The Confident Champion Session Four Transcript · Creating A Winning Self-Image Using GAME FACE 2.0. Detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to set yourself up from the beginning

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved. www.thecouragetowin.com

The Confident Champion Session Four Transcript

Hi it’s Lisa Lane Brown welcome to the Confident Champion System. In this System, you are going to discover how to create breakthrough confidence so you can believe in yourself so you can deliver incredible peak performance, become a star athlete, and dominate your sport.

Remember, I created this system so that you NO LONGER: 1. Lose your confidence, be passive and self-conscious, and over-think what you are doing so you perform at only a fraction of your potential and really don’t enjoy competing 2. Approach competing overwhelmed with fear, choke, and get worse and worse out there so that your performance goes up and down like a yo-yo and you lose playing time, get yelled at, or let your team down. 3. Try to compete with sub-par skills or skills that have hit a plateau so you really can’t accomplish your goals no matter how motivated you are because you don’t have the skills.

Instead, you will learn to do the following: 1. Create breakthrough confidence for yourself so that you are energized, confident, aggressive, and excited to perform whenever you go out there. 2. Transform yourself into a star athlete with superior, amazing skills so you can deliver peak performances, get instant respect, and win, even against tough competitors. 3. Develop consistent confidence by mastering the art of persistence and the will to win so you achieve total self-mastery and are in control of your athletic destiny.

In this program you’re going to learn five key skills: Session One How to Create Unshakable Confidence and BELIEVE in Yourself in Sport

Session Two How To Express Your True Greatness & Transform Yourself Into A Genuine STAR

Session Three The Magic Formula for Becoming Fearless and Super-Charged with Confidence BEFORE You Compete

Session Four CONSISTENT Confidence: How to Master the Art of Persistence & the Will to Win

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Session Five Relationship Mastery - How to Create Happy Relationships for Ultimate Confidence

The Magic Formula for Becoming Fearless and Super-Charged with Confidence BEFORE You Compete

• Eliminate The Fear of Making Mistakes. Learn the Code of the Samurai, which is the psychology of “winning beforehand” – once you know this formula, it will be like child’s play to take the lead early in competition, putting you in the driver’s seat. This is the specific method for eliminating the fear of making mistakes so you can start off your event excited, aggressive, and ready to take the smart chances needed to win.

• Good Nerves, Not Bad Nerves. What do to when you’re overwhelmed with nerves to become calm and energized, including how to transform “bad” nerves into self-trust and let go out there.

• Becoming Fearless Before You Compete. You discover how most athletes put massive pressure on themselves before competing and the most effective strategy for avoiding this trap to become fearless before you compete.

• Creating A Winning Self-Image Using GAME FACE 2.0. Detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to set yourself up from the beginning of your event to be a fearless, confident competitor so it is easy and automatic for you to handle “rough patches” and sail through the situation.

Session Three Review Just as in Session Two, you had a number of exercises. However, there are two that I want to check in with you about:

EXERCISE – Creating the Proper RIGHT FOCUS for Correcting Errors Let’s create the proper RIGHT FOCUS to correct the most important error you are making. Here are the steps:

1. Describe in the space below the error you want to correct.

____________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________

2. Describe how you would execute the skill three different ways:

Way One: ___________________________________________________

Way Two: ___________________________________________________

Way Three: __________________________________________________



3. Practice the skill this way three times this week. Notice what happens and make notes in your Athletes Journal. What is the difference in feel?

EXERCISE - Your GAME FACE Psych Up Routine In the space below, put together a 10-30 minute individual GAME FACE routine for yourself that includes the following components:

1. A physical warm up that activates you 2. At least one affirmation 3. Emotional visualization planning

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Remember to record this goal in your Athlete’s Journal and evaluate how you did after the event. How did these go? Did you DO them? This is so important, because only through doing them, can you transform yourself into a Confident Champion. Remember, Face It, Master It, and Make It Happen are all practices of mental toughness. They are not “concepts” or “ideas”. They are things that you do every day, with quality effort, to bring about the magic property of confidence.

I had an athlete call me this week who enrolled in the program and after Session One, she wanted to go right to Session Two because, she said, “I’m already doing the mental exercise from Session One.” (This was the exercise where you replaced fear created by the imagination with a new, positive image). Well, this is impossible, because it was a seven day exercise and there is no one else in the world who would have assigned her that exercise.

Do the exercises. They will change your life.

Session Four Agenda CONSISTENT Confidence:

How to Master the Art of Persistence & the Will to Win

Crush Your Demon Stressors. Many athletes “fold” as soon as they face stressors like an angry coach, poor conditions, or irritating teammates. You will discover a simple, three step process to banish your mental storm clouds and restores total composure to your mind and body. The Magic of Killer Instinct. The majority of athletes try to coast across the ‘finish line’ without offending anybody in the process. How to gut it out and win no matter who you are competing against.



How To Stay On Top After A Great Performance. Believe it or not, many athletes lose their confidence AFTER a major triumph – discover why and exactly how to set up your mental game to avoid this trap (and keep winning day in and day out).

The Power of Self-Acceptance. The step-by-step process for curing the perfectionism and low self-esteem that rob you of your confidence and enjoyment of sport so you can be proud of yourself whether you have a good day or a not-so-good day out there. Stop The Performance Yo-Yo. Can’t transfer practice confidence to game confidence? You’ll discover exactly what’s going on in your brain and exactly how to eliminate this tendency permanently.

Dealing with Losing. Champions do lose, but they deal with losses differently than everyone else. How to effectively deal with losing so it does not sap your confidence or de-rail your winning mindset.

How to Unlock Hope. A clever, proven tactic to unlock hope originated by Martin Seligman, the world’s leading authority on optimism. This is going “undercover”. Pulling back the curtain to see the Wizard to learn THE time-tested strategy for defeating fear and pessimism. With this simple tactic, you can create momentum literally out of thin air.

What Is Confidence? Confidence is the belief that you can cope with the challenges of competition and fulfill your desires. It is a profound belief in your athletic self.

It's a truly wonderful feeling. You know you're the goods and you believe you can succeed.

We develop confidence from continually defeating fear using the three mental practices of the Confident Champion: Face It, Master It, and Make It Happen.

Face It – The Practice of Consciousness Master It – The Practice of Competence Make It Happen – The Practice of Commitment

When you engage in these three practices every day, you gain more and more CONTROL over your performance, which triggers your Confident Self.

In Sessions one, two, and three, we focused mainly on the first two practices of the Confident Champion – Face It (face your fear) and Master It (master your sport). In Session Four and Five, we are going to bring in more of Make It Happen: The Practices of Commitment.

Make It Happen: The Practice of Commitment The “Make It Happen`` mindset is a pretty simple concept. Commitment is the “state of being committed to a cause.” In sport, that causing is winning.



“Make It Happen” is the will to win. It’s taking full, 100% emotional accountability for the win and committing to it in your heart.

Charles A. Garfield, author of Peak Performance - Mental Training Techniques of the World's Greatest Athletes and an athlete in power lifting, reminds us that our will controls our bodies: "The trained lifter knows that during the first few seconds before a lift, total attention must be focused on the bar, and the degree to which this is done is largely determined by how much he really WANTS to make the lift.

If his confidence is lacking or his volition not intensely focused, he simply CAN'T make the lift; he just can't muster the necessary psychological control and muscle power.

He can, however, turn away for a few moments, renew his confidence, reinforce his resolve, and rally with full force of his volition, and return to make the lift with relative ease."

I love the story from Wayne Gretzky:

In 1983, played the New York Islanders for the Stanley Cup Championships and got swept, four-zip. “I contributed almost nothing: no goals, no assists…Their big four—Bossy, Trottier, Potvin and Smith—danced all over us. Smith especially. He slashed, dove, screamed, whatever it took. He was so fantastic they gave him the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Most Valuable Player and they should have given him two. After that game, I’d have liked to move to Fiji for four months. I knew what was coming. “He can’t win the big ones. He disappears under pressure. He stinks.” And you know what? I was almost starting to wonder myself. Kevin and I loaded up our troubles and our junk and made our way to the bus. We both knew we were going to have to walk by the Islander locker room and we were dreading it: having to see all the happy faces, the champagne shampoos, the girlfriends’ kisses, the whole scene we wanted so much. But as we walked by, we didn’t see any of that. The girlfriends and the coaches and the staff people were living it up, but the players weren’t. Trottier was icing what looked like a painful knee. Potvin was getting stuff rubbed on his shoulder. Guys were limping around with black eyes and bloody mouths….and here we were perfectly fine and healthy. That’s why they won and we lost…They took more punishment than we did. They dove into more boards, stuck their faces into more pucks, and threw their bodies into more pileups. They sacrificed everything they had. And that’s when Kevin said something I’ll never forget. ‘That’s how you win championships.’



Make It Happen: The Practice of Commitment puts you back in control because when you resolve to never give up, you will inevitably find a solution to whatever challenge you’re facing. On some level, you know this. You understand that every great athlete who has come before you has faced the same challenges and figured them out. If you resolve to do the same, you have far more control over the outcome, and this triggers your Confident Self, especially because no one else in your sport is doing the same. But here’s the rub… The truth is, we are not made to persist. Human beings are built for instant gratification. I see this every day in my little daughter, who is almost three. When she tries to do something new, like take a lid off a container, but she can’t, she’ll pitch a fit and give up – and no amount of me saying, “You need to try again,” and “You need to practice,” makes much of a difference. It’s the human condition. When we have setbacks and things don’t work out the way we expect, we tend to go off and find something easier and more achievable to do. That’s why I suggest you master the art and science of Make It Happen: The Practice of Commitment. When you repeatedly engage in it, you develop the Will to Win, and no one can stop you. EXERCISE: What Is The Practice of Commitment? The film Rudy tells the true story of Daniel E. “Rudy” Rutteger, a football player who aspires to play for Notre Dame University Football. The problem is that he is 5’ 6”, weighs just over 100 pounds and who doesn’t have a speck of athletic ability. Yet Rudy makes the team because of his unparalleled commitment. “You want on the team pretty bad, don’t you?” says the coach. “Coach, you have no idea. I’ll do anything,” says Rudy.

When is the last time you said this? When is the last time you meant it? Write down in the space below and example of a time you were 100% committed to a goal or result and brought it about.

Most athletes and coaches understand the concept of commitment, the will to win, and the idea that, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.”

So what stops us from being persistent in the heat of the battle? Why do so few athletes display this very rare mental practice?

Learned Helplessness – The Enemy of the Will to Win



Speaker Brian Tracy has a great little story that explains this phenomenon: In ancient times, when a merchant needed to train his baby elephant, he'd wrap a rope around the elephant's leg.

Then he'd tie the rope to a stake and pound it into the ground. The baby elephant would struggle and strain against the rope, but he could never escape it.

Later, all the merchant needed to do was tie a rope around the grown elephant's leg. The elephant would instantly freeze and stay in one spot.

The adult elephant was strong enough to bulldoze an entire house to the ground, but he would stand there as long as a rope was tied to his leg.

The elephant had LEARNED to be helpless.

One breakthrough discoveries of psychologists in the 20th century is that we are just like elephants.

The moment we encounter a setback, most of us become helpless. When I was competing as an elite athlete, it happened to me all the time.

If I didn't score in my first few shifts, I'd lose my confidence, and wam! Hello slump.

My teammates and coaches knew it. They'd roll their eyes and say, "She's done now."

It happens to all of us. You try to score a goal, make a pass, cover your check, stop a shot...

...and you FAIL... ...and you're suddenly infected by learned helplessness.

But, you don't know it. All you know is that you feel numb.

Learned helplessness is the secret cause of failure in sport.

It's a giving up response.

Most of the time, you're not even aware it's happening.

You're still going through the motions, but something is off.

Your edge, your confidence, and your motivation are slipping away from you, and you can feel it.



You may not feel SCARED (although sometimes you do).

You just feel blah.

And you're worried.

Because blah is not going to get you winning and keep you winning. You cannot take consistent, congruent action as long as you are feeling blah. Pete Sampras Giving in to learned helplessness vs. not giving in to learned helplessness is what separates great athletes from superstars. In 1992, Pete Sampras lost the U.S. Open to Stefan Edberg and started to question whether he had the perseverance to win. “Throughout the fall, I kept harkening back to the loss at the Open to Edberg. It was eating away at my guts…I kept thinking, “If he didn’t play well, and I didn’t play that well, why did he win?”

And the answer dawned on me, slowly, over a matter of weeks. For the first time, I understood and could articulate the truth: I lost because I had packed it in. And it was part of a pattern. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my Dad. Why, I asked myself, are you being such a pussy?” It took me some years to come up with the answer, and here it is, in its most simple form. Everybody has a place in this world, and spends a good part of his mature life carving out his niche – the zone where he is comfortable. Some guys, they get to number one and they think, I don’t really like it up here, it’s too lonely. Too stressful. Too demanding. So they settle back a little. They find a comfort zone at number three, or five, or whatever. I could have done that; a part of me was doing that early in my career. I can’t honestly tell you why my conversation with commitment took this tack, but it did: I decided that I had this great talent and I wasn’t taking care of it. I had the Gift, and I was turning away from it, at least on some of the very occasions when it was maybe the only thing that could pull me through. EXERCISE – Learned Helplessness & You Think back to a competition where you gave up on something, whether it was scoring a goal, stopping your check, or winning the game. Do you remember giving up? Why did you?



Learned helplessness is a special type of fear. When we are infected by learned helplessness, three things happen:

1. We become passive.

2. We start to feel sorry for ourselves. `Poor me`.

3. We resent being asked to overcome our fear because we believe it is unique and special. `No one else has had to deal with the obstacles I have.`

How To Defeat Learned Helplessness and Make It Happen To create breakthrough confidence in yourself, BELIEVE, and make it happen, you start by identifying the individual stressors that tempt you to fall into learned helplessness, have a ‘pity party’ for yourself, and give up. These are called your Demon Stressors. Your Demon Stressors If you’ve been competing for any serious length of time, bad things have happened to you in competition. If you are like most athletes, what determines your performance is the absence of bad things happening to you on your ‘big day’.

If you are fortunate enough to have a day when nothing bad happens to you, you will perform well and win. In the world of mental training, bad things that happen to you are known as “distractions” or “stressors” because they distract you from your “A” game—your best performance. Every time these stressors show up, you tend to lose confidence and your performance suffers.

Why does this happen?

It happens because your “demon stressors” cause you to fall into learned helplessness, start feeling sorry for yourself, and give up just enough to let the event slip away from you.

What Are Your “Demon Stressors?”

Your very first job is to identify your stressors – those things that bother you most while performing. To do this, you begin by listing in the space below your top 7 distractions. Here are some examples athletes often cite:

Getting a bad start Opponents are annoying Teammates are under-performing Losing a period or rally by a large margin Teammate, coach or parent says something negative to me



Being given a role on the team I don’t like or want Not being able to read the competition properly Competing against a particular opponent Opponent is playing obvious “mind games” Having a bad warm-up Family member or friend is watching Conflict with a teammate prior to sport Being pre-occupied with life outside of sport, e.g., a problem at home Equipment or weather hassles Being late or given a schedule change Feeling sick or unusually tired

In the space below, list your top 7 distractions (things that trigger a loss of confidence):

1._____________________________________________________________

2._____________________________________________________________

3._____________________________________________________________

4._____________________________________________________________

5. ____________________________________________________________

6. ____________________________________________________________

7. ____________________________________________________________

Now, put your distractions in the following order from most bothersome to least bothersome.

1._____________________________________________________________

2._____________________________________________________________

3._____________________________________________________________

4._____________________________________________________________

5._____________________________________________________________

6._____________________________________________________________

7._____________________________________________________________



Now you know what your exact stressors are. Your “demon stressor” is the thing that has the most potential to cause you to lose confidence, choke, or under-perform. It is the first thing on the list. This is very powerful exercise, because now you have the opportunity to transform your game by carefully working with your reaction to your “demon stressor.”

Whenever one of your Demon Stressors show up, your #1 job is to get back in CONTROL and trigger your ConfidenT Self using Make It Happen: The Practice of Commitment. For the rest of this session, we are going to practice strategies for doing exactly that.

Make It Happen Using COURAGE Courage is the ability to do something even when you’re scared, anxious, or afraid. In sport, there are many shades of it:

Courage to take that shot in the dying seconds. Courage to choose the position you want on the team. Courage to speak up when you're being mistreated. Courage to make mistakes, publicly. Courage to defy the pressure to fit in. Courage to ask for what you need to excel. Courage to heal yourself of loss. Courage to ask for help when you're stuck. Courage to take control of your time and training in the face of massive pressure. Courage to shrug off unwarranted criticism. Courage to forgo approval and trust your instincts. Courage to risk rejection and try out for the team you want. In the book Do More, Achieve Less, we get a unique glimpse into the power of courage. The author says: ”My assistant, Tim, told me of an incident that occurred one night after a speaking engagement in Washington, DC. Walking back to his hotel, he took a route that traversed a neighbourhood located on the fringe of an area known for its riots. As he ambled along, he noticed he was being followed by about a dozen gang members. The faster he walked, the faster they pursued him. A chase ensued, Tim found himself running deeper into an area of DC that was foreign to him. Right on his heels, they were chasing him relentlessly. He thought to himself, ``Well, this is it.` He began to accept the possibility that tonight would be the night he would die. In a flash of inspiration, he abruptly stopped running and turned and faced the gang. An idea blazed luminously in his mind—if he must die at this moment, his death was not his end. And since his death was not the end, it must at least be the beginning of some new experience. In short, quite possibly, death would not be so bad after all. As the Sufi poet Rumi said, `Death is my wedding with eternity.`



The gang felt the fearlessness within Tim. With the intimidation element removed from the space, the thrill of experiencing their power to harm him vanished. The leader of the gang dropped his menacing stance, stepped forward, and stretching out his hand, said, `What`s up, man?` They shook hands and went their separate ways. The principle that Tim applied on the street applies to life in general. The more fearful you are about your survival, the more mistakes you will tend to make. When you are willing to focus on the duty, risk, exhilaration, and the fun of doing it rather than on the fear of making mistakes, you will begin to understand the meaning of thriving.`` In sport, courage is perhaps best expressed as aggressiveness. “Be Aggressive, Be Be Aggressive” If there was a list of top ten secrets for succeeding in sport, "be aggressive" would definitely be on it. (One of my favourite pre-competition songs of all time is the Jock Jams re-mix. The best part for me is when they chant, "Be aggressive. Be, be aggressive.") Basketball superstar Michael Jordan agrees. "I realized that if I was going to achieve anything in life I had to be aggressive. I had to get out there and go for it. I don't believe you can achieve anything by being passive." Of course there's good aggressive and bad aggressive. Bad aggressive is when you get angry and out of control. When this happens you go berserk inside and either take penalties or play a foolish, overly risky strategy. Good aggressive is when you quiet your mind, channel your determination, and just go for it in a show of total courage. In the 2012 in the NCAA Final Four Championship in basketball in the US, the Louisville Cardinals won their third national title overall and their first since 1986, with an 82-76 victory over Michigan.

There is no question that the key to the Cardinals' victory was their aggressiveness.

This was not a team of superstars (unlike their 1996 victory, which had nine NBA players).

It was a tough, aggressive team that chased down every ball and forced every play with relentless defence. Coach Rick Pitino said, "These are the toughest 13 guys I have ever coached."



The poster boy for this style was Chane Behanan, who simply overpowered Michigan's big men in the low post and helped Louisville finish with a plus-7 rebound margin.

This was in contrast to Michigan's star centre, Mitch MgGary, who was slightly "bad aggressive". MgGary tried to do too much, committing his fourth foul early in the second half. His team then had to reduce MgGary's playing time to avoid taking a fifth foul.

Yet while aggressiveness is extremely powerful, very few athletes ever harness it, because they’ve never DECIDED to become more aggressive. In fact years ago I owned a sports training camp for kids. Every day parents would call up our office and say one thing: "Can you make my child more aggressive?"

What about you?

How about you?

Could you be more aggressive in the good way out there?

You start by giving yourself permission to shine and go for it.

This is very important. You cannot worry about people-pleasing and be your very best self at the same time. Next, you make a deliberate decision to cultivate aggressiveness. Let’s do it now.

EXERCISE – Courage & Aggressiveness 1. Recall the last time you showed courage – the last time you did something in

competition or practice that frightened you.

2. With respect to your Demon Stressor, how could you show courage in your next practice or competition? How could you make a habit of showing courage with it?

3. Close your eyes and visualize what kind of athlete you would be if you were 10%, 20%, or even 30% more of the “good aggressive” out there. Then write down exactly what



you’d do in competition:

Make It Happen Using OPTIMISM One of the best ways to cultivate the Practice of Commitment and defeat learned helplessness (the giving up response) is good old fashioned optimism. Optimism is not positive thinking. It’s not trying to find something good about a setback or trying to find a silver lining. Optimism is finding a way to believe that your setbacks are temporary. So, let’s imagine you are a curler and you just gave up a steal of four points in one end. Your job is not to say, “That’s great because now the opposition will be complacent.” Your job is to say, “Here’s why this is not going to happen again in this game.” Optimism gives you a sense of control by preventing you from giving up. Nothing makes us feel more out of control than giving up! In fact, when you give up on your goals, you are giving up on getting back in control – which is one of the reasons why giving up is so depressing. When you engage in optimism, you are making a firm, unequivocal decision to get back up on the horse and try again. EXERCISE - Optimism Here are some questions that will automatically trigger optimism in you. Please think about your Demon Stressor when you answer them:

1. Describe something you`ve given up on right now, e.g., if your Demon Stressor is losing your swing in golf, then describe how you’ve given up on being able to re-create a consistent golf swing that allows you to crush the ball 300+ yards straight down the fairway. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. What attempts have you made to reach your goal (the opposite of your Demon

Stressor)? For example, if you are a swimmer and your Demon Stressor is getting a slow start, then you’ve given up on changing your start technique to be faster. Be extremely



detailed in your answer - leave no stone unturned when describing what you’ve already tried. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. How are you being passive like the elephants with learned helplessness? Be specific in your description – explain what you are NOT doing to make it happen.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. What do you need to learn to defeat your Demon Stressor and succeed in your goal?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. Who can help you reach your goal? (Include resources and people here).

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6. What’s your worst case scenario if you don't achieve your goal the first time? How could you do damage control and come back?

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Optimism in Your GAME FACE Routine: Why Not Me?



You can also use optimism in your GAME FACE pre-competition routine. This is an extremely potent tool because when you use it before competing, you keep hope alive – and hope is central to the Make It Happen mindset. To try and Make It Happen, you must believe your goal is possible.

Mark Tewksbury, one of the finest swimmers in the history of swimming, used the Want, Not Need mindset to win an Olympic gold medal.

Mark says:

"The world had become more competitive. The medals, which used to be shared by 8 countries, were now finding their way to over 25 countries.

Even swimmers like Matt Biondi, the world record holder, were leaving the pool without going to the podium. I thought, "Even silver would be good. I was not giving up, but there were no guarantees."

The first thing Mark did was refuse to PRESS.

He set his sights on winning and being aggressive in the pool, but he did not try and control it.

Before the race, he said to himself, "Someone has to win this race. Why not me?"

"Why not me?" is a beautiful thought.

It is optimistic, confident, and relaxed.

There is no PRESSING in this thought. Never Predict The Outcome of A Game, Race, or Match The Why Not Me? Optimistic attitude requires that you never predict the outcome of a game, race or match. I love tennis guru Brad Gilbert's confession about scouting. Gilbert's a super-analytical guy who loves the technical side of his sport, tennis. So when he was an athlete, he'd keep a journal of his personal scouting reports. One day he noticed how emotional he was getting about his opponents. If an opponent looked bad, he'd think, "Hey, there's no way I'm gonna lose to this guy. He's playing like a plumber!" If an opponent looked good, he'd think, "Holy Cow, there's no way I'm gonna beat this guy! He's playing awesome!"



The problem with these conclusions is that you can actually GIVE UP on an event before you compete without even knowing it. That’s one of the problems with learned helplessness. Half the time, we don’t even know it’s happening to us. All we know is that we’re a little less confident, and a little bit passive. Gilbert says we you should never assume anything about a sporting contest, and I agree. You want to go in with the mindset that you have always have a chance to win - as long as you give it the highest quality of effort. It’s the Why Not Me? attitude. Gilbert decided to delegate his scouting to his coach. All he wanted was to know the strengths, weaknessness, and patterns of his opponent. Then he'd go into his match on high alert, with the Why Not Me? attitude. It paid off. Aaron Krickstein was a player Gilbert had been losing to for years because of his powerful forehand. Gilbert had never found a way to neutralize it. During their next match Gilbert noticed that when he hit a slice backhand short to Krickstein's forehand, the forehand he got back was different. It was just a routine forehand. Gilbert quickly figured out that Krickstein loved to hit from the baseline because the ball would sit up for him. But when Gilbert hit a soft slice, it would land short and stay low. So Krickstein couldn't crank his topspin forehand - there just wasn't any pace for him to capitalize on. Gilbert went on to beat Krickstein in straight sets. The mental toughness lessons here? 1. Never assume anything about the outcome of a game, match, or race. EVER.



2. If scouting makes you emotional, delegate to someone who can take the emotion out of it, but make sure you get the information you need to compete in a smart way. 3. Once you have the patterns of an opponent, stay on high alert. Notice everything and wait for your opportunity to outsmart, outwit, and outlast him. EXERCISE – Why Not Me? a. Write down the name of your next competition: ___________________________________________________________________

b. Write down your performance goal for this competition (winning, scoring goals, winning the MVP, etc).: _________________________________________________________________

c. Write down what information about your opponents, conditions, venue, etc. that you will need to compete at your best and how you will get it: d. List at least FIVE believable reasons that answer the question “Why Not Me?“ For example, if you wrote down, “I want to be the top scorer in my basketball tournament this weekend by averaging 25 points a game,” list five reasons “why not me?” such as, “I have a wicked three point shot.”

Make It Happen Using The Power of Now To create breakthrough confidence and deliver amazing peak performance using the Make It Happen mindset, you’ll want to get very good at entering the NOW.

The most deadly, Make It Happen mindset in sport is to focus completely in the Now.



I'm talking about total focus in the present moment...the kind where you drive across town, get there, and suddenly realize you don't remember the drive. This impenetrable focus is very punishing to opponents. You get such a deep connection to what you're doing that tough things become effortless. If you're playing tennis or golf, you get into a rhythm with your strokes and swing that makes you perfectly consistent. If you're playing hockey or basketball, the speed of the game becomes just right, neither too fast or too slow. You're totally in sync with the game. If you're running or racing, you connect to your gait and become completely smooth. Getting into the Now also heightens your athletic genius because you become aware of tiny nuances that give you the edge. You make subtle decisions like when to suddenly change the pace of shots during a rally - and mess up your opponent. Or when to use a subtle fake and drive to the net with speed, or pass off. Or when to make your move or ride in someone's wake. Helen Wills Moody, the American tennis legend of the 1930s, had a simple mantra that brought her focus into the Now. After every ball, she would recover her focus by repeating, 'Every point, every point, every point.' Simple, yet devastatingly effective. Entering the NOW banishes doubt, because doubt comes from thinking about the future. The mind cannot deal with the future. It can only deal with the present – so when you get into the mental habit of entering the NOW, it would never occur to you to give up. Remember, you don't want to make mental training more difficult than it needs to be. Every point, every point, every point. EXERCISE – The Power of Now For the next 30 days, every time you practice or compete, enter the Now and stay in the present moment for as long as you possibly can. You can select a cue word such as “NOW” to



start the process. If your mind drifts to the past or the future, gently bring it back to the present moment and re-engage in the present. Record in your Athlete’s Journal how this exercise builds your ability to concentrate and stay optimistic:

Make It Happen Using Self-Acceptance

To create breakthrough confidence and keep BELIEVING no matter what setbacks you face, I suggest you learn to deeply accept all your emotions, including disappointment, shame, anger, and loss.

Most athletes are quite dismal at this. They hate having to feel bad, especially about a failure of any kind.

What they don’t realize is that if we can’t deal with emotions like disappointment, shame, and anger, we can’t have the Will to Win.

Why? Because when the going gets tough, and it looks like failure is on the way, we’ll want to give up – just to avoid feeling devastated because we gave our all and did not succeed.

This is actually why most people get pessimistic and give up. We take a “you can’t fire me, I quit!” approach because we hate being disappointed.

The problem with this mental approach to competing is that it doesn’t work. You can tell yourself all day long that you ‘don’t care’ about failing or losing, but you do.

So pessimism doesn’t save us from being hurt. All it does is make sure that we under-perform by causing us to give up and become passive.

I can really relate to this. When I was in my early 20s, I was very intolerant of having negative emotions of any kind (which is a weird thing to say because I considered myself a very emotional person). In fact, I was so adverse to letting myself any feelings of loss that my teammates gave me a T-shirt that said, “Sometimes you just have to lose.”

I thought it was a joke. It was only years later did I realize what they were trying to tell me – that loss was part of life.

Confident champions understand and accept the agony and ecstasy of sport. They know that failing and losing hurt, and they are prepared to accept this hurt.

I am not suggesting you should try to enjoy or approve of your bad feelings. I’m merely pointing out that disappointment, shame, and anger are normal and part of sport. The faster you can



come to grips with them, the more able you will be to take a risk and give it your all – even when things are not going well.

Accepting your bad feelings when they happen is the essence of self-acceptance.

EXERCISE – Self-Acceptance For the next 7 days, write 5-10 different endings for the following sentence:

If I were 5% more self-accepting today—

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Make It Happen by Dealing with Losing To transform yourself into a confident champion with the Make It Happen mindset, you’ll want to eliminate the fear of losing from your emotional life.

How?

By realizing that you can heal yourself of any disappointment (and fast) – if you know how.

From 2000 to 2004 (late in my athletic career), my team had to play the same powerhouse team in the finals.

And for four years straight, we LOST.

In 2005, we entered the finals optimistically: "It's going to be our year!" we proclaimed.

But our hopes were dashed AGAIN when we lost two games straight.

There was, however, an important wrinkle to this competition: if we won our next game--against a different team--we could still earn a birth into the National Championships.



We had exactly 45 minutes to re-group for this all-important game.

It was at this moment that my body took over and instinctively prepared me for this next challenge.

Upon entering our dressing room, all the wretched disappointment inside me over losing for four years came bursting forth.

I sobbed bitterly, and couldn't stop.

Images of old losses flashed before my eyes, and I sobbed some more. At one point, I went to the bathroom and put my head under the dryer so my teammates didn't have to hear me.

Three minutes before our next game, our goaltender (who knows me really well), calmly handed me my helmet.

She looked me squarely in the eye. "You have three minutes," she said.

I put my helmet on. Suddenly, I was completely focused, and filled with energy.

We won, and to this day, my team insists it was one of the best games of my career.

How To Heal Yourself When You Lose

Healing yourself means letting yourself experience your disappointment when you lose.

It's the same thing you did when you were nine years old.

Your body knows how to heal itself, and it will if you let it.

It's one of those secrets nobody tells you. Instead, your Dad, your coach, and your teammates will try to cheer you up.

They'll say things like, "Don't worry, it wasn't your fault."

Or, they'll try to get you to focus on the next competition right away.

The problem with this approach is that you end up suppressing your disappointment.

You try not to think about it...but it eats away at you.

You start to doubt yourself, and you lose your motivation.

"Why bother?" you think to yourself.



Of course, you'll want to draw the lesson out of the loss.

But you can't even think about that until you're over the disappointment.

Of course, the reason dealing with losing is so important is because to develop the Make It Happen mindset, you cannot live in fear of losing.

The more scared of losing you are, the more likely you are to give up when things get tight.

We need to stare down losing in the face. “Nice try, losing! I’m not going to give up!” EXERCISE – Dealing with Losing In the space below, record the most painful loss of your life.

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Next, open up emotionally and let yourself have any feelings of loss that are still inside you. Describe them below.

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Finally, using the Sedona Method we learned in Session Three, let this disappointment go using the following questions:

1. Can I let it go? 2. Will I let it go? 3. When?

Make It Happen By Defeating Self-Pity To create breakthrough confidence using the Make It Happen mindset, you’ll also want to become masterful at side-stepping self-pity. When our Demon Stressors show up, the first reaction we all tend to have it self-pity. We think all our fears and problems are completely special and unusual to us and that nobody in the world has ever dealt with such terrible problems. Self-pity is a unique form of misery. It’s self-inflicted, brought on by the ideas that we “shouldn’t” have to deal with the setbacks that the Universe has thrown at us. To outsmart self-pity, we need to remember that are setbacks and problems are actually quite typical, and every great athlete who has come before us has experienced them as well.



Here’s a great way to pep talk yourself out of self-pity when you’re wallowing in it from Shawnee Harle, one of our Courage to Win coaches: Lisa, you'll never guess what happened to Ashley, a fourth year player and starting shooting guard for our basketball team. She was having one of those nights where nothing was working.

We were playing the #7 ranked team in the country and the other team was keying on her and she couldn't get a shot to drop.

Ashley is a natural talent but once she stops making shots, she gets discouraged and the rest of her game follows suit...it is very detrimental to our team. At half time, I calmed myself down and said to her in front of the team: 'Ashley, you have a tremendous opportunity in front of you right now. I know you are upset with how you played in the first half but you have an opportunity to turn it around. You are a much better player than you showed. You are one of the best shooters in our conference. You can wallow in self-pity and give in to learned helplessness or you can make another choice. One of the most powerful things available to each of us is the ability to save ourselves. Once you realize you can save yourself, it is liberating, freeing and motivating because you realize you can depend on yourself. You don't need a coach or teammate to save you. You don't need somebody to give you a pep talk or run a special play. You realize it lies within you and all you need to do is have the courage to step forward. The choice is yours - you can remain helpless, frustrated and full of excuses or you can use the tools that are immediately available to you. The boat is waiting. You can sit there and let it sink or you can pull out the paddles and start rowing.' Ashley came out blazing in the second half. She scored 15 points and almost single handedly got us back into the game. The next night against UBC, ranked #9 in the country, she scored 25 points including 7/11 from the three point line. She was the major reason we recorded an upset win against a team that had more talent."



To repeat: when you are giving up, there are two things going on at the same time.

First, you have learned helplessness. You've become passive because you tried to succeed, but an opponent overpowered or out-smarted you in some way (or you messed up on your own).

Second, you're feeling sorry for yourself. You think it's not fair that YOU, someone so talented and special, should have to suffer the agony of personal failure or defeat.

I'm here to tell you:

Boo Hoo.

No one cares.

No one is even remotely interested in your self-pity. What they ARE interested in is what you're made of.

Everyone fails in sport from time to time. There is an agony to competing that will always find you, no matter how good you are.

That's what Ashley figured out.

She figured out that it was time for her to grow up and make a choice: will she be passive or aggressive?

We can do the same.

EXERCISE – Shifting Out of Self-Pity In the space below, record a recent setback you feel you ‘don’t deserve’ and are feeling sorry for yourself about:

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Next, write down exactly why this setback is actually TYPICAL for an athlete in your sport, and TYPICAL for confident champion athletes to have to deal with:

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Make It Happen By Channelling Anger

A secret weapon for creating breakthrough confidence and cultivating the Make It Happen: Practice of Commitment mindset is to channel your anger.

The truth is, whenever one of your Demon Stressors show up, you're going to get mad.

Now most sport psycs or coaches will never tell you this, but...

It's ok to be angry and frustrated - as long as you CHANNEL your frustration into GOOD ANGER – the kind that makes you persist and never give up.

Boxer Sugar Ray Leonard learned this the hard way.

Leonard, the flashy Golden Boy, had breezed through every opponent since turning pro and held the undisputed WBC Welterweight crown.

Until he met Roberto Duran.

Duran, nicknamed "Hands of Stone," gave up the lightweight championship to challenge Leonard.

In the lead-up to the bout, Duran bad-mouthed Leonard at every opportunity. "Leonard is not macho. He is a pretty boy who has everything given to him; the money, the easy fights, the television coverage. He will meet a real fighter for the first time."

By fight time, Leonard was so angry he foolishly tried fighting Duran's style, going toe-to-toe with him.

Duran won by unanimous decision.

Leonard later admitted: "I wanted to knock his head off. Stupid. I'm a competitor and a very proud man."

Leonard's mistake?

He gave in to his Dark Side.

There is BAD and GOOD anger.

BAD anger makes you panicky, stressed out, and causes you to lose your focus.

GOOD anger keeps you focused and motivates you to persist until you prevail.

The good news is that Leonard learned his lesson.



Barely five months later, the rematch occurred.

This time, Leonard kept to his style of fighting, sticking and moving. Duran was overwhelmed. "The whole fight, I was moving, moving," Leonard said. "I snapped his head back with a jab, once, twice. He tried to get me against the ropes, I'd pivot, spin off and Pow! Come under with a punch."

Near the end of Round 8, Duran turned completely away from Leonard and told the referee, "No mas."

The fight ended in a TKO.

The third meeting, nine years later, was a debacle with Leonard winning easily. Duran finally admitted: "No man hurt me like Leonard. He is a great, great fighter."

You see, BAD anger really is learned helplessness in disguise.

You feel overwhelmed and insecure, so you go wild.

Sometimes you get penalties; other times you just PRESS and make a mess of things.

The wonderful thing is it's easy to turn BAD anger into GOOD anger.

All you need to do is tap into your pride as an athlete. This is what’s known as Killer Instinct, and it’s a powerful Make It Happen weapon.

The bottom line?

You don’t need to fear setbacks or the anger that comes with them.

Simply channel your frustration into smart, GOOD anger, do a better job out there, and never say die.

EXERCISE – From BAD Anger to GOOD Anger In the space below, write down the last time you got mad in competition (tapped into your pride) and performed better as a result:

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Next, commit to yourself that the next time you are tempted to give up and become passive, that you will bring your anger forth and channel it into doing a better job. Write down your commitment below:



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Let’s re-cap this session. Here’s what we’ve learned:

Crush Your Demon Stressors. Many athletes “fold” as soon as they face stressors like an angry coach, poor conditions, or irritating teammates. You will discover a simple, three step process to banish your mental storm clouds and restores total composure to your mind and body. The Magic of Killer Instinct. The majority of athletes try to coast across the ‘finish line’ without offending anybody in the process. How to gut it out and win no matter who you are competing against.

How To Stay On Top After A Great Performance. Believe it or not, many athletes lose their confidence AFTER a major triumph – discover why and exactly how to set up your mental game to avoid this trap (and keep winning day in and day out).

The Power of Self-Acceptance. The step-by-step process for curing the perfectionism and low self-esteem that rob you of your confidence and enjoyment of sport so you can be proud of yourself whether you have a good day or a not-so-good day out there. Stop The Performance Yo-Yo. Can’t transfer practice confidence to game confidence? You’ll discover exactly what’s going on in your brain and exactly how to eliminate this tendency permanently.

Dealing with Losing. Champions do lose, but they deal with losses differently than everyone else. How to effectively deal with losing so it does not sap your confidence or de-rail your winning mindset.

How to Unlock Hope. A clever, proven tactic to unlock hope originated by Martin Seligman, the world’s leading authority on optimism. This is going “undercover”. Pulling back the curtain to see the Wizard to learn THE time-tested strategy for defeating fear and pessimism. With this simple tactic, you can create momentum literally out of thin air.

I’ll talk to you again soon.

Your friend, Lisa B.


Documents

The Confident Champion Session Four Transcript · Creating A Winning Self-Image Using GAME FACE 2.0. Detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to set yourself up from the beginning