become practiced at moving on.

Meditation/mindfulness is an excellent approach to managing rage. And confusion. And distraction. And disconnection.

No need to sign up for 10-day silent retreats or even set aside more than a few minutes of time. Just try sitting without devices or interaction for as long as you’d like. 1 minute. 5 minutes. 30. One’s endurance for mindfulness builds with practice, just like with any form of training. David Johnson’s podcast Beyond The Thoughts is a great starting point. Short recordings from an interesting and human point of view.

As you gain more skill at mindfulness, you will be more nimble at noticing your emotions and what is triggering them. You will feel more freedom to act rather than react.

3. Team Up
Whether it’s working with a coach like me to strengthen your mental game or surrounding yourself with friends who keep you accountable to your mindset, teaming up with others is a powerful strategy. When we are enraged, we’re not often our best coach. We’re busy raging. Working with others and designing how you’d like them to support your mental game can bring help you snap out of the reactive moment and snap back into your desired approach.

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I Am the Foraged Mushrooms

I am the foraged mushrooms. A friend of mine described his recent state of mind with these words. This wonderful image describes one element of himself, one ingredient of a gourmet dish. He could have told me hours of stories about his last few weeks and it would not have provided as much information as those five words.

Photo: Pixabay

We get caught in stories and details. Unnecessary details. An inconsequential moment can spoil my day if I allow my brain to spin it out of control.

I am the foraged mushrooms. I am the raw, heavy cream. And, I am the minced garlic that goes into the slop that sits on the fancy steak.

Layers and layers of meaning in those metaphors. One layer is that they are all ingredients of a gourmet meal. The deeper layers are personal and less obvious. The interpretations of the metaphors are keys directing ourselves forward.

In high stakes performance situations, we can get caught in story.

This is all or nothing.

Why are they looking at me like I have no business on this stage?

I’ve crumbled so many times at moments like this.

What will people think of me if I fail?

This feels like one person against an army.

Without training our minds, those thoughts can unravel us. They can prevent others from seeing our true potential. They can strip the enjoyment from our favorite things in the world. And they can keep us from our goals.

So we train, in order to quiet the stories that sabotage us and replace them with more helpful messages. Or even complete stillness. The irony is that to find stillness, we need to wander through the clutter of our brain and its messy thought habits. We need to instill order so that when an unhelpful story arrives, it’s not a five foot high stack of 30 year old newspapers. It’s a little speck of dust, easily removed.

Photo by Digital Buggu

Metaphors like “I am the foraged mushrooms” can help us access stories and begin to take leadership in shaping them.

Our metaphors for ourselves will change day to day, as will what they reveal about us. Multiple metaphors can even be true at the same time. “I am the spacewalking astronaut” may describe me on the same day as “I am the undiscovered gigantic emerald“. The next day may be more of a “I am the Olympic big air skier” day.

It’s all good as long as we harness it. Create the metaphor. Reflect as deeply as possible on it (often best when facilitated by a coach). Then apply the learnings.

How are you feeling today? Foraged mushroom? Over ripe mango? Tasty cherry scone?

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Achieving Vulnerability

Achieving vulnerability. Photo

Top performers can seem like freaks of nature, impervious to pressure, perpetually healthy and prepared for battle.

Invulnerable.

I believe it’s the opposite. Being vulnerable can be mistaken for a sign of weakness, but it can actually be one of our biggest strengths.

Don’t get me wrong, top performers are often freaks of nature. As humans, we vary in our mental and physical strengths, and outliers (freaks of nature) have a headstart. And I think one of the strengths of the truly legendary performers is their vulnerability. Specifically, self-knowledge of vulnerability.

Allowing Vulnerability

Western society puts on a brave face, pretending that emotions are a luxury and a barrier to accomplishment. While it’s possible to go quite far while denying human emotion, emotion and vulnerability are often the drivers of transcendent creations.

When we deny vulnerability, we are hiding a part of ourselves, fighting against it. Sometimes this is the part of us that makes the big leap. Sometimes it gives us access to performances levels we never imagined.

Justin Vernon spent a winter at a Wisconsin cabin in the wake of illness and the breakup of a relationship. Allowing his emotions into his music without filters, he created a critically-acclaimed album, launched the Grammy-winning act Bon Iver and redefined his musical reputation.

More recently, Phil Elverum wrote music as he mourned the loss of his wife. Through the quiet and heartbreaking and raw songs on “A Crow Looked at Me, we are side-by-side with Elverum as he meets each day without his late wife. The album has been called one of the best of 2017.

It’s not always about breakups and death. Triple jumper Christian Taylor was already the Olympic champion when he started having knee pain in 2013. Facing a potential career-ending knee condition, Taylor faced this vulnerability and did the impossible. He learned to jump with his other leg. Even more incredible, he exceeded his previous best jump and nearly broke the world record two years later at the world championships. A year later he won another Olympic title.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Os8H-zDLuE

By allowing vulnerability, these three – and so many others – have removed barriers to performance.

Let’s shed the baggage these words carry. It’s time to redefine emotion and vulnerability.

Emotion is a source of strength, and vulnerability is a key to breakthroughs.

Achieving Vulnerability

Top performers are focused on doing and performing and achieving. So how do we move from allowing vulnerability to integrating it into training toward the big moment?

Throughout their careers, they identify where they are vulnerable and address it. They practice the skill of distinguishing between what is under their control and what is not, and they work on what’s under their control.

They look at the strengths of their competitors and use them as inspiration to close the gap and even chart new territory.

Even if they are already the GOAT, they don’t convince themselves of their invulnerability. They assess their performance and envision what’s possible next. They anticipate vulnerability and address it before it impacts their results.

If they have weaknesses like performing under pressure, they don’t let that vulnerability fester. They experiment in order to find the methods that let them access peak performance at the highest stress moments.

And when they have setbacks like injury or a failed enterprise, they muster their courage and look deep into that vulnerability with the intention of emerging stronger than ever.

Passive vulnerability is not the champion mindset. It’s an invitation to be destroyed.

Active vulnerability – achieving vulnerability – is how innovators make their mark.

One last thought on vulnerability. It’s an essential ingredient in true success because it makes us human. We’ve all seen tunnel-visioned success stories who turn out to be uninteresting (at best) people. Vulnerability means we’re connected with who we are. Someone who has achieved vulnerability is more likely to be seen as a real person. And I think that’s a good thing.

Where are you vulnerable, and what are you going to do about it?

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Those Damned Expectations

Peak performance is about paradox. Be intense and stay relaxed at the same time. Play with bravado and humility simultaneously. Be fully trained nearly beyond the bounds of health – and fully rested too.

The bigger picture of peak performance is the same. When we commit to big goals, we can be seduced by the expectations that go with them. We can lose track of the work needed to get there and lose sight of our progress. Both of these diminish our potential. Today, we’ll talk about setting aside expectations and keeping connected to progress.

PERSPECTIVE FOR LONG-TERM DOMINANCE

Perspective makes the experience of pursuing goals more effective and rewarding.

While it’s useful to attack our huge goals and aspire to greater achievement it’s also important to keep things in perspective and to celebrate successes. Let’s say your huge goal is dominance. You want to be the number one company or the number one athlete or have the greatest social impact of any activist in history. If our expectation is achieving that at the next milestone, we are setting ourselves up for frustration. Becoming the Dominant One can feel like trudging forward, but there is a more rewarding, effective road.

A problem with enormous goals like dominance is that they are always in the future until they aren’t. Sometimes we only see dominance in retrospect.

In the meantime, it can be a pretty bleak road where we only see disappointment at not meeting our expectations. Even the victories seem smaller than we want.

But let’s step back for some perspective. What seems disappointing today might have been an unimaginable performance five years ago. Most of the time we don’t see that. Our progress is entangled with end goals and ego. Expectations. We’ve lost sight of how wonderfully we are moving forward, and with that we’ve lost an opportunity to be even more dominant.

CONFIDENCE

Seeing progress gives us access to confidence. When we are bound by expectations, our self-talk might sound like “why is it never good enough?!?!?!” or “of course! Another mistake that puts me behind everyone else.”

Freeing ourself from expectations with a bit of perspective, we are free to say “that’s not the level I’m ultimately going for, but it’s so much better than last time.” We give ourselves credit for progress, but there’s something else available. One of the key factors in clutch, dominant performance is confidence or bravado. By giving ourselves credit, we also give ourselves permission to own a higher level of bravado.

Team leaders take note. If your folks have just hit their number or delivered on a deadline, give ample time for celebration. Talking about the bigger goals too soon spoils the fun and prevents the team from locking in their well-earned bravado. It’s also possible that your newly confident team might have bigger, better ideas for what’s possible next.

TINKERING TO OPTIMIZE

Seeing progress also lets us evaluate and see new opportunities. We’ve gained bravado. Now we get to add a dose of humility to shake things up.

True dominance requires tinkering. It requires a paradox of complete immersion in generating momentum toward the goal AND self-awareness of what’s working and what’s not.

Sometimes we get so inside our pursuit of a goal that we lose sight of what it actually takes to succeed. We become reactive instead of strategic. We might take short cuts, sacrificing long-term success for a short-term win. In this moment, we might feel frustrated or drifting or fuzzy about how we’ll ever get where we want to go. It’s at this point that many people give up.

Not you.

By taking a step back and seeing your progress, you can access both the bravado of a champion and the humility that makes a dominant force.

Take an honest look at what’s working and make a comprehensive assessment of what’s needed next. Remember, we don’t always know everything the ultimate goal will require of us. Pausing gives us a chance to notice things like:

Are my assumptions flawed?

What are others doing that might work for me?

What are others doing that might be completely wrong for me…or even them?

How am I enjoying the experience of getting there?

Where can I cultivate a surprising dominant advantage?

We pause. We tinker. Then we do it again.

And through the tinkering, we discover opportunity.

Now go tinker!