Terms to Add to Your Mindset Vocabulary: Neutral Thinking and Aggregating
Yesterday I shared an article about Russell Wilson’s mental conditioning coach Trevor Moawad. In this article Moawad discusses some of the details of the important elements of the training program he does with Russell Wilson. Two of those elements were neutral thinking and the aggregate of marginal gains.
These are two terms I was not very familiar with. So today I spent some time trying to understand these concepts and below is what I found.
1. Neutral Thinking
Neutral thinking is a better approach to positive thinking. The problem with positive thinking is that sometimes you have to fake it to truly be positive. Your inner-self knows when you’re faking it and this can minimize the benefits of positive thinking. On the other hand, neutral thinking is more about being positive about the reality of the situation. It’s being a realist without letting negativity of what you can’t control impact the reality of what you can control.
When you use neutral thinking you focus on sticking with the facts. Facts that are not necessarily overly positive or negative, they just are. Moawad provides a great example of this referenced below:
One of Moawad’s go-to examples of neutral behavior is Wilson’s language in the 2015 NFC Championship Game. The Seahawks trailed Green Bay 16-0 in the second quarter and 19-7 late in the fourth after four interceptions by Wilson. They scored 15 points in the final two-plus minutes to force overtime, in which Wilson threw the winning touchdown to cap an improbable comeback.
“If Russell is positive in that situation, he’s constantly talking — ‘We’re going to beat Green Bay. We’re going to beat Green Bay’ — because much of positive thinking is connected to outcomes,” Moawad said. “Neutral thinking is truth-based thinking focused on behaviors, and Russell’s language is all about competing. There’s time. He’s not pretending that he didn’t throw four picks. But what he’s being very clear of is there’s still five minutes left. And that’s the truth, and even the most skeptical people recognize that that five minutes has not happened yet, so how are we going to play those five minutes? And we don’t have to concede those five minutes because of the first 55 minutes.”
2. Aggregating Marginal Gains
Marginal gains are tiny amounts of progress. For example, getting 1% better each workout session. When you aggregate these 1% improvements over time, major improvements happen.
The trick is that these 1% improvements don’t just happen, deliberately changing small behaviors is what makes them happen. Small improvements to diet, sleep, and other habits are what drives the marginal gains.
The marginal gains approach is ultimately about learning how to compete with yourself each day. It’s about finding the best version of yourself by changing something for the better every chance you get.