Welcome to the Mindset Coach Academy Podcast. I'm Lindsey Wilson and I am a high-performance Mindset Coach, a mom, a former professional athlete and an entrepreneur. I help coaches and high performers optimize their mindset to improve their coaching, their performance and those of their athletes and their lives. Here you'll learn all about mindset, how to live it, how to teach it and how to sell it.
Hi guys and welcome back to the Mindset Coach Academy Podcast. My name is Lindsey Wilson and today we're going to be talking about something that is so simple and so massively effective and it's called the mistake ritual. It's also called the reset ritual. Essentially what it is, it's a way for athletes to center themselves in the middle of chaos, whether that's chaos around them, likely chaos within them, also likely. It's a very simple tool and it's the one, well one of a couple that when someone's asking me like, what is the easiest way to start mental performance training or what is like the easiest thing to get started with. This is in the top three or four. It's also what we teach in the mental game plan and we also have something called mistake ritual magic where we teach just this tool.
So we'll link to both of those below in the show notes but I wanted to just give you just sort of a breakdown of how effective this is and why it is so massively important. Okay, so I've told the story like one million times about when I was playing professional basketball. I was playing professional basketball and we were down by one and I had the ball and as a professional basketball player when you're overseas like you're supposed to score. You're supposed to win games and for the most part I was pretty good at it. Obviously I was getting paid to do it but on this particular day I did what I always do which is dribble crossover and I'm headed to the middle of the lane for like a pull-up jump shot.
In my head it's like already happened. I'm like winning the game with this you know 10 foot jumper and instead of doing that I actually dribble the ball off my foot and it bounced around to a jump ball and the other team got the ball. Anyway what happened in that moment was it was a jump ball of a timeout and there was like you know I don't know 20 seconds left or something and in that moment like the emotions of one not doing my job to like not being the game winner like I really like that feeling and I could taste it like it was right there like if I just got into the middle of the paint like I would have made it right instead you know something else happened and the emotions of that moment were pretty overwhelming and so but I had learned something called the mistake ritual and so in that moment I was able to do that ritual which for me was very simple it was putting my middle finger and my thumb together it was taking a deep breath it was saying be present and then it was breathing out now when you're listening to this that sounds like something almost too simple like how could that have made all the difference but that what is what you don't understand unless you are me was that I'd practiced that ritual many many times when things were going terrible when things were going decent when things were going great I had practiced resetting my brain in that moment so it was a little bit like you know muscle memory in the sense of like that was the neural pathways of my brain understood what that meant on a different level than just what it fears on the outside right so the key really is practicing right so I was able to sort of calm my mind and bring my brain back to that moment and reset so that I could play the last 20 seconds of the game because you know the ability to recover after something massive happening that's why we all watch the end of the games it's so exciting to see how people are going to respond because there's only one person that can win or one team that can win and there's a whole lot of mistakes often or at least the potential for mistakes in those moments so how do people recover that's so much of what we watch right we want to see the comeback right and so I was able to get to neutral essentially and what happened when we went back in is we were on defense and because I wasn't worried about the past I was able to just be on defense right like I wasn't I was motivated but I wasn't like losing my mind like going and fouling people for example right So what happened was I was playing defense, I swatted the ball away, jumped on it for a loose ball and threw it to my teammate who made a last second lay up for us to win the game. Now, it's a great story because we won, but the real gold there is not that we won.
It's that I was able to be present for the last 20 seconds after really screwing up, right? And so often athletes aren't taught that. They have no idea what to actually do from a psyche standpoint when we make those mistakes. And you know, it's like the typical things of like patting them on the back, telling them it's okay, high-fiving them, people yelling from the stands. Like, does that ever work?
Like honestly, does that ever work? Like you see their body language change, like the shoulders hunched over, they're feeling that shame, that embarrassment, which I a thousand percent still felt. I was getting paid thousands of euros a month and I just bounced the ball off my foot like a third grader. So I was feeling all of the things that no pat on the back was going to help, right?
Like that's not enough. It was me inside knowing that I had this tool that I had practiced ahead of time that I could get back to in the moment that I needed it the most. The mental gymnastics and the mental discipline of going to that only happens if it's been established, if it's been practiced, if I've done it in other situations. And yeah, if you can get your athletes to do it, and this is one of the tools that I think is one of the easiest to implement because people actually really like it.
If you can get them to do it, and by the way, you can do it as a team also, some people do that. It's gold. It's like this little lifeline. And again, think of the things that you've tried before that like have they worked. My guess is no, maybe you have some secret thing you do that actually does help. And something doesn't help at all. Like, you know, having your coach tell you that they believe in you like that helps a little, but it is not a lot. And so giving someone the agency to do that work in the moment and having other people, whether it's a team sport, individual sport, having other people see them do that. I mean, how powerful is that? Right.
So, mistake ritual magic. We're going to put the link below. It's gold guys. I don't know how much it is. I think it's like $27. It's like not expensive.
I think that the workshop is 30 minutes might take another 30 to implement it with your team. And then you have it forever. Okay. A reset. And by the way, coaches need this just as much as anybody else, maybe even more. I know a lot of coaches that came up with their own ritual because guess what? You know, I'm a basketball player, so I'm also basketball, but they're on the sidelines getting pissed about the refs or getting pissed about their team not doing what they want. Like, if anybody needs emotional regulation in the middle of games, sorry, not sorry, it's coaches.
And by the way, parents also emotional regulation in the middle of competition. Y'all need it too. So it can be a fun thing that the whole team does together. It's just a really powerful tool. And it's fun.
And it's easy. And there's a huge upside to this because here's the thing, guys. We know mistakes are going to happen at every single level in every single sport in every single competition. We can all agree on that, right?
So let's get a plan. Check out mistake ritual magic. We also teach it within the mental game. We also teach it in the certification.
So if you're in any of those programs, you'll get it too. But if you want to just get started and you're unsure where to start to start here, click the link in the show notes. Go to mistake ritual magic.
Go through the workshop. There's work. There's what I'm trying to say, worksheets that you can take to your team. There's a video like you can do this. You can learn it.
Mistakes are going to happen. Let's get a plan. All right, guys. We'll see you next time for Mental Monday. Talk to you soon.
Bye for now. Hey, guys, before you go, I want to tell you about one of our really affordable, simple products. If you follow this podcast for any amount of time, you know I'm all about tools.
I'm all about actionable things that you can actually implement on like a Tuesday afternoon with your team or with your athletes. And I want to tell you about mistake ritual magic workshop. It is a quick workshop.
I think it's about an hour and it's probably like, I don't know, under 50 bucks and you can take this workshop. It's got the worksheets. It's got the audio.
It's got video. It's got everything you need to implement a mistake or reset ritual with your athletes today. It takes all the guesswork out of it.
And again, this is like one of the low hanging fruits of mental training. You know, like it's great if you can do all the things. It's great if you can bring one of our certified coaches in.
It's great if you can get certified or work with a sports psychologist. That's all great. Most of us can't. We need something that we can do today or again on a Tuesday afternoon.
And mistake ritual magic is simple and it works and it will help you, your athletes and your entire program. So get it. Don't delay. Just go get it. We have a money back guarantee. Also, you're not going to need it, but if you do, go get it.
Use it. Love it. There you go.
Mistake ritual magic. I'll put the link in the show notes. It's also all over our website at positiveperformancetraining.com. Thank you.
