Athletes Mental Toughness Quotes

Forgiveness takes intelligence, discipline, imagination, and persistence, as well as a special psychological strength, something athletes call mental toughness and warriors call courage.

I wish I could discover why people quit. I’ve often wondered if it’s because of how they were raised. Among the college athletes I’ve worked with, I’ve seen too many who simply weren’t mentally tough. They had all the natural gifts in the world, but they were lazy.

The Invictus mindset then, is a commitment to maintaining control of your destiny without regard for the obstacles and hardships laid on your path. It

the three most important mental skills for success in endurance sports: commitment, confidence, and patience. Taken together, they form what we typically call mental toughness. Mentally tough athletes are hard to beat.

You can spot the girls who have it easy. I don't even have to describe them for you. You can spot the girls who will get by on smarts. You can spot the girls who will get by because they are tough or athletic. And then there is me.

Mental toughness can be demonstrated at a particular moment in time or over the long term, as in your overall career success. Doing the thing that is hard over and over again is like depositing money in your inner-strength bank account.

You’re going to experience adversity; you’re going to have days that are incredibly challenging, even scary. There are going to be days that cause you to question your motives and ability. It’s important to realize that the toughest days are your best days, because they have the potential to force the most adaptation—mentally, as well as physically.

True, every runner wants to quit sometimes. By any definition, becoming a successful athlete requires conquering those psychological barriers, whether you’re sucking air during your first jog or gutting it out in the final four miles of a marathon, axiomatically the toughest. When you push beyond the marathon, new obstacles arise, and the necessary mental toughness comes from raising your pain threshold. All endurance sports are about continuing when it feels as if you have nothing left, when everything aches, when you feel done—but you’re not. You have to get beyond the numbers that, like certain birthdays for some people, just seem intrinsically daunting: fifty miles, one hundred miles, one thousand miles, two thousand miles, and random points in between. At such distances, the sport becomes every bit as much mental as physical.

Matt Espenshade confirmed that in spite of the deaths of so many of the kidnappers, many more are still at large, including their leaders. Those men might hope to be forgotten; they are not. The FBI has continued its investigative interest in those involved with the kidnapping. The leaders, especially, are of prime interest to the Bureau. And now the considerable unseen assets in that region are steadily feeding back information on these targeted individuals to learn their operational methods and their locations and hunt them down. The surviving kidnappers and their colleagues are welcome to sneer at the danger. It may help them pass the time, just as it did for Bin Laden’s henchmen to chuckle at the idea of payback. If the men nobody sees coming are dispatched to capture or kill them, the surviving kidnappers will find themselves dealing with a force of air, sea, and land fighters s obsessed with the work they do that they have trained themselves into the physical and mental toughness of world-class athletes. They will carry the latest in weapons, armor, visual systems, and communication devises. Whether they are Navy SEAL fighters, DEVGRU warriors, Army Delta Force soldiers, Green Berets, or any of the elite soldiers under United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), they will share the elite warriors’ determination to achieve success in their mission assignment. The news that they are coming for you is the worst you could receive. But nobody gets advance warning from these men. They consider themselves born for this. They have fought like panthers to be part of their team. For most of them, there is a strong sense of pride in succeeding at missions nobody else can get done; in lethal challenges. They actually prefer levels of difficulty so high it seems only a sucker would seek them, the sorts of situations seen more and more often these days. Impossible odds.

Navy Seals Stress Relief Tactics (As printed in O Online Magazine, Sept. 8, 2014) Prep for Battle: Instead of wasting energy by catastrophizing about stressful situations, SEALs spend hours in mental dress rehearsals before springing into action, says Lu Lastra, director of mentorship for Naval Special Warfare and a former SEAL command master chief.  He calls it mental loading and says you can practice it, too.  When your boss calls you into her office, take a few minutes first to run through a handful of likely scenarios and envision yourself navigating each one in the best possible way.  The extra prep can ease anxiety and give you the confidence to react calmly to whatever situation arises. Talk Yourself Up: Positive self-talk is quite possibly the most important skill these warriors learn during their 15-month training, says Lastra.  The most successful SEALs may not have the biggest biceps or the fastest mile, but they know how to turn their negative thoughts around.  Lastra recommends coming up with your own mantra to remind yourself that you’ve got the grit and talent to persevere during tough times. Embrace the Suck: “When the weather is foul and nothing is going right, that’s when I think, now we’re getting someplace!” says Lastra, who encourages recruits to power through the times when they’re freezing, exhausted or discouraged.  Why?  Lastra says, “The, suckiest moments are when most people give up; the resilient ones spot a golden opportunity to surpass their competitors.  It’s one thing to be an excellent athlete when the conditions are perfect,” he says.  “But when the circumstances aren’t so favorable, those who have stronger wills are more likely to rise to victory.” Take a Deep Breath: “Meditation and deep breathing help slow the cognitive process and open us up to our more intuitive thoughts,” says retired SEAL commander Mark Divine, who developed SEALFit, a demanding training program for civilians that incorporates yoga, mindfulness and breathing techniques.  He says some of his fellow SEALs became so tuned-in, they were able to sense the presence of nearby roadside bombs.  Who doesn’t want that kind of Jedi mind power?  A good place to start: Practice what the SEALs call 4 x 4 x 4 breathing.  Inhale deeply for four counts, then exhale for four counts and repeat the cycle for four minutes several times a day.  You’re guaranteed to feel calmer on any battleground. Learn to value yourself, which means to fight for your happiness. ---Ayn Rand

Do not fall into this trap of early success. Regardless of your current skill level, it is crucial that you continue to work hard so that you will continue to improve. Only by continuing to improve will you give yourself the opportunity to reach your potential in your sport.

One lone player stayed out on the field after the two-hour practice: Michelle Aikers, who was at that time considered to be the best female soccer player in the world. Instead of going inside to cool down and relax, Michelle stayed afterward for thirty minutes to practice taking free kicks.

study of over two hundred men and women found that when athletes trained in an autonomy-supportive environment, there was a correlation with the satisfaction of their basic psychological needs for well-being. Controlling environments were associated with thwarting an individual’s basic needs and with lower overall satisfaction. Furthermore, they found that those in a supportive environment tended to have higher levels of mental toughness and better performances.

Neuroscience Explains Why You Need To Write Down Your Goals If You Actually Want To Achieve Them.” (Excerpt)

Living in mental cruise control and making nothing but safe choices leads to boredom and complacency. A breakthrough in happiness, self-awareness, and mental toughness requires new experience.

The best source of knowledge concerning the most effective methods of coping with the challenges of endurance sports is the example set by elite endurance athletes. The methods that the greatest athletes rely on to overcome the toughest and most common mental barriers to better performance are practically by definition the most effective coping methods for all athletes.

Mentally tough athletes know how to stay focused and deal with adversity.

Mentally tough athletes possess an inner strength. They often play their best when they’re feeling their worst. They don’t make excuses.

But getting the mind right when things are not going ideally is the key to athletic excellence. Good perspective in the face of adversity qualifies as “mental toughness” — the coin of the realm for elite athletes.

Courage. A mentally tough athlete must be willing to take a risk. That’s what peak performers do. In the book Adversity Quotient author Paul Stoltz compares success with a mountain. Only climbers get to the top. The campers, those who get part of the way up and decide to stay where they are, will never feel as alive or as proud as the climbers. As the philosopher said, it takes courage to grow up and to achieve your full potential.

One of the first scientific papers to write about exercise-induced myokines labeled them “hope molecules.” Ultra-endurance athletes talk about the metaphor of putting one foot in front of the other—how learning that you can take one more step, even when it feels like you can’t possibly keep going, builds confidence and courage. The existence of hope molecules reveals that this is not merely a metaphor. Hope can begin in your muscles. Every time you take a single step, you contract over two hundred myokine-releasing muscles. The very same muscles that propel your body forward also send proteins to your brain that stimulate the neurochemistry of resilience. Importantly, you don’t need to run an ultramarathon across the Arctic to infuse your bloodstream with these chemicals. Any movement that involves muscular contraction—which is to say, all movement—releases beneficial myokines. It seems likely that some ultra-endurance athletes are drawn to the sport precisely because they have a natural capacity to endure. The extreme circumstances of these events allow them to both challenge and enjoy that part of their personality. Yet it’s also possible that the intense physical training contributes to the mental toughness that ultra-endurance athletes demonstrate. Endurance activities like walking, hiking, jogging, running, cycling, and swimming, as well as high-intensity exercise such as interval training, are especially likely to produce a myokinome that supports mental health. Among those who are already active, increasing training intensity or volume—going harder, faster, further, or longer—can jolt muscles to stimulate an even greater myokine release. In one study, running to exhaustion increased irisin levels for the duration of the run and well into a recovery period—an effect that could be viewed as an intravenous dose of hope. Many of the world’s top ultra-endurance athletes have a history of depression, anxiety, trauma, or addiction. Some, like ultrarunner Shawn Bearden, credit the sport with helping to save their lives. This, too, is part of what draws people to the ultra-endurance world. You can start off with seemingly superhuman abilities to endure, or you can build your capacity for resilience one step at a time. Months after I spoke with Bearden, an image from his Instagram account appeared in my feed. It was taken from the middle of a paved road that stretches toward a mountain range, with grassy fields on either side. The sky is blue, except for a huge dark cloud that appears to be hovering directly over the person taking the photo. I remembered how Bearden had described his depression as a black thundercloud rolling in. Under the Instagram photo, Bearden had written, “Tons of wind today, making an easy run far more challenging. So happy to be able to do this. Every day above ground is a good day.” Below, a single comment cheered him on, like a fellow runner on the trail: “Amen to this! Keep striving.

When researchers at Eastern Washington University compared coaches utilizing either servant (supportive) or power (thwarting) styles in sixty-four NCAA track teams, the athletes under the servant leader scored higher on measures of mental toughness and ran faster on the track.

The best way to work harder is to make your

Confidence: developing an athlete’s self-belief and self-worth, as well as their resilience and mental toughness

You have to decide what your goals are and you have to believe that you will reach them.

There is no “born with it” gene. There is only a “worked for it” gene.

Learn the basics and do them over and over and over and over and over again.”- Kobe Bryant

The best way to work harder is to make your practice more difficult than the game or competition.

If you’re afraid of failure, you don’t deserve success.

Failure is a necessary part of success. Learn to seek it out!

take responsibility for EVERYTHING.

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Mental toughness is the ability to remain positive and proactive in the most adverse of circumstances.

Don Miguel Ruiz says in his book The Four Agreements, don’t

For five minutes every day, go through what you said to yourself that day. Go through all of it. Make sure that going forward, you only tell yourself what you want to be your reality. Remove anything that uses the word “don’t” and increase the times that you tell yourself what you want to see in your future. No

off of the backboard rang throughout the gym like a bell as it flew back onto the court. “Zero, zero,” the coach said as he walked back to the top of the key. One of the other players in the gym got the ball from mid court and passed it back to the coach. “Check up,” the coach said as he passed the ball back to Matt. After that, you can imagine how it went. The basketball coach beat Matt pretty easily, scoring basket after basket with ease. It was almost like Matt wasn’t even there. Just like I had predicted, the coach beat Matt soundly, and he did it without having to say a word. Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of players with grit talk trash, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but they usually only do it with people they perceive as real competition. There are a lot of things that go with trash talking and I can guarantee that you probably don’t know them. Don’t worry, you will after you finish this book. The coach in this story knew that Matt wasn’t real competition, so he just beat him. The other players on the sidelines did all the trash-talking for him. Most of the time, players with grit won’t talk trash to

From a mental standpoint, the most tried-and-true way to increase performance is to improve confidence. Self-talk is one of the most influential agents for honing self-confidence. Extensive research in the sport psychology world confirms that an athlete’s internal dialogue significantly influences performance.

An Olympic gold medal wrestling coach once told me that there are two principal types of athletes, those with talent and those with work ethic, and the greatest possess both.

High-level, professional athletes receive training on how to deal with pressure, get it under control, and focus on doing what they need to do to win. It’s now time we start doing the same thing for our men and women in law enforcement and the military.

If you read Tyson’s story in his autobiography, Undisputed Truth, you can see how D’Amato helped Tyson train and get focused. The young Tyson had the potential to be a great athlete and had developed immense pain tolerance and fierceness from his tough background, but D’Amato took him to mental, physical, and emotional levels of toughness and focus never before visited. This, combined with elite technical training, led Mike Tyson to rapidly rise to prominence.

SECOND NECESSITY FOR MENTAL TOUGHNESS: TRAINING   It’s long been known that athletes and soldiers need to prepare by training the physical actions they’ll undertake when in competition or combat.   It’s only been relatively recently, though, that this has applied to people doing less physical activities.

As you build emotional intelligence, you are simultaneously building mental toughness, as control over personal emotions is one of the most difficult feats to accomplish as a human being.

Hell Week was not a fitness test. While it did require some athletic ability, every student that survived the weeks of BUD/S training prior to Hell Week had already demonstrated adequate fitness to graduate. It was not a physical test but a mental one. Sometimes, the best athletes in the class didn’t make it through Hell Week. Success resulted from determination and will, but also from innovation and communication with the team. Such training graduated men who were not only physically tough but who could also out-think their adversary.

Getting to know one’s self intimately and being aware of the influences people and circumstances have on your life is an important tool for holding on to the important changes and progress you’ve made over time in terms of mental acuity and mindfulness, as well as your capacity for positive thinking and rational thinking in moments of stress or emotional intensity.

the pleasure of a happy thought is much more attractive than worrying over things we can’t control, so give yourself that luxury.