Mental Toughness: Control
Mental toughness is a necessary element for athletes in the pursuit of success and outcome achievement. If you want to build your mental toughness, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll start with control.
Control is the 1st of the 4 C’s of mental toughness (Control, Commitment, Challenge, Confidence). Control is the extent to which you feel in control of your own life including your emotions and your sense of purpose . You can have an Inner or an Outer Locus of Control. If you are wanting to build mental toughness you need to learn control.
There are 2 aspects of control for athletes to focus on:
1. Life Control—I have control over the direction of my life. I truly believe I can do it.
2. Emotional Control—I can effectively manage my emotions and manage the emotions of others such as my teammates and coaches.
You may find, like many athletes, that you have varying degrees to which these statements will feel true and circumstances can certainly impact that, too. That is normal and actually a good thing. What we are really after with control is not controlling everything. It matters what you are exerting effort to control and where you are focusing.
Focus on what you can control.
Locus of Control is the degree to which you feel you have a sense of agency about your life. You can have an internal locus of control meaning you have a strong belief that you are in charge of your own life, or an external locus of control meaning you have a belief that there are other factors beyond you that are controlling your life.
In truth, we have far less control over things than we think we do. This is a hard pill to swallow for many athletes, but it is an important one. So many athletes focus on things that are not truly in their control and waste mental and physical energy, effort, and time on these things. All anyone can truly control is themselves. Only you control you—your thoughts, feelings, reactions, beliefs, interpretations, behaviors, attitude and emotions. You have control over your choices and the effort you put in to pursuing your dreams and goals.
Everything else, falls outside of your control. There may be things you can influence through your choices, behaviors, attitudes, etc. But they are still outside of your actual control.
Nevertheless, it is important, as an athlete, for you to have an internal locus of control. Those with an internal locus of control will likely believe that events in their lives are largely shaped by their own skills, efforts, and decisions.
Athletes with a strong internal locus of control will take responsibility for results and outcomes, tend to work harder, set and work toward goals, focus on solutions and problem-solving (rather than excuses and remaining problem-focused), demonstrate a growth mindset, and manage their thoughts and emotions well.
It is important to repeat that there are things outside of your control and determining what those things are is necessary to maintain a health, balanced, and helpful perspective.
Athletes with an external locus of control often attribute events (wins, losses, mistakes, skill-set, etc.) in their lives to external forces, such as random chance (luck or fate), environmental factors (weather, field conditions, where they grew up, etc.), or the actions of others (referees, teammates, coaching, etc.).
Athletes with an external locus of control tend to blame others (teammates, coaches, officials, etc.) for poor results, tend to pull-back effort especially when things become challenging, focus on problems rather than looking for solutions (aka: they look for excuses), tend to have a fixed mindset, and may struggle to manage their thoughts and emotions in a healthy and effective manner.
Again, there are things that are outside of your control. Nearly every athlete has come across inconsistent and even biased officiating. The way an athlete *responds* matters even in these cases. You can build an attitude of dedication against all odds.
Start by identifying your Circle of Control. This is everything that falls under your ability to control. I’ve already listed what falls under your circle of control, but feel free to make it more specific to you.
You can take it a step further and create a list of things in your control you’d like to work on improving. For instance, within your circle of control is your thoughts and like every athlete you have helpful and unhelpful thoughts. Helpful thoughts are those thoughts that assist you in keeping commitments to yourself, keep you on track, and support your mental wellbeing. Unhelpful thoughts distract you from your goals or set you on a path you don’t really want to go down. Seeing things clearly give you more opportunity to shift things in a way that supports you in your pursuits.
The next aspect you need to identify is your Circle of Influence. These are things that fall outside if your control, but not outside of your impact. For example, you can influence your coaching staff or teammates with your attitude, effort, and communication. You can’t change how they think, feel, and act, but you can encourage these things by the way you show up.
You can’t control an outcome either, but you can influence it by the work and effort you put in. This is an area many athletes over emphasize to their detriment. You likely have goals to win games and therefore focus on scoring, but in any sport, there is so much more that needs to happen. Your focus on you or your team getting a goal as the clock ticks down is a distraction from the plays you need to perform to even set up the opportunity you are after. No game is won by looking at the scoreboard. Athletes that focus on their effort, skills, and performance, rather than the outcome of the competition will have a better opportunity to influence the game because they are focused on what is they can *actually* control and do in any given moment.
Last, is the Circle of Concern. The Circle of Concern if everything that falls outside of your control and outside of your influence. The challenge here is not to stop caring about the things outside of your control or influence, but rather let go of your attempts to control them.
You have the opportunity to heighten your focus on what you can do rather than get lost in wishful thinking or ruminating on mistakes, losses, etc.
To do this effectively, you will have to take control over your mind/thoughts and continue to redirect attention and focus where it will be most helpful.
When a mistake is made or you mind is replaying old, painful losses, think: “What’s important now?” Then take action on what is important whether that is your full presence in practice or rest and recovery so you can come out stronger next time.
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