Saturday, July 10, 2010

Positive Fighting Spirit


As I flew back to Vancouver from Montreal after a week off of training while participating in our company’s sales meetings, I’d had ample time to reflect on last weekend’s race, Subaru Vancouver Half Ironman (July 4th). With a 4th place finish that took more mental than physical energy to complete, it’s only the remarkable lessons and the love of the sport that stay with me. It was a gift to race in my home city surrounded by friends, great athletes and world-class event organizers. To see so many victories for my athlete peers relieved my own selfish mental chaos so unnecessarily and inexplicably welling up inside.

Events fascinate me. Events bring people out to see and be seen. Events make people smile, hug, connect and make plans to see each other again. Events stir up emotions, excitement and energy. Last Sunday’s event surely did all of those things and more for all the athletes and many spectators. Personally speaking, my emotions were mixed with excitement and a certain amount of distractions. Perhaps I was seeing too many familiar friendly faces inviting me to idle and chat on the sidelines rather than line up for a swim in the frigid Pacific Ocean water? Whatever the reason for a momentary lack of mental presence on race day, reflection during this past week untangled a few emotional mysteries and I have since dusted off eager prepare for the remainder of the season.

With 10 hours of flying time, my book Girl With a Dragon Tattoo was going to take a rest while I revisited the principles written in the book The Toughness Training for Sports by Dr Jim Loehr. This was an important book for me when I was road racing and continues to offer spot on mental toughness training techniques for the competitive athlete. His principles rely on emotional resiliency, flexibility, strength and responsiveness. If an athlete embodies all of these principles, they will perform with confidence, poise, assertiveness, focus and enjoyment. They will optimize the Ideal Performance State for competition. They will love the battle, never surrender and always always maintain a positive fighting spirit.

In the last chapter of the book, Dr. Loehr summaries seventeen strategies to accelerate the mental toughness process, which resonated deeply with me.

1. Change your thinking to change the way you feel
2. Change the picture if you don’t like the feeling
3. Take full responsibility for what and how you think
4. Practice positive thinking constantly
5. Never think or say “I can’t”; never think or say “I hate”
6. Think empowering thoughts
7. Think humorously to break up negative emotions
8. Think more energetically
9. Learn to keep a here and now focus during competition
10. During critical moments of execution, focus your attention outside yourself
11. Practice strategic visualization constantly
12. Be more disciplined in the way you think about your mistakes
13. Be clear why it’s important to fight. Before the battle begins, make the commitment
14. Use adversity to get stronger
15. Constantly remind yourself to love the battle
16. Use positive brainwashing to break negative mental habits
17. Focus on “Just For Today”…

Everyone would hopefully agree that this list stimulates emotions associated courage, challenge, motivation, presence, focus, confidence and positive energy. Emotions that serve us no matter what we are doing, sport or otherwise.

The book finishes with an extensive list of how competitive sport is a unique arena for a display of mind-body experiences. Competitive sport brings out so much – emotional and physical – which is observable, open and testable yet for the athletes is largely a personal, internal, passionate-driven and courageous experience completely invisible to the public. One of his key points about Competitive Sport that spoke to me was:

“Nowhere is it clearer than in competitive sport that you have to love it. Love the grinding, the searching the pushing, the pulling, the victories, the lessons, the battle itself. And the crazier it gets, the more you have to love it. Becoming the best competitor you can be means loving to compete more than winning. Becoming the best you can be at anything means loving the journey – from beginning to end.”