Don’t Overthink Mental Toughness: There is only One Way to Develop it
One of the most common questions I hear from parents of struggling young athletes is how to help them develop mental toughness.
The first time I tried to answer this question I began with the 4Cs model of mental toughness. This is a good framework to understand. Furthermore, I highly recommend it in theory, but it is a bit complex to execute for most.
Next, I came from the perspective of athletes who already have deep seated obvious mental toughness issues. My focus here was changing the mindset from using negative self-talk to positive self-talk. Again, this is solid advice, but this approach takes time and also feels too fluffy to execute for most.
Today, I’m going to boil the answer to this mental toughness question down to the obvious. There is really only one way to develop mental toughness in an athlete. No need to overthink this.
If you want to develop an athlete’s mental toughness, you have to make them do mentally tough things. That’s it.
If an athlete lives an easy life that doesn’t challenge their mental toughness, then they won’t be mentally tough. On the other hand, if you require an athlete to consistently overcome challenges that require mental toughness, then they will develop mental toughness.
Our job as parents is to not let our children off the hook when things get tough. As much as each of us wants to create a safe and happy environment for our children and support them when they’re struggling, we must be careful not to overdo it. What’s more, we must find ways to create challenges for them when we see them living on easy street.