Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

When pursuing difficult goals, the process must be the goal, and the goal must serve as your compass. When the process is the goal, then achieving your goal is 100% within your control. By having complete control, you eliminate all excuses. What’s more, you must accurately set your compass with the right goals to ensure you’re following the right processes.

With this purpose in mind, coaches are the best people to help young athletes find the right goals to serve as their compass. Young athletes have a tendency to create superficial be the “best in the world” or “be a millionaire” type goals. Or, they may just copy the goals of their friends or competitors.

Typically setting these type goals temporarily satisfies a short term desire. However, once the euphoria of talking about the goal wears off, the realization that these goals don’t truly drive motivation on a day to day basis sets in. It’s at this point that the goal turns into nothing more than a faint dream.

With the help of a strategic planning coach like myself, a young athlete will instead start off with “S.M.A.R.T.” goals. This means goals that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time bound. On top of this, in my coaching program I make sure that I always take advantage of an athlete’s innate strengths, passions, and motivations. For example, setting a goal for a rabbit to increase speed vs learning to fly.

My Approach to Creating The Right Goals for a Specific Athlete’s Personality, Motivations and Strengths

When I first start working with an athlete, I stat by talking to their parents, sports coaches, and teachers if possible to learn about their behaviors using the Strengths Based Parenting approach.

1. Yearning: What activities or environments is the athlete repeatedly drawn to or eager to try?
2. Rapid learning: What new skills or activities does the athlete pick up quickly and easily?
3. Satisfaction: When is the athlete most enthusiastic and fulfilled?  Which activities is he or she excited about doing again and again?
4. Timelessness: When does the athlete become so engrossed that he or she seems to lose track of time?

The next step is to understand which one of the 5 big personality traits they best fit.

1. Openness: People who are dominant in the openness personality trait are known for their curiosity, imagination, and ingenuity.
2. Conscientiousness: People who are dominant in the conscientiousness personality trait are known for their organization skills and have a tendency for perfectionism.
3. Extroversion: People who are dominant in the extroversion personality trait are known for being outgoing, energetic, and talkative.
4. Agreeableness: People who are dominant in the agreeableness personality trait are known for being highly cooperative with others. What’s more, agreeable people are often considerate, generous, forgiving and trusting.
5. Neuroticism: People who are dominant in the neuroticism personality trait are known for being emotional and have a tendency of being moody.

Then I combine what I learn from these two approaches to categorize a child’s primary form of self-motivation into 1 of 9 types:

1. Autonomy
2. Competence
3. Social Bonding
4. Social Status
5. Accomplishment
6. Knowledge
7. Excitement
8. Challenge
9. Creativity

Then finally, using these 9 categories of self-motivation, I develop a custom plan and process to pursue goals that takes advantage of the young athlete’s unique strengths and motivations to optimize their potential for inevitable success.

To find out more about my coaching programs, including cost and how to participate, please contact me here.