Total Game Plan » Mental Game

About Motivation

Coach Tully — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:47:54 +0000

No aspect of coaching is as misunderstood as motivation is.

Too many coaches think of motivation as a magic wand to be waved over their team before the big game.

Great coaches know that isn’t the case. A perfect example is Mike Pope, who coaches the tight ends on the New York Giants. Pope uses motivation all the time, as is profiled in this article by Mike Garafalo of the Star-Ledger.

Pope’s techniques can give you ideas on how you can motivate your team. He is a reminder that motivation is not a magic wand.

It’s not a sometimes thing. It’s an all the time thing. It’s not just something to rile up the troops before the big battle. It’s something keep them sharp and focused before the battle.

It’s not something you add onto what you do. It’s something that is at the heart of what coaches do.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

The Opinions of Others

Coach Tully — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:33:07 +0000

Groundhog Day fascinates me. Not the movie, but the fable of what a groundhog can tell us about the weather.

No one I know uses the prediction of Punxsutawney Phil to decide how much salt to buy for the driveway or when to buy spring clothes.

But lots of people live their lives according to something much less reliable than if a groundhog sees its shadow. I’m talking about the opinions of others.

“Be more like the weather,” the saying goes. “It pays no attention to the opinions of others.”

The world is full of successful people who defied the limits that others tried to place on them. Elvis Presley was rejected. So were the Beatles. Almost 1,400 players were drafted before baseball slugger Mike Piazza was. Michael Jordan was cut from his freshman basketball team.

“Patterning your live around others’ opinions is nothing more than slavery,” said Lawana Blackwell.

Success belongs to those who can persist in their vision despite those who offer negativity.

Cicero said, “No one can give you better advice than yourself.”

And if you follow that advice, you won’t need Punxsutawney Phil or anyone else to tell you how you’re doing.

Winning the Battle of Thoughts

Coach Tully — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:42:22 +0000

How do you even begin to talk about Novak Djokovic’s epic victory over Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final?

It lasted five hours, 53 minutes, nearly as long as the marriage between Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian.

Both Djokovic and Nadal gave everything they had. At one point, after losing a 31-stroke rally, Djokovic lay prone on the court, seemingly spent. Within that moment he gave us a clue to help us through difficult times.

“Thousand thoughts going through the mind,” Djokovic said. “Trying to separate the right from wrong.”

Djokovic was describing something that he and all of us have in common. We all have thoughts racing through our mind. Some of them are good, some are bad. It’s our job to separate the two.

For instance, you can be tempted to think about the final score. It’s much more productive to think about the next point. You can worry about what happened, or you can keep your mind in the present. It’s all choice.

Djokovic, in other words, conquered his own thoughts as much as he defeated Nadal. It was mental toughness.

My favorite quote is: “Some people think the battle is against others. Winners understand the struggle is within the self.”

If you can win the struggle to stay focused on productive thoughts, the battle with others will go much more smoothly.

The Secret of Feedback

Coach Tully — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:23:23 +0000

One day Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams watched a teammate return to the dugout after striking out.

“Tell me,” Williams said. “When you swung and missed that ball, did your bat go over the ball or under it?”

“What difference does it make,” the teammate wanted to know. “Either way, I struck out.”

It makes all the difference in the world, Williams explained. Knowing how you missed was the first step in preparing for the next time.

Williams was an expert on the art of receiving feedback. He examined what happened and used the information in his next attempt.

Feedback is available everywhere. Often the result of our actions will tell us what we’re doing right or wrong. For instance, if a golfer consistently hits a slice, the ball is telling him something about his swing.

You can bet that both the New York Giants and New England Patriots will be using feedback to prepare for Sunday’s Super Bowl. They played each other during the regular season, and they’re in a race to see who learned the most from that game.

Herb Brooks, mastermind of the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s gold medal in 1980, used feedback to make history. After the Soviet Union trounced his team 10-3 in a pre-Olympic exhibition, Brooks simply said, “We learned some things.” Two weeks later, the teams met again, and this time the U.S. won!

So if you’d like to be a champion, you must first do what Brooks, Williams and other did — become experts at receiving feedback.

Keeping Your Eyes on the Dream

Coach Tully — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:07:39 +0000

“If you have only two pennies left in the world, with the first penny, you should buy rice to feed your family. With the second penny, say the wise Japanese, you should buy a lily. The Japanese understand the importance of dreaming.”

We all love to dream. But we also need to make a living.

It takes strength to keep your eye on a distant goal when there are needs in the present. But ask yourself, “Can you give up what you want now for what you want most?”

Champions do this all the time. They ignore the distractions and temptations of the present. They have their feet on the earth and their gaze toward the sky.

My friend Gary Pritchard alludes to this way of living when he says, “Make your decisions based on the person you want to become, not the person you are.”

That means looking past outward circumstances and listening to something within the self.

Said Steve Jobs, “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Knowledge and Wisdom

Coach Tully — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:15:36 +0000

My friend Ken Smith just sent out this quote:

“Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

It really struck me because recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between knowledge and wisdom as it applies to coaching.

At a recent coaching clinic, a colleague pointed out that knowledge was easy to get. You can find it in books, videos, conversations and from observation.

But all that knowledge doesn’t help much unless it is applied with wisdom.

“We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom,” said Michel de Montaigne.

There’s a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. That certainly seems to be true in my case, because I lately have been receiving a lot of hints about coaching with wisdom.

The first time came a month or so ago, when someone sent an article on one of the most important coaching issues, how to give feedback. First on the list of hints was asking yourself exactly why you’re giving feedback. Is it truly to help, or is it to make yourself important or to assure yourself that you’re busy?

Then on a recent trip I ran into a coach who has been on a search for wisdom. He even went on what is called a Vision Quest in the Southwestern deserts. I am reading his account with great interest, just eagerly as I’ve ready books about X’s and O’s.

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom,” said Isaac Asimov.

Where are you in your coaching career? Are you still gathering information, or are you becoming curious about wisdom? I’ve love to hear your story.

Practice and Mindfulness

Coach Tully — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:55:53 +0000

Martina Navratilova, perhaps the best female tennis player who ever lived, once said, “I just try to concentrate on concentrating.”

Her phrase comes to mind as I digest a recent post on Larry O’Connor’s blog, Run4yr life. Larry is a marathoner preparing for Boston in April. From the sound of this post, he has reached a higher level of training, a level where he thinks carefully about the effect of each and every training move.

We call this mindfulness, and it’s one of the most important qualities we can bring to practice. Here’s the difference between practice and mindful practice.

In practice, you might hit 100 golf balls. In mindful practice, you hit one ball, analyze the result, and decide on the adjustments to be made. Then you hit another one and repeat the process. With practice you might improve. With mindful practice, you improve. A lot.

“What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence,” said Samuel Johnson.

Mindful practice, also called deliberate practice, falls in line with the findings of Dr. Anders Ericksson, the world’s so-called “expert on experts.” His first condition for optimal learning is “motivation to attend to task.” In plain English, that means “”caring enough to think carefully about what you’re doing.”

It sounds like Larry O’Connor is doing just that.

Wayne Gretzky and Practice

Coach Tully — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:58:01 +0000

On Wayne Gretzky’s birthday — he turns 51 today — I always think of practice and of Gretzky’s father, Walter.

One day, when Wayne Gretzky was already the greatest hockey player in the world, he was practicing with his team, the Edmonton Oilers. Walter watched from the stands.

Afterwards, the two drove home together.

“You just wasted two hours of your life,” Walter Gretzky told his son. “If you’re going to practice, then do it right.”

No word on what happened the rest of the ride home. Maybe there was a sullen silence.

But Walter Gretzky’s comments are a reminder that even the world’s best need a wake-up call now and then. It can come from a coach, a family member, or an unexpected loss. That’s what happened to the Soviet hockey team when the U.S. Olympians defeated them in 1980.

Performers must be, in the words of golfer Bobby Jones, “everlastingly on the lookout against the self.”

Slumps often begin when things are going well. When results are good, performers never notice little flaws creeping into their game. The flaws only get discovered when results begin to fall.

Walter Gretzky knew his son well enough to know whether or not he was working hard. Trouble is, as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has said, you can fool yourself about how hard you are working.

Don’t fool yourself about your practice ethic.

Team Culture

Coach Tully — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:42:42 +0000

Let’s start with a trick question.

Does your team have a culture?

Remember, it’s a trick question. And the answer is yes.

Whether in sports, in business or even in your family, your group has a culture.

It may be weak or it may be strong, but it’s a culture.

It may be positive or it may be negative, but it’s a culture.

And, as this article on the Fast Company blog points out, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Culture beats rules, it beats x’s and o’s. Culture may be the most important aspect of your team.

“Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale,” said football legend Vince Lombardi.

Writes Shawn Parr on the Fast Company blog, “Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation.”

My friend and co-author Gary Pritchard devote a chapter to team culture in our book “Ten Things Great Coaches Know.” We define it as “the way things are done around here.”

Parr lists the benefits that come from the right kind of culture: focus, motivation, connection, cohesion and spirit.

He also offers the following four tips for building a positive culture.

1. Dynamic and engaging leadership
2. Living values
3. Responsibility and accountability
4. Celebrating successes and failures (that’s right, celebrating failures as well as successes).

Any leader seeking peak performance from a group, or in real team-building, should check the culture.

Daily Motivation

Coach Tully — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:21:56 +0000

A few days ago, a coached reach out to me, said that her team was going through a rough stretch, and asked if I had any wisdom to offer.

I told her I had no wisdom of my own, but that there was plenty in this article from the Gold Medal Squared Web site.

Written by Loyola-Marymount volleyball coach Tom Black, the article tells of a team that faces a huge fight in every match. Black says a coach must do three things: 1) teach students how to learn, 2) remember you’re part of something bigger than yourself, and 3) celebrate growth.

Black really motivated me with this article, because — unlike the scores of games — all those three items are things I can control.
In fact, when I read the article I was wishing I had seen it during my own season. And that’s the point. Get all the motivation you can get! Don’t wait until you are way down in the dumps. Daily motivation helps direct your energy and focus toward the right thing.

And motivation is doubly important for students and athletes, because you can’t build real skill without it.

Motivation is where you find it. You can ask a friend, like my coaching colleague did. You can read a book, see a movie, look up a daily quote. Or you can listen to a daily motivational message from sports psychologist Dr. Rob Gilbert. It’s called “Success Hotline,” it’s free and the message changes every day. The number is (973) 743-4690. My friend Karin Abarbanel finds it so valuable in her field — writing — that she dedicated a post to it on her blog, Karin Writes Dangerously.

Keep in mind that real motivation begins with and within you. You have to look for it. Staying motivated is a big part of your mental game.

“The best motivating is self-motivating,” said speaker Jim Rohn. “The guy says, ‘I wish someone would come by and turn me on.’ What if they don’t show up? You’ve got to have a better plan for your life.”
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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.