Overcoming adversity is a crucial aspect of any athlete’s journey, and as a sports psychologist, I’ve had the privilege of guiding many through these challenging waters.

 The path to success in sports is rarely smooth. 

It’s filled with hurdles, setbacks, and sometimes, heart-wrenching defeats. 

But it’s in these moments of struggle that the true spirit of an athlete is forged.

As a sports psychologist, I’ve seen firsthand how the company you keep can make or break your game, both on and off the field. 
Here’s the game plan to make sure you’re surrounded by the best team possible.

Bravery in sports is more than physical prowess. It’s a mental game where fear is acknowledged and conquered, where setbacks become lessons, and where the true spirit of a champion is forged.

To excel in your athletic endeavors, embracing bravery is crucial.

This article dives deep into what makes an empathetic leader, the importance of this leadership style in sports, how it contrasts starkly with weak leadership, and practical steps to cultivate it.

Find out what are 23 different ways you can build endurance. You can choose one or all, depending what suits your life and training style.

You are reading this because you want to cut through the clutter of information and identify the high performance habits that…

The good news is, whether you are in high school now or high school was a long time ago, you can start taking effective action toward your dreams. 

Rather than give a whole long list of tips, which can be overwhelming and cause paralysis, I’ve narrowed it down to eight essential strategies.

And I encourage you to do all of them. Because each one adds a unique ingredient to the “dreams to reality” recipe. 

I encourage you to not do more than what I describe either because lesser suggestions can be a distraction from these most effective eight.

As we go through, you’ll see how they actually all tie together and work in unison.

I don’t know about you, but I spent years trying to figure out exactly how to let go of some pretty rough experiences, thoughts and feelings. 

Things that had happened to me. Childhood experiences. Self talk, that was really unhelpful. I just wanted to get rid of it all. 

And the more I tried to let it go, the more I had it. 

What I learned was that the best way to let something go is to wholeheartedly invest your heart and attention somewhere else.

If you are hard on yourself, do it with a loving heart. The harsh approach may motivate us in the immediate moment, but the benefits won’t last.

I recently read some articles on this topic and I found that I disagreed with most of what has been written.

Many of the articles are talking about the pathologies of why you’re beating yourself up, such as abuse or bad parenting or perfectionism. They frame it in this unnatural, unhelpful way that honestly just makes me feel worse when I catch myself being critical. 

But I want to ask, have you ever met somebody that didn’t beat themself up? 

There is, if you want to call it a “pathological” or more problematic level of self criticism. But I’m scaling this discussion back to the idea of self criticism in any capacity. 

And what I want to be sure you know is this: self-criticism is just a normal response to our failure to meet the standard we desire.