BLOG

In researching emotional regulation among basketball coaches, gratitude came up, over and over again, as a technique that coaches actively use to maintain control of their emotional state. We know from research, and from the findings of Positive Psychology, that the positive impacts of gratitude reach far and wide. So, if we're drinking the Kool-Aid on gratitude, how do we train it? Like many other mental skills, it can be trained actively, but we must shift the paradigm

In mental skills training we talk a lot about pre-performance routines. And it's for good reason: routines put in an athlete in a consistent state of mind by creating a "sequence of task relevant thoughts and actions" (Moran, 1996), A routine allows an athlete to keep consistency in the turbulent and ever-changing world of sport. There are many factors that change regarding your performance: location, venue, weather, time of day, opponent - just to name a few. By maintain

This isn't about Sport Psychology. Nor is it really a mental skill. This is truly a way to conceptualize your own free will and take hold of the choices and actions you live by. Think about a chessboard. There are 64 squares on the board. Think about these squares as the objective facts of your life: where you live, how old you are, how tall you are, that you live in a world with other people in it, that the moon exists (shout to Ali G). Sure, we can argue about what is

Raise your hands if you’ve heard of mindfulness? [All the hands in the virtual classroom go up]. Raise your hands if you’ve read an article about the benefits of mindfulness? [75% of hands go up again]. Now raise your hand if you’ve meditated once in the last week? [10% of hands go up]. There is a disconnect here. As a society we have never been more crystal clear on the benefits of mindfulness. We know what it is, we understand how beneficial it is, and yet, many don’t pract

Motivation. What is it and why, oh why, does it seem to come and go? In plain terms, motivation is the direction and intensity of effort....

“Long term consistency trumps short term intensity.” -Bruce Lee Everyone can go out and hit a homer once in a while. Greatness – or even...

We’ve all seen it: a call doesn’t go your way. A teammate blows an easy one off your pass. Your sibling knocks your food over. You forget...

Athletes, musicians, artists: we all want to perform in a state of flow. Flow, which is at times synonymous with “The Zone,” is typically...

See it to achieve it. Seems simple, right? It is and it isn't. Seeing yourself succeed in your sport before going out will help you...

Motivation isn’t about rah-rah speeches. It’s not fire and brimstone moments where you feel like you can run through a brick wall. Motivation is a spectrum, from amotivation to intrinsic motivation, with a stop at extrinsic motivation in between. So how do we harness the power of intrinsic motivation? First we need to have a strong sense for what it is! Intrinsic motivation is our desire to engage in an activity for reasons that are within our control, related to our sati