The Mental Skills of Successful Athletes

Confident athletes display many attributes that contribute to their outlook, attitude, demeanor, and performance. Based on my experiences with athletes over the last 30 years, both as an athlete myself and in my professional career as a mental performance consultant, below is a list of mental skills that confident athletes exhibit. 

Successful athletes:

1. Choose and maintain a positive attitude.

These athletes realize that their attitude is a choice, and therefore choose positivity. They view challenges, mistakes, and failure as opportunities for growth, and focus on more than wins and losses. 

2. Maintain a high level of self-motivation.

These athletes are hungry for growth and improvement. They want to be the very best they can be and work hard to achieve this. They are self-driven to train, grind, work hard, and improve. 

3. Set high, realistic goals, and work towards them.

These athletes set smaller process goals and larger long term goals, work daily towards their goals, assess their progress, and make adjustments when necessary. They understand that improving by even just 1% a day will contribute to their improvement and success. 

4. Manage self-talk: self-enhancing over self-defeating.

These athletes have control over their self-talk. They’ve dedicated time and purposeful effort to identifying what self-talk works best for them and when it works best, and are able to direct their inner voice to be self-enhancing and facilitate performance. 

5. Use positive mental imagery.

These athletes use imagery as a tool, and through practice are able to visualize their performance - what they want to happen, how they want it to happen, when they want it to happen. They understand that imagined training facilitates actual performance, supports problem solving, and prepares them for in the moment action. 

6. Manage their anxiety effectively.

These athletes have developed awareness around their stress and anxiety triggers, have a deep understanding of how their anxiety affects them, and have a plan in place to cope with anxiety when it strikes. They feel and exhibit some degree of control over their anxiety, and have developed the skills to use their anxiety for them instead of it working against them. 

7. Manage their emotions effectively.

These athletes are in control of their emotions. They have mental checklists to facilitate pre, during, and post performance reflections, and use that information to improve and apply in future performances. They understand that they need to feel what they’re feeling, deal with it, and move on from it. 

8. Ability to stay moment focused. 

These athletes are able to direct and redirect focus to the task at hand. They understand that in order for them to perform at their best, they need to ‘be where their feet are’. They’ve trained their focus so distractions flow by without stealing attention. 

9. Are growth minded. 

These athletes believe that they can improve through assessment, reflection, hard work, and purpose. They take an opportunity perspective, have a love of learning, and are dedicated to the process. They have a realistic definition of success that includes more than outcome or statistics. 

Successful athletes have the mentioned qualities ingrained in them. They live these attributes every day, and dedicate purposeful time and effort towards their process. How many of these qualities do you possess? In what ways? 

I believe that everyone is capable of possessing each attribute on this list. And I can help. If you’re ready to take your game to the next level, get in touch and let’s get started.