How, How You Think
Our mind is the most important thing that will dictate everything about our lives. How we feel, perceive and respond is always dictated by our thoughts. So why is it more of us don’t journey to understand HOW we think and WHY we think the way we do?
Throughout my collegiate career and ten years traveling the world as a professional, one thing has become evidently clear — most of us have absolutely no understanding of why we think the way we do and that is what holds us back from achieving the things we want in life.
In the beginning of my career, I was defined by one word: potential. That word was also followed by a handful of phrases that summarized to be mentally incapable.
As a professional athlete, you can only last so long without being able to mentally handle the responsibilities of pressure, stress, execution and everything else that comes with being at an elite level. That’s just in your sport, what happens when real life challenges arise that we all have to deal with?
So I learned about myself, partially through study and partially through experience. Learning about my mind is what is directly responsible with helping me succeed in the second half of my career and completely rewire my mental health.
I went from struggling to consistently perform, having immense mental health struggles and being unable to keep my head above the proverbial water, to thriving, succeeding and creating sustainability.
When I retired as an athlete, I knew I had the formula to help other people, particularly athletes, to succeed. So I mapped it out, gave that formula to others, found ways to measure performance, well-being and relationships and began consulting to some of the world’s best. I’ve worked with the NBA, Olympic athletes, PGA Golfers and many more.
NOW, I’M GIVING THAT ROADMAP TO YOU— FOR FREE.
Everything I do is based off of four personality styles. We all have varying levels of each of these styles but certain styles standout more. That is what we would call our dominant style(s). Below is a brief chart based on each of those styles:
I’m sure as you read over those, you instantly connect to at least one style. By having an awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, you can immediately begin to evaluate your life more efficiently.
For example, I sit in the Direct and Analytical styles as my most dominant styles. Some of my strengths are my levels of competitiveness, I don’t fear leadership positions, I work quickly to set a goal, analyze a plan of attack and implement it and I seek out challenges to solve them.
My weaknesses, however, are that I can be too blunt, I’m highly impatient and can be overly critical of everything as I am for perfection.
With an awareness of all of the above, I am able to fix both performance and well-being (if you haven’t figured it out yet, they go hand in hand.) I know that when I fail at something, I don’t need to be overly critical, I just need to continue moving forward. If I haven’t figured something out or gotten the results quick enough, I just need to stay the course and when it comes to working with people, I need to be more mindful of how I deliver the hard-truths and be more empathetic of their feelings.
Once you understand your personality and what your natural propensity to act on is, it’s time to understand your behavioral patterns. The tool that I have found to be most effective in identifying these thoughts, is what is known as a Cognitive Triangle. Below is the layout of the Cognitive Triangle.
What you think → What you feel → What you do
All of these are interconnected and can display the patterned behavior we assume in any situation. Below is an example of someone who may fall under the Engaging and Supportive types.
If you feel like this may pertain to you, then whenever the trigger point comes to mind, you know you have to eliminate that immediately. If you find yourself feeling anxious, if you find yourself thinking, “Everyone is judging me” or you are hiding yourself in a room, it is important that make an adjustment in your behavior for two reasons:
- This is an opportunity to grow and further evolve your skillset as a human being.
- This is how you solve your anxiety, your well-being and develop self belief.
So how do you fix it? The process is simple but first you must understand how the conscious and unconscious parts of our mind work. Below is an illustration for reference:
Our unconscious thoughts are our belief system. It is estimated we make roughly 35,000 decisions every single day. Our brains, to avoid decision fatigue, will create belief systems that our subconscious mind will operate for us so we don’t need to actively make that decision.
As you can imagine, that can be problematic when we don’t actively have autonomy over what programs we are writing into our belief systems.
The feelings of, “I’m not good enough. I can’t do this. It’s too hard.” Or, as we used above, “I’m anxious that everyone is judging me,” becomes part of those belief systems.
So how do we fix it, using two simple tools? The answer is surprisingly simple — flip it.
Every single time a thought pops into our heads and goes uncorrected, it becomes further anchored into our belief system. Using the example of “What others think of me” we can see how we change our belief systems below:
The process isn’t an easy fix and one time will not do it. If the way we think is nothing more than habit and the belief is a new habit is formed every 66 days, two months of disciplined thinking could dramatically impact each of our lives. It’s not an easy fix but there is no easy fix when it comes to years of poor habits.
So, if you are looking to create a better version of yourself, focus on the 3 selfs (esteem, belief, confidence) and watch life unfold in ways you didn’t think were imaginable.
Simply follow the process:
- Awareness — pay attention to what you think, feel and do.
- Alteration — correct the thoughts that don’t serve you.
- Implementation — action these changes every chance you get.
If you would like a free assessment personally done by myself, visit www.empiresportperformance.com to become a member (for free) and fill out your assessment.
