My fellow Mental Toughness Practitioner in Sydney, Paul Lyons recently provided this great read to understand what a Mental Toughness Coach can do for you.
I’ll admit up front that as an experienced Mental Toughness Coach and Psychologist I am biased on believing you may need a mental toughness coach. However, I have assisted many people to understand their mindset and how they can proactively manage this to recognise that they can empower themselves to fulfil their goals and to achieve greater positivity and lower their personal levels of stress. We need to be able to recognise in life how we can “starfish up”.
This can work for you and here are 10 reasons why:
1. You can see the wood for the trees
One of the challenges of life is that you can easily become caught up in the everyday emotional rollercoaster and lose your perspective. Someone neutral, removed from the emotion of the situation, like a Coach or a Psychologist, can assist you look beyond it. They will help you to articulate your current reality and ideal future state and achieve that by working with you through the priorities, challenges and opportunities.
A mental toughness coach will focus on improving your performance and wellbeing. They will ideally use the MTQ 4C’s framework to help you understand and identify the mental obstacles and interference that prevent you from performing to your potential.
Author Tim Gallwey in his book 'Inner Game of Tennis' developed a simple model: Performance = Potential – Interference that simplifies the challenge you face to being the best you can be.
2. You can regain your passion and sense of identity
In reaffirming your path from now to the future, your Mental Toughness Coach will help you rediscover your passion and align it properly with your goals to get you motivated and keep you motivated. This will reinforce your sense of identity –who you are, what you stand for and why, and with it the emotional boundaries that reinforce your definition. As a result, you build your self-esteem, self-efficacy and with them a positive mental attitude.
This is an important piece in the puzzle because you learn that if you think you can, you can.
3. Learn to control what you can control
With your Mental Toughness Coach you can learn to identify what situations and circumstances you can control and then to better control them. Similarly, you’ll learn to largely ignore what you can’t control.
4. Better manage your emotions
Emotions are important and thankfully as humans we all have them. With your Mental Toughness Coach you can identify the strongest emotions you have and how they can help and hinder you, especially in a team environment. You have to learn how to regulate your anger, disappointment, fear and confusion when decisions or situations don't go your way and sometimes your elation and joy when they do.
5. Improve your focus
One of the challenges of the modern world is that it is too easy to become distracted and diverted from achieving your goals. Your Mental Toughness Coach will help you set your goals, imagine and visualise your success and learn how to change the channel of your distractions to concentrate and focus more efficiently.
6. Reframe negative situations and failures as positive opportunities to learn
One of my career turning points came from a shift in thinking about failure. I used to think that failure was opposite to, rather than an important part of, success. Your Mental Toughness Coach will help you to reframe negative situations or setbacks as opportunities to learn and also to think about the problem differently. Should you persist with your current course of action or is there another way?
7. Become more flexible and adaptable by being uncomfortable
Your comfort zone is called a comfort zone for a reason. It’s comfortable. Your Mental Toughness Coach will help you to think differently and become comfortable in being uncomfortable. Being more adaptable to changes when they occur and more flexible when you need to be will help you see opportunities and be prepared to take greater risks to achieve them.
8. Manage your inner voice
We all have an inner voice that expresses an opinion, usually negative, that can have us second-guessing an opinion or decision. Your Mental Toughness Coach will help you to create a script and learn how to use your inner voice positively and objectively.
9. Develop your confidence and self-belief
A major part of your mental strength mental strength comes from your confidence in your own ability to perform well in what you do. Sometimes you can lose it, or not develop it at the same pace as your technical or operational skills, which can hinder your progression. This lack of confidence prevents you from performing the way you should, which in turn affects your self-confidence. Your Mental Toughness Coach will help you break this vicious cycle through various techniques that include regular reaffirmation, visualisation, controlled breathing and others.
10. Improve your wellbeing – care for yourself
In improving your mental fitness you need to pay attention to ensuring your body and brain can work efficiently. Your Mental Toughness Coach will help you develop routines and habits around sleep, diet, exercise and learning to recognise and manage your stress levels.
The above are ten of many reasons how a Mental Toughness Coach can help you to improve your performance, positivity, adaptability and wellbeing. This can start through some self-reflection gained from taking the MTQ Plus psychometric test which measures your Mental Toughness and highlights any mental obstacles you may have.
Want to know more? Contact Michelle on 0412047590 or via email michelle@bakjacconsulting.com
Michelle Bakjac is an experienced Psychologist, Organisational Consultant, Coach, Speaker and Facilitator. As Director of Bakjac Consulting, she is a credentialed Coach with the International Coach Federation (ICF) and a member of Mental Toughness Partners and an MTQ48 accredited Mental Toughness practitioner. Michelle assists individuals and organisations to develop their Mental Toughness to improve performance, leadership, behaviour and wellbeing.
