The First Mental Skill an Athlete Needs to Fix a Mental Toughness Issue
The research suggests that mental toughness is a product of both nature and nurture. Therefore, when an athlete has a known mental toughness issue, you must be sure to focus on their nurture not their nature as you can’t change a child’s personality, and it’s unlikely you can change what motivates them. So, if these traits are the source of their mental toughness issue another approach is needed. The approach I suggest is using the reframing mental skill.
Reframing is a mental skill that helps athletes change their perception of a situation. When an athlete changes their perception of a situation, they can change their emotions. Correspondingly, the ultimate goal of reframing is to change emotions that have a negative impact to emotions that have a positive impact.
A classic example is when an athlete performs fine in practice but has mental toughness issues during competitions. In this example, a process to reframe competition as just another form of practice will help. This process may include visualization, creating habits to make sure the athlete performs the same routines before a competition and practice, as well as training the athlete to achieve optimal intensity in both competitions and practice the same way.
While reframing can work when done right, you can’t reframe all mental toughness issues the same way. In this example the environment was causing the mental toughness issues. However, for a different athlete the cause could be preparation, coaching, social support, or something else. Reframing is likely the first solution you want to try for each of these causes. However, there is no cookie cutter reframing approach that works for everything.
If you would like help with a situation that requires reframing a mental toughness issue, please contact me here.