What Are Mental Skills?
Talent won't get you there by itself. Neither will sweat and blood. You'll need to work smart while working hard to approach your potential. You'll need to train both your physical and mental skills.
What are mental skills? Anything that impacts your performance other than talent and physical skills.
- Focus
- Courage
Courage Poster Here- Confidence
Michael's Mom and Harvey's Dad
"THAT is powerful and did I need to hear it. Thank you."
-Wanda, in receipt of the story below via Coach Traub's Mental Skills Tips e-newsletter
Harvey Dorfman's Dad said, "Sufferin makes you stronger, kid, as long as you survive." He may have borrowed that from Friedrich Nietzsche who said, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
Harvey was the best mental skills coach I've known and I was lucky to have him as a mentor. In addition to World Series Rings as a coach, he won a national championship as a goalie in college and survived serious asthma as a child.
Balance
BALANCE IS EVERYTHING
Ironic Facts about the Mental Side of the Game
You have to care, but don’t try too hard!
Be smart, make adjustments, but make sure not to think too much.
Be supremely confident, but avoid both complacency and cockiness.
Hustle and be quick, but don’t hurry.
Be enthusiastic, but not over-excited or nervous.
Be a team player, but play for yourself first and foremost.
Always be aggressive, but DO NOT force it or try to MAKE it happen.
Be humble, but not deferent.
Be the best you can be, but avoid the perfectionist tendency to beat yourself up for every mistake. (Coach Wooden tells you how, here.)
Motivational Quotes
WORDS TO LIVE BY
LESSONS
Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
-Booker T. Washington
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
-Abraham Lincoln
Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.
-John Wooden
Poems
The Guy In the Glass
by Dale Wimbrow
When you get what you want in your struggle for wealth
And the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn’t your Father or Mother or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may call you a straight shooting chum
And say you're a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.
Happiness
THE QUALITIES OF HAPPINESS
In What Happy People Know, author Dan Baker outlines what he calls “Qualities of Happiness.” Not all have to be present, and they don’t all have to be there in equal amounts. Still, most must be abundant for someone to experience the kind of lasting, rock-solid happiness that endures even when life gets tough to take. And if there is one thing in life you can count on, it is that life will get tough!
LOVE • "The love in your heart wasn't put there to stay. Love isn't love until you give it away." (from The Sound of Music). Being loved is awesome and giving love is even better.