Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

The process vs. the outcome mindset is nearly always the first mindset type I must address with clients. Most athletes have parents or coaches refer them to mindset and mental skills coaching because of an outcome they are seeking. However, focusing too much on that outcome is usually the source of what is holding the athlete back.

An outcome mindset is when you focus too much on an outcome related to an ego goal. The problem with this is that it’s impossible to control the outcome as outcomes are in the future. Moreover, focusing on things you can’t control is what leads to negative achievement behaviors.

On the other hand, a process mindset is one in which you concede that you don’t control the future. But you do control what you do in the present to impact the future. Moreover, in the present moment you make that impact by focusing on the process of making the future you prefer the most likely future.

Teaching athletes why the process mindset is better than the outcome mindset is easy. However, getting them to apply this mindset to how they make choices is much harder.

While most athletes will claim the process mindset as their mindset, the vast majority of athletes only give this mindset lip service. A mindset is not something you speak into existence, it’s something you live out through your behaviors. Moreover, the behaviors of an athlete with a process mindset include:

10 Behaviors of a Process Mindset

1. Choosing to sleep instead of staying up late using social media, texting, and gaming.
2. Building healthy eating and drinking habits daily and not overindulging in foods and drinks that debilitate performance.
3. Investing in rest and recovery by abstaining from competition and training at least one day a week.
4. Spending as much time thinking about and planning their training routine as they do physically training.
5. Focusing their energy on having an internal locus of control. 
6. Proactively building mental toughness as part of their strength training routine.
7. Consistently using positive training pain to increase pain tolerance and mental toughness.
8. Creating habits that practice positive self-talk when conditioning.
9. Finding ways to practice bringing a high state of emotional intelligence to criticism and feedback.
10. Using failure to learn by seeking opportunities that will force them to “punch above their weight” and then applying the strategic mindset to the process of deliberate practice.