The Illusion of Choice: Why Choices are Killing Your Performance

 The Illusion of Choice

 April Theme: Decision-Making

If you want to be great at something, you have few choices. In fact, you may have no choice. Choices are just an illusion for those who want to be great at something.

We all love having choices. From the food we pick on a menu to the videos we watch on YouTube; we all love choices. But at some point, can giving ourselves too many choices actually work against us?

In the area of mindset, one thing a growth mindset or a positive mindset does not account for is the number of choices we give ourselves.  What if having too many choices actually prevents us from being great?

Who Can Benefit

Whether you are already an elite athlete, an aspiring future star, a coach or athletic director, or a person who is simply motivated to do better and be better: we all have a tool in our tool bag called, “choices”. Choices...

You’ve Already Decided: How to Outsmart Yourself for Elite Performance

Head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, Nick Saban, is arguably the most successful college football coach in college football since 2007. He and his teams have won the national championship in 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017. And the years he and his teams haven’t won the championship, they are always present among the top teams in the nation.

MAKE THE COMPLEX SIMPLE

His coaching style is simple: Make complex things simple. Listen to Saban speak at a conference, seminar, or practice, and you’ll quickly realize that college football’s most successful coach is consistently preaching simplicity.

ESPN filmed a series of shows following Coach Saban’s interactions with many of his players at practice. At one practice, Coach Saban was visibly upset with his team about their physical and mental performance. He blew his whistle loudly and waved the entire team to the center of...

Proactive vs Reactive? 6 Ways High Performers Live Proactively AND Reactively Responsively for an Elite Mindset

I know you’ll be tempted to skip to the bottom of this article and fast-track your way to the top 6 ways high performers and elite athletes live proactively and responsively.

But don’t.

As a mental training coach and mental training consultant, let’s go on a walk and dig deeper into this idea of being a highly proactive person, athlete, coach, athletic director, or high performer in your field. Sports Psychology has a lot to teach us about how to live both proactive and responsive. If you want an elite mindset, you’ll have to work hard at disciplining yourself to live intermittently between proactive and not reactive, but responsive.

Why Striking a Balance Matters

When high performers and those with an elite mindset figure out when and how to move between proactive and responsive mental skills sets, they will:

1. Build confidence.
2. Learn...

GOAL SETTING BASICS PART 1

Goal setting is all the buzz these days. Some people live and thrive by them, others live by a different ethos. If you are a goal-oriented person, you might find this article on how to set goals helpful to get better and be better.

At the time of this writing, the coronavirus and the world’s response to it are in full swing. It might feel odd to talk about goal setting in a time of crisis. But in every crisis, there’s an opportunity. An opportunity to re-commit to the things that are important. An opportunity to focus on what’s important now. An opportunity to stabilize ourselves with healthy habits and routines.

Whether you’re setting personal goals or professional goals, goal-setting can help you focus on what’s important to you right now, for the future. 

In this article, we’ll look at 2 different kinds of goals from a study, then I'll suggest a third to complete the goal setting structure.

From the Journal of...

What Sports Psychology Can Teach Us in Times of Uncertainty

As many of you know, the coronavirus is on everyone's mind. Facebook and Instagram posts highlight the anxiety from the worldwide pandemic. People are on edge. People are thrown off their daily routines. Kids are out of school.  Jobs, money, and the stock market are all unstable. Lives are at risk.  All of it can be anxiety-producing.

While visiting friends down in the Santa Barbara area, an English professor friend of mine at a college in the region estimated that even before the rise of the coronavirus, 1 in 4 students have visited the mental health office with many of those visits being anxiety-related. 1 in 4. And that's just the students who have reported having anxiety-related issues. How many more are there?

And how many more working-class people are experiencing anxiety from the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus? 

Can we escape the anxiety that is produced by the uncertainty of the times?

To be...

HOW TO UNLOCK PERFORMANCE WITH TWO QUESTIONS

A great question can unlock a treasure chest of self-understanding. When I'm asked what I do professionally at Elite Mindset, I will often respond, "I'm a professional question-asker."  Sports psychology and mental performance are about asking great questions. 

There's nothing that unlocks a player's psyche and heart more than asking a great question. The conversation needs to be about them. And they need to figure out what their answer is and how they will eventually execute it. 

There are two questions that I often ask athletes and high performers. They must be asked in the correct order. In fact, they are almost identical, but they are very different. The first one is quite playful. The second one is crucially important.

QUESTION 1: "What do you want?"

I don't know about you, but, my first response is to watch football games all weekend, eat pizza, hang out with friends, and smoke some meat on the smoker. Now, if...

POSITIVITY DOESN’T WORK FOR ELITE PERFORMERS. SO WHAT DOES?

At this point, you’re thinking that this article is clickbait. I hate clickbait titles that don’t deliver in the paragraphs below. I wouldn’t do that to you.

Now you’re looking for my disclaimer. There isn’t one.

You’ve watched the news. You’ve read the articles. You’ve glanced at the Instagram pic with a cute note about positivity. Positivity is overrated no matter what “science” you’ve been reading from psychology blogs or “experts”. The truth is that when you read about the “science” of positivity, it needs so many qualifiers that it is no longer “scientific”. It can only be anecdotal.

“POSITIVITY HURT ME”

I recently bought a suit at my local suit shop. The retailer was a physical human specimen. We got to chatting about why I was there and the environments I’d be wearing this new...

The best recovery list on the internet begins right here, at Elite Mindset.

As a mental trainer and a frequent gym attender, I searched the internet for a simple but comprehensive list of the very best recovery techniques I could find. But, I'm a research nerd and I couldn't find one that I loved, so I decided to write the best recovery practices list on the internet (a big endeavor, I'll admit). The list is a combination of old school and new school research and practices. I'll include my own best recovery practices that I've learned over my years of coaching motivated people to be their very best. To be transparent, it's taken me a lot longer than I'd like to admit to learn many of these, but here's what I've learned the hard way!

INTENTIONAL RECOVERY IS YOUR SECRET WEAPON.

Recovery is your secret weapon. If you're an athlete, then resting and recovering better than your opponent gives you a significant competitive advantage. If you're a high achiever, the...