Yesterday in our Jr. Training Camps Program, the opportunity came up to share lessons on the performance mindset. Sports is an environment of uncertainty and creates opportunities for lessons to be learned and experience to be gained in facing uncertainty and developing one’s performance mindset.
In coaching the players to enter a challenging game with an uncertain outcome, a valuable piece of insight that I gained from Nathan Furr and Susannah Harmon Furr’s book, The Upside of Uncertainty is that it’s quite normal to feel self doubt in the face of uncertainty. Therefore, the key is not to delve on the self doubt or to let it bring us down, but rather to recognize that if we are feeling it, it’s very likely that others are feeling it too. This can bring some calm and create a competitive equilibrium in our minds. From here the performance mindset lies in what we think and do next.
Instead of going into competitive and uncertain situations thinking “I’m going to fail”, we can train and develop the mindset of feeling and saying to ourselves “I will try, I back myself, I will come through.” I encouraged the young players to develop this mindset of backing themselves for I believe greatly in its power to elevate our performances. I also believe that if such a mindset is developed and ingrained from a young age, there is tremendous potential and a very bright future that lies ahead both in sports and in life.
In tennis one can step up and hit a ball with the thought “I’m going to make the shot”. Or you can hit the same shot thinking “I hope I don’t miss”. In both scenarios the uncertainty on whether the shot is made or not is very much present. But what has changed is our approach, our preparation, our mindset and ability to give that effort our very best potential. If we can learn, train, and develop the ability to give our very best potential to each effort, that’s the performance mindset in action paving the way to growth and higher levels of performance.
Harsh Mankad
Founder and Head Coach of Tenicity
