Where to Start When Young Athlete Has Obvious Mental Toughness Issue
A few days ago I shared my perspective on how to develop mental toughness. My perspective comes from the concepts of a mental toughness framework experts call the 4Cs model.
- Challenge: You must proactively seek out challenges and look for opportunities that will require you to overcome adversity.
- Commitment: You must proactively put yourself is situations were people depend on you keeping your promises.
- Control: You must proactively immerse yourself in high pressure situations that cause emotions to run high. Then practice staying under control in those situations.
- Confidence: You must proactively develop your confidence by proving to yourself that you can perform under pressure and influence how others perceive you.
With this in mind, yesterday a reader pointed out a gap in the information I previously shared on mental toughness. Specifically, the case when a young athlete is already beyond the stage of proactive development. In this scenario, it’s not so clear what to do first when mental toughness is already an obvious issue.
In lieu of seeing a sports psychologist, which may be the best choice, I believe the next best thing is to focus on the athlete’s self-talk.
Moving from Negative to Positive Self-Talk
This may or may not be obvious, but someone who constantly speaks negativity into their life often has negative outcomes. It’s quite common for both children and adults to both think and whisper out loud messages to themselves. We all do it, and many of us have bad habits of whispering negative messages to ourselves.
If a young athlete is having an obvious mental toughness issue, unquestionably this is where I would start. As one of my mentors likes to say, old habits die hard but new habits form fast. This basically means that old habits can only be broken by quickly replacing them with new habits.
A good place to start is with yourself. You must make sure you are not reinforcing the negative self-talk by telling the child things like:
- “stop being so weak“
- “don’t go out there and choke this time“
- “you always quit when things get hard“
- “you have to toughen up“
If a parent or coach is saying things like this, there isn’t much that can be done until this stops. The best thing to do is to speak the reverse when mental toughness issues surface.
- “You got this, you’re stronger than you think“
- “You’ve been here before, there is no pressure“
- “This isn’t hard, this is your chance to get better“
- “One step at a time, you’re doing great“
Positive Affirmations
Once you can eliminate the outside negativity, the next step is to develop some type of positive affirmation routine. An affirmation is a simple statement one says out loud for the purpose of absorbing as a truth in their life.
For example, each morning I may wake up and look in the mirror to tell myself “I am going to attack the day, I’m strong and full of energy.” Many psychologist and spiritual thinkers believe that positive affirmation routines are healthy and helpful for eliminating negative self-talk.
The key is that it must be a habitual process for it to work. Therefore it’s probably a good idea for a parent and child to do this together in the morning and at night to ensure the routine is followed. In addition, a routine before and after competitions and/or in critical pressure moments may be necessary.
Regardless of how often you do it, it’s important to stay consistent and remain patient with the process. I suggest sitting with the child and typing the affirmations together. Then, print them out and tape them somewhere that is readily visible. You could also put them on an index card that can be tucked in their sports equipment or take a few pithy positive affirmations and have them printed on those silicone wristbands (shown in article image) that can be worn everywhere.