Mental Skill #3 – Organization
Definition: “The ability to inventory; the act of creating a detailed mental menu list of words and mental pictures”
We are talking about a mental skill and ability that can be learned over time with self-discipline and hard work. In the same way hard work and a strong work ethic will reap rewards with physical strength training and conditioning, the same is true with mental strength and conditioning.
The hard work of mental and emotional strength training reap the reward of handling pressure and difficult situations, overcoming conflicts and problem solving. The rewards actually result in improved decision-making and your ability to keep cool and calm. Your decision-making will improve under pressure and during difficult situations.
This is a critical stepping-stone in your development process. Once you’ve become aware of the chatter, you begin to regulate it; the scriptures call this “taking your thoughts captive”. In flexing the mental skill of organization, you learn to file the chatter away for inventory later; some chatter you want to get rid of entirely. You learn to organize your thoughts. Remember, as soon as you file one set of words and mental pictures, more thoughts will rapidly follow. It’s a constant cycle.
You already know thoughts arrive in rapid time. The key step now is to understand your role in navigating this tidal wave of words and mental pictures. You must discipline the important thoughts by making a detailed mental list. Of course, you are encouraged to “ink it, not just think it”. The act of writing things down is not always necessary for every task but there will be times of intense pressure that writing on paper will “free up the mind”. Think of your computer system and the need to add more RAM (or random access memory). The moment you write your thoughts down on paper it’s like adding computer RAM and giving yourself more thinking power to focus.
In this case, understand your brain is so powerful you can create “filing cabinets” to creatively store your thoughts for later. As each thought pops up, you must learn to put some of those words and mental pictures on the shelf and deal with them later, not now. A good guiding principle to use when organizing your thoughts is to consider only 20% are worthy to keep in your chatter. Most everything else must be stored away and inventoried for later.
At this stage of your mental skill development the third mental skill will continue to improve your ability in awareness and regulation of your emotional states. You must first learn and understand the mental skills of regulating the chatter before you are able to engage your mental skill sets to regulate your emotions.
Earlier in the book we used a creative example of “two-brains” and how they relate to one another. We talked about having a thinking brain and a feeling brain. In this example we learned the feeling brain can highjack the thinking brain. The feeling brain takes over and just like turning up the volume knob on your radio, the feeling brain turns up the volume of stress hormones in your body.
The brain’s emotional states regulate the amount of adrenaline and other stress hormones that are released into your system and it all starts with your ability to regulate the chatter. When you learn to inventory the right and specific words and mental pictures that support you, you then can regulate the volume knob on the feeling brain. When the feeling brain turns up just enough volume for the right amount of stress hormones for the task science calls this “flow”. The opposite of “flow” we’ve already referenced as “frazzle”. If “flow” is the right amount of stress hormones for the task and “frazzle” is a fragmented, too much or too little amount of stress hormones for the task, it is your mental skill and ability to navigate between the two. In sports language, this state of “flow” is often referred to as “the zone”.
7.1.1 Guiding Principle: Recovery is key
This is not about prevention, but rather recovery. “Frazzle” and an emotional highjack is a part of life, we must all learn to accept this truth. This is not about controlling or preventing negative thoughts from popping up or having negative feelings about yourself or others. It is impossible to control your thoughts and emotions, never use the word “control” when it comes to these two subjects. These are involuntary body functions; your focus is to develop the skills to recover from these internal states.
Learn to seek understanding on why we all have these negative thoughts and emotional overloads. It is your goal to accept and no longer struggle with why or how often these negative thoughts and emotions appear; it is simply the way you are designed. When you consider these first three mental skills, we can begin to explain your new knowledge like this…
“Your communication to yourself (self-talk) and your ability to concentration, repeating often with focus strengthens your ability to organization complimentary words and store them in your mental menu list, these three skills and ability will empower you to recover from negative chatter and emotional frazzle”.
If you really drill down into the science of frazzle and emotional highjack, you will be amazed at what happens inside of you when the chatter is running rampant, unregulated and unorganized. As you journey through life and compete, you will wig yourself out with negative chatter from time to time; it will happen. Struggle not! How frequently and how often you recover is determined by your ability to flex these mental skills.
7.2 Natural Law: The Law of Correspondence
This is another natural law like the Law of Gravity and the Law of Concentration mentioned earlier. The Law of Correspondence says, “Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world”. Simply put, your chatter on the inside will determine what you see on the outside.
Remember, this is a natural law, so nature is the judge. You can’t plead not-guilty or even ignorance and expect to get a break on this law or reap the benefits. You will either reap the benefits and rewards, or you will suffer the consequences. The kicker is only you will ever know your truth. Only you know what’s happening inside your chatter. Since this is your chatter and it’s inside of you, you then are responsible for obeying this nature law; only you can hold yourself accountable to the benefits or consequences.
“Only you know the dominant thoughts in your head”
A great illustration of the suffering and consequence of this law is when everyone on the outside applauds you, yet you allow your chatter inside to remain self-critical. You not only miss the sincere nourishing words of a compliment, instead, you override it with your own toxic chatter. Ironically, your lack of skill and ability to accept a compliment is a critical indicator of your low self-esteem and how you truly feel about yourself. If you cannot learn to accept a sincere compliment and say, thank you it is painfully obvious you are suffering from unregulated chatter. Unregulated chatter, which is working against your ability to grow, to achieve, and become something more than you are right now.
“Your voice inside is louder than anyone on the outside; your voice will over-ride all the others.”
7.3.1 Guiding Principle: Performance Improvement
All performance improvement begins with new words and mental pictures on how you want things to happen. This is the most critical “mental menu list” of all.
The inner world comes first. You must take the time to define what is important to you, your dreams, your goals and desires, the results that you specifically want in life and in competition. It’s ok to borrow from your coach or your boss, but you must still have the discipline to create your “mental list” of words and mental pictures which support you. You must define and refine often and then store in your inventory. They are what you refer back to as you learn to flex your mental skill of organization and file away all the bad images. It’s this “mental list” of values you create that will become the filtering system on what’s good and needs to stay in the chatter and what’s filtered out as “discontinued” and should be taken out as trash to the curb.
The lack of a “mental list” of values can be considered the consequence of rambling chatter. This rambling, unorganized chatter ultimately affects your decision making in the moment. You will lack discernment and the ability to judge what is right and wrong in that moment.
7.3.2 Guiding Principle: Disciplined Chatter
“We must all suffer one of two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Do not trade one for the other; discipline weighs ounces where as regret weighs tons.” – Jim Rohn
Keep in mind these skills require work. There is a self-discipline that must be applied to your chatter; the five skills simply provide you with a framework to get started. You must work hard at finding these skills in your daily life and develop them. It is the same for anything worthy of achievement. If you do not work, you will not reap the benefits, but rather suffer the consequences of a rambling, unregulated chatter that ultimately seals your fate. Your soul will die young and we will bury you somewhere down the long road of a miserable life.
Understand that anything of value requires work; it is not free. These benefits and ideas are available to you and within your reach. However, there is no entitlement, you will not benefit from this skills without hard work and self-discipline.
Most people around you are comfortable with just trying to get through life or playing an average game. We call it “mediocrity”, where you simply settle and the quality of your game suffers. Rather than working on the chatter and developing these mental skills, to often, we turn on the radio, pull up the new app, and switch on the TV or the computer. We seek entertainment or anything to keep us from hanging out with “self” and trying to better understand the chatter. I’ve been there. It was only later in life when I learned these valuable truths that I can share here and now, long after my time for playing competitive sports and competing in athletic competition has ended.
Whatever chatter you allow inside, true or false, organized or unorganized, influences your view to the outside. If the dominant message in your chatter is “poor student and struggling”, ‘choke and can’t’, or even ‘unworthy and don’t belong’, odds are your emotional state will trigger feelings of doubt, confusion, fear, even anxiety, and your report card will confirm your doubt. The same is true with your personal view and your inner dialogue regarding your ability to compete at an elite and world-class level of play.
You must learn to turn off the distractions and place inventory on your chatter; learn to have quality conversations with yourself. You learn to regulate the chatter and talk with yourself on the important things. It is the world according to you. It’s your world; you must make it happen and organize the inside to realize it on the outside.
Make It Happen
“I believe in the power of these words so much, they are inked on my flesh.”
It was 1989 and I was twenty-one years old. My athletic identity was no longer and the college-student lifestyle was over. In reflection it took me about three years on my own before I realized I was going nowhere. My chatter made me feel lost in life and no clear direction of what to do next. I was twenty-five at the time.
I struggled a few more years and in 1992 something changed for me; I started regulating the chatter. It was a slow process, at least for me. At that point I had twenty-five years of trashy, uncertain and unregulated chatter and I had poorly programmed myself.
This was a time that I call the, “awakening”. It was the first time in my life that I started paying more attention to the inside than the outside. The search inside began and I started to learn more and more about who I was and what strengths and talents I had been given. I was able to use the ideas and tools mentioned in this book to learn more about my weaknesses and how to improve. And it was then I learned how to take my talents and serve others.
This is a time to turn off the TV and radio. Put all the devices down and learn how to hang out with yourself, learn how to have good conversations about who you are and your true potential.
7.3.3 Guiding Principle: The Mind is like a Missal
Technology today allows our most advance military strikes to achieve their objectives with great accuracy from miles and miles away. Your mind works much in the same way with its own “on-board navigational system.” This is another one of those amazing abilities and roles that your brain plays in your ability to hit your own targets.
For the missile, it takes a very specific set of “x” and “y” coordinates to strike the target. For you to achieve, grow and become more skilled and competitive it also takes a very specific set of “x” and “y” coordinates. In order to strike your targets and achieve daily goals requires a constant, organized set of words and mental pictures. In other words, your words and mental pictures are the specific set of coordinates. You will be amazed with how well you will perform a task once you align the chatter with the specific coordinates required for your achievement.
7.3.4 Guiding Principle: First Words
The Olympian athletes are taught to focus on and repeat power words. It’s an exercise using the five mental skills that allow you to work your brain states and your chatter to your advantage. You’re going to have chatter anyway, but if you discipline your chatter and create a library of one-word adjectives that create the right emotional states to perform your task, you will improve your level of play.
For example, if the task is hitting or catching the ball or making a critical kick, your “first words” might be, “Power”. “Strength”. “Focus”. “Sight”. “Stride”. These are your chatter-coordinates. Notice, there is not a lot of chatter going on by design. You are focused on specific words and mental pictures and constantly feeding your brain with this first words in your chatter. These power words should emphasize your ability to perform the task exceptionally well. Even though you physically will not perform the task until later in the afternoon or tomorrow. This is what we call “pre-playing” in the future-window. You are learning to summon your talent on demand and in the moment the more you learn to “pre-play” specific chatter for upcoming events. These first-words that you have learned to define for every task will in turn support your need for the brain’s specific set of “x” and “y” coordinates.