“You have to dream big and go for it. Surround yourself with people who believe in you and ignore those who try to bring you down. Never give up, no matter what-- overcoming obstacles makes you stronger!”
-Shannon MacMillan, US Olympic and women's national soccer champion
February is Black history month. This month I wanted to focus specifically on quotes from black athletes in my blog post. I have a pretty large database of quotes from athletes from all races, sports and genders. I look through my database daily and I post different ones on my Facebook page. At the end of the week I choose one that really speaks to me and develop my weekly blog post around it. I looked at some great quotes in preparing this week. I examined quotes from Tiger Woods, Flo Jo, Magic Johnson, Venus Williams, and Michael Jordan, arguably from some of the greatest Black athletes of the modern era. And they had a lot of great things to say but you know sometimes it's really not about race. It's really about the message not the messenger. I found a quote from a White athlete that many of my readers may not know who really has something to contribute and that's why I chose Shannon Macmillan.
Most non-soccer people probably have never heard of Shannon Macmillan. I know I had not heard of her before I got involved with providing mental coaching services to high school soccer players. She’s an Olympian and a legend in the world of women’s soccer. However, soccer is not the most popular sport in the US. To make matters worse, women athletes tend to get relegated to second-class status in virtually every sport. But one of my reasons for writing this blog is to highlight principles, ideas, and mental strategies from high-level achievers in all sports and the performing arts. Part of my mission as a mental coach is to break down barriers between sports, races and genders. I've listed this as a goal in my company's mission statement. Largely, barriers exist between different groups because of the lack of knowledge. I hope this blog post will educate more people about soccer, women, and champion thinking in order to outgrow some of their prejudice.
Cross training first became popular in the 80’s. Athletes like distance runners who normally relied solely upon exercises that would build their cardiovascular endurance started to adopt weight training. Athletes like football linebackers that would normally dedicate many hours to weight training started getting on exercise bikes and treadmills and upping their cardio. It was a good thing. In the 70’s and 80’s I remember reading articles in Sports Illustrated about football players who took ballet classes or martial arts classes in order to increase their flexibility and agility. What can a ballet dancer learn from a football player? What can a football player will learn from a ballerina? We never know until we sit down and have a conversation.
Today's conversation is not about physical skills that one can learn from a different sport, it's about the mental skills. There is a universal language of champions that cuts across generations, genders, races and sports. Shannon Macmillan’s quote is ideally suited for any athlete or peak performer to study. Shannon is encouraging us to keep several principles in mind in order to be your best. The first is “dreaming big”. The world is filled with people who don't allow themselves to dream at all. If and when they do start to dream, they choose very small, conservative dreams that don't allow them to really stretch or reach their full potential. Other people have no problem with dreaming big but it falls flat because they fail to act on those dreams. I’ll give an example. I have clients come to me when they want to make a breakthrough. I met Joseph about five years ago. He had a good job as a social worker making decent money with health insurance and job security but he was longing to make a bigger contribution and start his own business. That was his dream before we met and like most people he read books, attended seminars and listened to recordings all designed to help him to achieve this dream. The problem was that Joseph was unable to take any action. He had everything he needed to go for it but was unable to take the leap. My coaching helped Joseph to release his brakes by reprogramming his subconscious beliefs about starting his own consulting practice. He is now a successful IT consultant, changing the world one client at a time.
I think what makes sports so exciting to watch and read about and participate in is that it's about action. It's not an intellectual pursuit. However, there is a great deal of mental activity that goes on behind the scenes. It is the dream or mental image of getting a soccer ball in the net, sinking the basket in basketball or crossing the finish line in a race that propels the athlete to take decisive action. Without the big dream there is never any action but without the action the dream remains just a wish. Athletes can dream and achieve on a higher level than they ever thought possible by reading the biographies and exploits of other athletes in their field and outside of their field. For example, a tennis player who learns about the endurance regimen of a marathon runner could significantly improve her performance. A golfer significantly increases his performance output by adding weight training to his golf regimen. Tiger Woods led the way by showing other golfers the importance of strength training.
The second thing Shannon talks about is surrounding yourself with the right kind of people. When you have big dreams and are taking action it can be scary to some of the people that are around you who may not be big dreamers. Your family, friends or coworkers may not be action-oriented. As a result, they may shoot down your dreams and may cause you to hesitate in taking action. The right kind of team produces an environment that is conducive for the growth of all the athletes involved. The right kind of coach dreams big and takes massive action and encourages the team to do the same. In my opinion, the coach helps the athlete to find her dream but it's her responsibility to take action on it. It's always an inside game. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. When I was a schoolteacher in New York City, I saw many students with incredible potential. My job was to help them recognize it but unless those students were ready to release that potential nothing changed. Hypnosis takes students who have the potential to do well academically to the top of the honor roll and Dean's list. I'm living proof of this and I've helped many of the students in my care do the same thing by teaching them self-hypnosis.
Birds of a feather flock together. It's hard to soar like an eagle when surrounded by turkeys. These expressions are popular because they have a ring of truth to them. In order to reach high levels in any activity like sports, sales, performing arts, or academics it's important to be around people who believe in you and who are possibility thinkers on the road to high achievement. So many bright young people in inner-city schools never excel academically because the peer group discourages intellectual pursuits. “Don't waste your time studying for a test.” “Don't join the math team.” “Don't try to learn to play chess.” Those things are for nerds, right? When I was in junior high school I was a bit of a nerd. Surprise, surprise! My jokes didn’t go over so well and I didn't have designer jeans and shell-toe Adidas like the cool kids but I could dance and I could fight and that helped me survive.
Nothing is ever accomplished without persistence. That's the third message within Shannon’s quote. Never give up. It's easy to say but hard to live. The secret to persistence is found in the other elements that we've alluded to in the blog post. The dream that we hold in our minds helps us to keep going and be relentless. Having taken action we’re in motion and because we ARE in motion, it’s easier to keep going. An object at rest tends to remain at rest and an object in motion tends to remain in motion. These are scientific principles. When you're dreaming big and taking action on a regular basis, it's easy to keep taking steps in order to reach your destination. The problem occurs when we lose our momentum. Maybe you've stopped going to the gym for a while. Maybe you've got out of the habit of eating salad with each meal or something as simple and healthy as drinking enough water each day. Because you “stopped" it may seem hard to pick up that habit again. Let's go back to the third element in Shannon's quote, “Surround yourself…” Surround yourself with people who are like-minded. If all your friends go to the bar and drink after work how likely is it that you'll do the same thing? Conversely, if all your friends go immediately to the gym after work how likely is it that you'll do the same thing? Having the right kind of people in your life who are health conscious, fitness conscious or motivated toward high levels of performance in some sport or activity, tends to assist you to be a little bit more disciplined in your pursuit of excellence.
The last element in Shannon’s quote has to do with the way that champions see obstacles. They see them as necessary for growth. Let's substitute the word “problem” for “obstacle”. How do you feel about problems? The attitude that we have toward these problems or obstacles makes all the difference in whether or not we surmount them. What are the questions that come to you when the obstacle shows up in your life? “Why does this always happen to me?” “Why me?” “What have I done to deserve this?” We need to change these questions because they don't lead to good results. Ask a better question and you're likely to get a better result. For example, if you asked yourself what can you learn from this or how can you solve this challenge and enjoy the process you're more likely to not give up. Obstacles and challenges are fundamental to sport. If there were no “hurdles” it would be far too easy. Challenges are built into games like golf in order to allow humans to develop skill as well as the mental muscles of persistence, concentration and calm under pressure. Shannon Macmillan has offered us a great quote this week that can be taken and applied by athletes of every single sport without respect to age, nationality, gender or even race. It's such a pleasure to be involved in the field of applied sports psychology and be able to spread the championship wisdom of the practitioners of various sports especially the lesser known ones.
Ajamu Ayinde, C.M. Ht., A.C.H., Certified Sports Hypnotist & Creator
M.E.N.T.A.L. Games ™ sports enhancement system
Sports success begins in the mind. ™
Connect with me on FB: www.facebook.com/ajamu.ayinde
Visit our website: http://advantage-enterprises.yolasite.com
Subscribe to our weekly sports psych blog: http://mentalgamestraining.blogspot.com
Contact Us: 845-240-6470 and on Skype@ Sambamindman ajamuayinde@gmail.com
