15 Steps to Mental Strength in Sports – Step 5 Motivation

Step 5 – Motivation In Taking Your Athletic Training To The Next Level

What’s your athletic dream?

What’s your performance goal?

Where do you want to take your athletic performance?

These are all very important questions to answer, plus a few more, before you can begin to talk about motivation.

With out a big dream and goal there’s no need to up your game.

Motivation, the long-lasting kind, comes from inside.  Sure, your coach’s and teammates can get you temporarily pumped-up, but long sustaining motivation comes from the inside.

And how does this motivation originate?

By having a powerful goal about your athletic career.

This is the fire in the belly, but is has to be your fire and your belly

Motivation is…

• Going the extra distance

• Getting up earlier then your teammates and competition

• Working on your weaknesses

• Is say yes when you’re asked to do more

• Having a direction

• Taking action

• Stepping outside your comfort zone

Without motivation most athletes end up having “permanent potential.” That is, they never truly reach peak performance.

I’ll warn you, you can’t stay or get motivated by staying inside your comfort zone. You must venture outside your comfort zone, both physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Motivation is not about telling what you are going to do.  Motivation is about doing something and then telling what you did.

So, what are you motivated to do?

What is your direction…your athletic goal…your athletic dream?

With your athletic training, and in life, you are constantly faced with a decision point.  One path leads to being average…at best.  The other path…well this path leads to peak athletic performance.

Let me give you an example:

Example 1: Let’s say some friends are going out on the town.  You know you have practice tomorrow, but you don’t want to miss out on the fun so you go so you decide to go out with them.  You’ve just decided to take the average path.

Example 2: You’re in the middle of an intense practice and you’re hurting big time. Your coach asks you to step it up a notch.  You think to yourself “no way!” and when the coach looks the other way you slack off.  Congratulations, you just took the average path.

Now, let’s say in example 1 you passed on the invitation and stayed in and got the required sleep, nutriment and hydration to perform your best at practice.  You have now taken the path to peak performance.

In example 2 your coach asks you to push by something you’re not that good at.  You know the coach is right; you use your mental strength and dig in.   Great job!  You’ve taken the path of peak performance

You see when you’re motivated to achieve peak athletic performance you practice something you’re not good at, instead of something you’re already mastered.

Taking the average path tension revealing not goal achieving.

The path of peak performance is full of pain, suffering, failure and frustration. But eventually this path does lead to peak athletic performance.

So you may ask why anyone would take this path, the path of peak performance.

Answering this reveals the truth behind motivation.

You have to WANT it!  You MUST have an emotional compelling reason to make to sacrifice worth it.

Let me tell you a story….

There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the lowlands and the other high in the mountains. The mountain people invaded the lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the lowlander families and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.

The lowlanders didn’t know how to climb the mountain. They didn’t know any of the trails that the mountain people used, and they didn’t know where to find the mountain people or how to track them in the steep terrain.

Even so, they sent out their best party of fighting men to climb the mountain and bring the baby home.

The men tried first one method of climbing and then another. They tried one trail and then another. After several days of effort, however, they had climbed only several hundred feet.

Feeling hopeless and helpless, the lowlander men decided that the cause was lost, and they prepared to return to their village below.

As they were packing their gear for the descent, they saw the baby’s mother walking toward them. They realized that she was coming down the mountain that they hadn’t figured out how to climb.

And then they saw that she had the baby strapped to her back. How could that be?

One man greeted her and said, “We couldn’t climb this mountain. How did you do this when we, the strongest and most able men in the village, couldn’t do it?”

She shrugged her shoulders and said, “It wasn’t your baby.”

Your big why has to be your “baby!” This will motivate you to push yourself far beyond what the average person would do.

Make this big why specific as possible and positive.  This is basically the SMARTER goal format I have disused numerous times.

Let me give you some quotes from Olympian Champion Dan Gable:

“I’m a big believer in starting with high standards and raising them. We make progress only when we push ourselves to the highest level. If we don’t progress, we backslide into bad habits, laziness and poor attitude.”

“When you finally decide how successful you really want to be, you’ve got to set priorities. Then, each and every day, you’ve got to take care of the top ones. The lower ones may fall behind, but you can’t let the top ones slip. You don’t forget about the lower ones though because they can add up to hurt you. Just take care of the top ones first. In 25 years as a head coach and assistant, I think I might have missed one practice. Why? Because practice is my top priority. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t accomplish something in my family life or my profession because those two things are my top priorities.”

“When I’d get tired and want to stop, I’d wonder what my next opponent was doing. I’d wonder if he was still working out. I tried to visualize him. When I could see him still working, I’d start pushing myself. When I could see him in the shower, I’d push myself harder.”

Dan’s quotes give you the secret to athletic success. That is get comfortable being uncomfortable.  This is what developing mental strength is all about.

When you start to feel the pain, you stay with it.

Here’s another story about the benefits of pain and struggle.

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared.

He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.

Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly.

He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily but it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it, expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge and expand enough to support the body.

Neither happened!

In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around and was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand:

The restricting cocoon and the struggle required by the butterfly to get through the opening was a way of forcing the fluid from the body into the wings so that it would be ready for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives.

Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.

We will not be as strong as we could have been and we would never fly.

Anybody can quit.

It’s exactly what your adversaries or competitors hope you will do, and there’s always a legitimate excuse. But have faith; hang in there. Stay in touch with your dream and commitment.

Remember that your resources are always far deeper and far greater than you ever imagine them to be. You got yourself this far. Down deep you’ve got what it takes to go the distance.

Everything counts!

Everything you do today, every decision you make, every thought you have, every action you engage in, has some kind of consequence somewhere in your future. Without measurable, specific goals for each important area of your life, these decisions, thoughts and actions become nothing more than a random exercise in futility.

Make a conscious decision today to take control of your life. Instead of maintaining a habit of procrastination, develop a bias for action!

Remember, goal setting is not about timing; it’s about decisions. It’s not about luck or chance; it’s about determination and hard work. Being athletic isn’t just about how much talent you have. It’s about being persistent in every aspect.

Start today in developing your mental strength for peak athletic performance by picking up a copy of “Mental Strength Training for Athletes” by going HERE.