Hi, guys, and welcome back to the Mindset Coach Academy podcast. It is Mental Monday. So we're going to talk about one tip, tool, or technique that you can implement in your life today or this week.
And I just wanted to talk again about the power of being able to critique ourselves. So I was reminded of this because I was going and working with an SEC women's basketball team a few weeks ago. And we were talking about a post-competition routine. So this is one of the things that I teach really to all my students, but it's certainly in the mental game plan. We talk about a lot in the certification. And it's having a routine that allows you to look at your performance from an objective unemotional place. And this is something that all of us can practice, not just athletes.
And here's how it really works. The challenge with most of us, many of us that are high performers that are driven people, is we are sometimes, oftentimes, relentlessly hard on ourselves. You might call it perfectionism.
But it doesn't. It's not always about being perfect. It's just about being really hard on ourselves. So a lot of driven people have this characteristic. And it can be really beneficial. It can be really powerful.
I mean, I would not have played at the level that I played at without that drive. However, one of the downsides of being really hard on yourself is the resistance to really looking at yourself. Because if you're really hard on yourself, if you're relentless in that, our brain starts protecting us from that.
And for myself as a college athlete, I did it. But I didn't want to go watch film. I didn't want to go watch myself because I was so emotional about how I played that it was like my brain was like, screw this is not safe.
Like you need to just walk away from that game and just move right on. And luckily, I had some good coaches that didn't allow me to do that. But again, when we are relentlessly hard on ourselves, when we don't have a system of critiquing without judgment, we tend to put up blinders because again, our brain is trying to protect ourselves. So for you, trying to figure out how to bring a level of standards and success and drive without dragging yourself down with emotions is absolutely a practice. It is not something that happens overnight, but I do think that it starts first with the awareness. Can you start critiquing yourself without kind of going to the other side?
Just try it. Just try if you can look objectively at how something went, whether that was a presentation, a job interview, a date, a game. Like anything that you are doing, for me it would be some like a webinar or sales calls.
Anything that you are doing that has some sort of performance component to it or some sort of results to it. Afterwards, if you can look objectively at how it went, and we asked three questions, we asked, what went well, what didn't go well, what can I do better next time? What went well, what didn't go well, what can I do better next time? And often with the last one, what can I do better next time? We talk about what action I can take to make it better next time.
But anyway, and that's it. So try that the next time you have anything that in the past you might have gone to the other side and been so hard on yourself. And the challenge here is that if you've been doing that a long time, you might have built up those blinders to where you don't want to look. It's like I don't want to look. Give yourself the space to look. But then keep yourself disciplined that is just those three questions.
And it's non-emotional as much as possible. Again, this is a practice that's not going to happen overnight. But if you give yourself that space, then you're really kind of having your own back.
You're telling yourself, next time I can do it even more. I can look and it's not scary. It's not going to be terrible.
I'm not going to be so hard on myself that I never want to do it again. And so you just kind of have to open up the door and let it creak open just a little bit and then push it open a little bit more each time. But it starts with that self-awareness. If you've been hard on yourself in the past, just give it a try. Next time you have something, sit down afterwards and critique it objectively, non-emotionally. It really is like one of the simplest best ways to improve at anything. Come on over to Instagram, @lindseypositivep@erform.
Let me know how it works. All right, guys. We'll see you next week for Mental Monday. Bye for now.
Hey, guys. Real quick, if you're a coach trying to look for the next thing to do to improve your own coaching, to understand mental training on a deeper level and to take it to your team, I highly recommend checking out Psychology of Competition. This is our course that's, I think it's 297 and it really breaks down pre, during and post-competition routines and what we teach.
If we were going to come in and work with your team, any of our certified coaches or a specific athlete on your team that wanted to improve their consistency, their confidence, their performance, we would teach them these skills. It's really simple. It's really easy to implement, but they are very, very powerful. If you want to do this with your team, it is the most cost-effective way to do it. It will improve your coaching. They're tools that you can implement for your own competition on game day, your own mental approach to competition.
If you're looking for a way to improve your coaching, maybe you've thought about getting certified, but you're not ready for that or what have you, and you want something that's simple, that's affordable, I highly recommend checking out Psychology of Competition. It's on our website, depositperformancetrained.com. If you click on courses, it's a DIY course. You have lifetime access, and it gives you all of the tools, the worksheets, the videos, the MP3s that you can implement this with your team and improve their performance today. Click the link in show notes or go to our website to get yours.
