In this regard, following his conceptualization of mental toughness, Loehr (1986) constructed the Psychological Performance Inventory (PPI). Stephanie: So there’s a theme through all of that. And what they found is that academic ability accounts for about 7% of your chance. And so finding out what those techniques are, are so different because we are so different. Mental toughness isn’t a quality people are born with. And to do that, it has to be more tailored. And so if you feel that having more confidence is going to help you to be able to achieve better outcomes, you’re more likely to kind of look at opportunities and strategies in which to do that. So the fourth C, can you teach someone to be confident? If it’s about the goals of the organisation and achieving a vision, there are lots of organisations out there that do some wonderful things about achieving much more bigger or larger vision or goals than just themselves. A couple of months ago, Florence’s paper was published looking at this meta-analysis. Gaj: Yeah, absolutely. In professional sports, there aren’t huge differences between athletes in terms of potential, training, or physical ability.The determining factors of success, therefore, lie in the psychological realm. And one of the big frustrations that a lot of employees face and one of the things that comes out continuously in these engagement surveys that are coming out each year is the perception of the lack of support from their leaders. This is great news because all athletes can benefit from mental toughness training. It’s a very mechanical word-. I think really the elements are empirically solid. What is Mental Toughness and how does it affect your Performance? Gaj: It is. Consider a marathon runner. Loehr (1982) suggested that mentally tough athletes learned or developed two important skills: first, the ability to increase their flow of positive energy when faced with adversity or a crisis; and second, to think in ways that promote the right attitudes to sol… Stephanie: Not letting it take over whatever the context is, take over and overwhelm you. But if you’re doing it in a way that demonstrates a sense of community, a sense of tribe with your people, where you’re bringing people together against your competitors, against the challenging situation or the environment that you’re in, perhaps that could be a benefit to helping them and to helping your customers to get the best outcomes. It’s complex (it involves focus, belief, drive, self-talk, communication skills, and more) and it’s on a dynamic continuum, meaning abilities can increase or atrophy over time. So there is an inherent issue with that. Over the past several years, coaches and athletes alike have started to realize Do you believe you are genuinely in control of your life? And so being able to do that effectively allows you to be much more successful in terms of not only the thought processes of managing a situation, but also then post that situation, how you deal with that. Gaj: So that is critical. We constantly apply blanket rules. So the model itself was created by an independent group of researchers out of the UK called AQR. Stephanie: That’s interesting. The Hull researchers from the International Journal of Sport Psychology carried out a study to show how mental toughness was related to performance and cognitive appraisal. So they said, ‘Why are we not talking about this? They happened to be there in a conference. How are you helping me and supporting me in being able to do this? But we do it all the time. So there is probably a superficial level of training that might be effective for everybody that isn’t necessarily going to have a massive impact on the buttons that we’re pushing. Stephanie: So what would be the circumstances that someone perhaps who has high mental toughness and a good sense of control might choose to take the passenger role in their own life? And that’s the research that has been coming out. Was a group study of personalities and how it links to the dark triad of personality, the Machiavellianistic, the narcissistic and psychopathy, but also mental toughness. And so just being mindful of the mindfulness training and what is the impact on children and ensuring that we’re not giving a blanket approach that is too deep. Is it actually negative in a way or deconstructive to have these behaviours? In fact many researchers have attributed Mental Toughness as being a significant influencing factor contributing to successful performance excellence as well as a performance enhancer. How we perceive things in life greatly impacts the thoughts and behaviors that follow – for better or for worse. Being mentally tough involves continuing to persevere through the more difficult times in performance. The open and closed questions about mental toughness then generate scores for the five areas of mental toughness; Motivation, Emotions, Thoughts, Unity and Focus are all subcomponents of MT. : a psychological barrier where their bodies seize up and they feel like they cannot go on. Mental toughness (MT) is an umbrella term that entails positive psychological resources, which are crucial across a wide range of achievement contexts and in the domain of mental health. So someone who is mentally tough is able to perform in stressful situations. But that’s kind of one size fits all, isn’t it? Stephanie: Yeah, right. According to the World Health Organization, depression and anxiety alone cost global economy approximately one trillion dollars annually due to lost productivity.. When I’ve been listening to you talk about this, is choice is really a big part of it that I’m hearing you saying. Gaj: Been doing some really interesting things, I think. We behave in a way because we do get something in return from that behaviour. So if a leader understands what their people are thinking, then they have a much more stronger ability to build and influence those thoughts which they influence their feelings and influence their behaviour in the right way. And at times to really affect significant change, you need to go deep, you can’t just assume a one-size-fits-all training program to fix things up. And one of the other things which is interesting and I was reading about actually a couple of days ago, is something called activation energy, which is this idea that when you focus on a task and it’s a problem, if you actually do things around you that allow you to focus on that task with the first three to four minutes, it actually gives you a higher chance of completing that task. But these mental skills are mighty useful when it comes to achieving consistent success. Because that support is something that I could get from my manager, could be resources or budget that I need to have allocated, maybe it’s some technology that could make my life a bit easier, maybe it’s even just the customer that needs to have some clarifications made about what this challenge is and what it means for them.’. I agree with you that personalities are preference and if I have a very strong preference away from confidence or whatever adds up to confidence, can you learn it? So how important is that then to an overall picture of mental toughness? And so we tend to behave and continue to behave in that way. Gaj: No, I think I’d put a post up on the Life Of An Entrepreneur and that had been observed by a few people and as I was paying for the bill, the individual had-. Is there’s a significant risk and the risk is that our personalities are so different that once we actually get to a point where we are pushing little buttons of our personality, we don’t necessarily as leaders realise that when that button is pushed it is having an impact on another set of personalities. This is great news because all athletes can benefit from mental toughness training. There’s a whole bunch of inputs that are going to give me some outputs. Factors impacting on performance - Introduction, Impact of emotional factors on performance, Impact of physical factors on performance - Fitness, Impact of physical factors on performance - Skills, Impact of physical factors on performance - Tactics, How factor interaction impacts on performance, Religious, moral and philosophical studies. When it’s cold outside, I’m in the month of May.’, Gaj: And this mindset, to choose your reality, to overcome a problem or a challenge by saying, ‘I’m going to turn the problem into an opportunity,’ we use that word probortunity-. Gaj: Yeah, and happy. Gaj: Thank you for having me. Gaj: Absolutely. There are some people who like to be victims because it serves them in some way. Jennifer Heistand at Stillpoint Performance takes an outdated model of performance coaching and turns it on its head. High-performance athletes claim that 90% of their success comes from mental training and ability. Hall found that mental toughness greatly influenced subjects' finishing times, and that among the variables influencing performance (fitness, weather, and nutrition), mental toughness … It’s also: Physical Emotional In order to be mentally tough you: Must have talent Be in peak physical condition Your technical skills have to be sharp Mental toughness acquires you to: Recognize that the physical, emotional and mental sides of your self affect each other Mental toughness training allows players […] We call this living in the discomfort, right? This provides the sport psychologist or performance psychologist with incredible insight into how to assist this performer. Stephanie:  And be interesting to see how people respond to that because in a past life we would have had people coming to us saying, ‘Can you do resilience training for my organisation?’ We were chatting on the way over about… something on the ABC this morning about an organisation doing resilience training and mindfulness for young children. Gaj: We go into an accountant’s office and sometimes see absolute chaos, but they know exactly where the file is, they know where to locate things. Gaj: Supposedly they’re actually increasing it to the dark tetra. Research has shown that mental toughness is 3 times more impactful than academic ability and performance in terms of success and happiness. The problem, however, is that without specifying, or operationalizing the variable “mental,” we have no way of really knowing what we are trying to measure. Mental factors can be divided into two different sections: those concerned with cognition and those reflecting psychological traits. So absolutely, those choices that we make can dictate the outputs in a lot of ways and it’s about us taking ownership. I love that. And so therefore the activation energy principle says, ‘Look at the things around you that typically cause you distraction.’ If it’s an email, is your phone. It’s just going to be cruisey. One question that is commonly thrown around in conversations centering around sport performance is how much of sport success is “mental?” Most people think this number is quite high, sometimes even suggesting close to 100%. So what’s one person’s clutter is another person’s order. Gaj: You can create a space for yourself and that’s really important. Mental Toughness is a … What have you done since then? If you’re an athlete who wants to learn how to stop performance anxiety quickly, be poised, calm and in control during those “critical moments”, learn more about The Composed Athlete!. This conversation of mental toughness when it’s more than three times more impactful than academic ability and academic performance?’ So that started to become a driver for them. For some people, clutter is helpful, right? And so any opportunities to do that can get you to perhaps at some point to be a little bit of a passenger, to reflect on things, to not be on the front foot on all occasions. Great choices result in a better life. You came across a model of mental toughness. That’ll never happen again, but it was great. Gaj: Instead of accountability, imagine if we replaced it with promises, it becomes almost very personal. Whenever I am asked to defend this position – that mental toughness and mental health are not the same – I use the same example. Stephanie:  I can’t let you go without touching on the dark triad because you have. So tell us a little bit about it. So for example, shut down your Outlook or turn off your computer because you know it’s going to take you four minutes to boot up your computer. Mental Toughness. What would it look like for example, if I was low commitment or one of my team is or my team as a whole, sort of skews towards like commitment? Where’s the crossover do you think? At The Race Club camps, our fifth and final point of peak performance mental toughness training is called anchoring. That’s really interesting. This leads to you continuing in the event and completing it to achieve your targeted time. Impact of mental toughness on performance, continuing to persevere through the more difficult times in performance. Gaj: So the words are, ‘I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day. As a person, it’s my choice how I’m going to approach each of these areas of mental toughness. Mental Toughness is a personality trait that determines one’s ability to perform consistently under stress and pressure. And so that is a critical piece. All rights reserved. Mental toughness didn’t ensure runners met a goal time, Hall clarified. As a peak performance coach, Gaj Ravichandra assists individuals, sporting teams and educational institutions to enhance and maximise their potential and performance. They define mental toughness as “the personality trait, which determines in large part how people deal effectively with challenges stressors and pressure… irrespective of circumstances”. Mental toughness is more than just mental. An athlete’s level of mental toughness directly affects their success which makes it a very important tool to an athlete. As a Peak Performance coach, Gaj Ravichandra, assists individuals, sporting teams and educational institutions to enhance and maximise their potential and performance.Do you believe that you are contr... – Lyssna på What is Mental Toughness and how does it affect your Performance? The following are 11 Facts About Mental Toughness from Performance Expert Alan Stein, Jr. So if we get a sense of what is actually the thought that is taking place in the heads of our people, that can help us to understand what’s going on. Can you control your destiny or are you leaving it up to fate to kind of do that for you? Stephanie: If you don’t really believe you can do it, you find the light. It’s going to gel well with some people. Rather, it influenced finishing time, meaning without mental toughness, finish times would have been slower. Stephanie: Yeah. And whether you’re a leader, whether it’s about self-leadership, leading a team, leading an organisation, we inherently are bad at creating spaces for ourselves to think and reflect, we’re caught up in all this stuff that’s happening around us. It’s going to shake the world of training-. It’s hardly surprising therefore that the issue of mental health in athletes is not exactly top of the sports health agenda. 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