Rob Bell's Blog, page 27
September 4, 2015
How to end it…
I would never said goodbye at any party or wedding. I always left exactly the same way. I hated giving the formal goodbye, because people never let you leave without some sort of guilt play. So, I would duck out the door. No goodbye. Like ripping off a band-aid.It’s probably how most people do it today in real life. No two-weeks notice, no official break-up, and especially not face to face. Just a text.
My daughter hates that I’ve implemented the principle of how we end everything. We Thank the Coach! She is six and starting to get it.
Coaches and mentors are the most important person in our lives. Everyone needs a coach!
Coaches Mark James and Brain Satterfield end practice the same way, they shake each player’s hand. Simple, yet powerful. NO matter the type of practice or outcome of game, the ending is the same. It was created as a way to put any type of closure to a good or poor day, a way to END it positive.
Players even started looking forward to it. The worst punishment coach could ever deliver is telling one of their players, “I don’t want to see you after practice.” They got it together pretty quick.
A positive ending is essential because we can’t know the last time we are ever going to see someone. Travis Smith played golf at Ball State and I distinctly remember seeing him at practice before I left for Nashville. I don’t recall saying goodbye… He died in a car accident in 2007. There’s no amount of money his parents wouldn’t have given to spend just a few more moments with him.
Money isn’t the most precious resource, its time. Make sure you end everything with a handshake and a thank you.
Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge:: The Importance of Mental Toughness
Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
August 28, 2015
Mental Helplessness
I asked Archie Manning and Andre Agassi to read my next book and provide testimonials, because they would be perfect for its message to parents. I got through to their agents, they said, “no.” Andre Agassi has denied my request three times now. I hate rejection, check that, my ego hates rejection. Dr. Seuss was rejected 27 times, his ego must not have got in the way.
What takes place in my mind after losing, or getting rejected is that feeling that I’m not good enough. The setback just affirms that belief, “see, here’s the proof.” Gym owner and coach, Tyler Miller, of Force Barbell knows when someone isn’t going to make a certain lift, because their approach to the lift is different.
Feeling helpless is learned. Having limiting beliefs are learned. We set up our own mental barriers about how good we will be.
PIKE syndrome
A study was done with Pike fish in a tank, where they released minnows and watched as the Pike gobbled them up. Then , they placed the minnows inside of a jar so the Pike could not get to it. It still went after it, nailing the glass jar time and time again. After a period of time, the jar was removed and the minnows swam freely, meaning the Pike fish could once again feast…This time, the Pike fish did nothing! It stayed there, and eventually starved to death! The power of nature didn’t allow the fish to survive.
The Pike syndrome has to be at least 10x stronger for us humans.
How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man? – Bob Dylan
Self-imposed limiting beliefs are everywhere. For example, “you’re good, but not that good?” “she’s pretty, but you’re just okay?”
If we are unaware of our identity and our mission, then the limiting beliefs will still arise and keep us from reaching our full potential. It’s a mental tether.
Baby Elephants
As a means of training an elephant, when they are very small, they are tethered by a thick rope to a stake in the ground. As a baby, it lacks the strength to break free, so eventually, it stops trying. Even when the elephant is large enough and could easily break the rope around its leg, it refuses to do so. The massive size of an elephant learned to be helpless.
Dogs & Electric Shocks
Seligman was the first to coin the phrase learned helplessness. I highly recommend his book Authentic Happiness: His experiment with dogs exposed them to electric shocks, in which they could not escape. After the dogs actually had an out and could escape the shocks, just like the elephant and the Pike fish, they did nothing. The dogs had to be physically removed, no amount of rewards, or praise would get them to leave the shocks. They learned helplessness.
If you want it bad enough, you have to BELIEVE. More importantly, we’ll have to go through our own shocks, mental tethers, and glass jars. These are the times of non-belief that determine if we will remain steadfast and eventually break free.
Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge:: The Importance of Mental Toughness
Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
August 21, 2015
A participation trophy doesn’t build mental toughness
FOX 59 interviewed me… click on the image above to watch the story…
Trophies don’t mean anything. Many Olympians have their Gold medals in a sock drawer. We give meaning to the trophy and what it represents.
Olympians didn’t participate for a medal, it was not the driver. They wanted to test themselves against the best. Their own mental toughness and talent are the reasons for their success.
When we give kids trophies for participating, it is more about the adults than it is the kids.
I doubt if even one kid ever began to play sports because they thought, “Hey, I get a trophy at the end.” They play for the fun, and the capri sun.
Awarding participation trophies actually can do more harm than good.
We think that providing an external reward for hard work will build motivation, but the opposite may be the case. It may diminish their motivation. Is it a reason why 80% of kids stop playing by age 14? Not sure.
Yale researcher, Amy Wrzesniewski examined the motives of over 11,000 West Point cadets across the span of 14 years. They wanted to assess the impact of cadets “why” for entering the academy. Cadets that had internal motivators were more likely to graduate, receive promotions, commissions, and stay in the military. Cadets that entered with BOTH strong internal and external motivators (such as get a good job later in life) revealed drastically less success.
The external factors such as get a better job and make more money had a negative impact on overall success.
Think about it, we all have different internal motivators and are more likely to accomplish a task when we tap into our own “why” rather than a carrot or stick approach. (i.e., I find a wallet- I’ll return the wallet because it’s the right thing to do, rather than the possible reward I could get.)
Adults don’t need to give trophies to Kids for participating, they just need praise their effort and allow them to have fun and also fail. We don’t make everyone a winner by making everyone not a loser. It may even create more losers.
Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge:: The Importance of Mental Toughness
Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
Participation trophies doesn’t build mental toughness
FOX 59 interviewed me… click on the image above to watch the story…
Trophies don’t mean anything. Many Olympians have their Gold medals in a sock drawer. We give meaning to the trophy and what it represents.
Olympians didn’t participate for a medal, it was not the driver. They wanted to test themselves against the best.
When we give kids trophies for participating, it is more about the adults than it is the kids.
I doubt if even one kid ever began to play sports because they thought, “Hey, I get a trophy at the end.” They play for the fun, and the capri sun.
Awarding participation trophies actually can do more harm than good.
We think that providing an external reward for hard work will build motivation, but the opposite may be the case. It may diminish their motivation. Is it a reason why 80% of kids stop playing by age 14? Not sure.
Yale researcher, Amy Wrzesniewski examined the motives of over 11,000 West Point cadets across the span of 14 years. They wanted to assess the impact of cadets “why” for entering the academy. Cadets that had internal motivators were more likely to graduate, receive promotions, commissions, and stay in the military. Cadets that entered with BOTH strong internal and external motivators (such as get a good job later in life) revealed drastically less success.
The external factors such as get a better job and make more money had a negative impact on overall success.
Think about it, we all have different internal motivators and are more likely to accomplish a task when we tap into our own “why” rather than a carrot or stick approach. (i.e., I find a wallet- I’ll return the wallet because it’s the right thing to do, rather than the possible reward I could get.)
Adults don’t need to give trophies to Kids for participating, they just need praise their effort and allow them to have fun and also fail. We don’t make everyone a winner by making everyone not a loser. It may even create more losers.
Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge:: The Importance of Mental Toughness
Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
August 14, 2015
Why I quit drinking…
My wife told me the other day that my son had me under his thumb. It was always my daughter before. Funny thing about boys is how much they emulate their daddy. I love coffee, so he loved coffee. I would have a pint in the evening and so would he (okay, he’d have a sip). He was three. It was funny.
But I noticed something scary. He wanted another sip and another and another. Alcoholism runs rampant in my family and I could already tell he had the sickness. My grandfather actually has the second longest living sobriety date of 54 years in the U.S. It was confirmed at the national convention.
When I was younger, I wasn’t an alcoholic. I mean I only fell off of a cliff and was involved in a drunk driving accident during college in the same year. Some people said I was lucky, some said I was very unlucky. Some said I was meant for much more in life. The tough part was that it had cost me playing baseball in college. I could have hurt someone else, and I never wanted that, but I didn’t think about those things.
After those mistakes, I had to attend all the alcohol classes, AA meetings, perform 100 hours of community service, and meet regularly with a probation officer. The probation officer would give me a breathalyzer every time I would show up. I always wondered, “Who in the hell would show up drunk when they had to give a breathalyzer?” She said, “You’d be shocked.” I had a sheet of paper that needed to be signed to confirm my attendance at all of the AA meetings. I learned, “Hey this is anonymous”! I just had people at dorms sign the sheet instead of going to the meetings. I remembered in those meetings thinking that these people were messed up, I wasn’t that bad. I focused on the differences between us, rather than the similarities.
Even after all of that for many years, I still drank. I just managed my drinking. I never liked liquor, I was a 2 or 3 pint man, well, most of the time. I simply loved having fun and drinking beer was just a part of it. Games, concerts, parties, BBQ’s, at the beach, after golf, during golf, at dinner, with friends, at the movies, hanging out, writing, chess, after runs, were all great times to have a cold one.
After my kids were born, I actually started to look forward to a craft pint in the evenings to unwind. It occupied my mind about wanting a beer.
I admired people who didn’t drink. People that had issues with drinking and no longer drank. I always thought that those who never drank were the lucky one’s. I actually wanted to be the person who didn’t need to have a drink. That is my beautiful wife, take or leave it, no problem.
I’m an all or nothing guy. If I have one, I’m gonna have two. A saying that resonated with me “One is too many and 10 is never enough.” The only path for me was not having one. It’s tough because it still looks appealing, but it forces me to remember my why, my gratitude list, my role as a father, and the benefits. That’s mental toughness. For example, we went to a wedding last week and the ride home with my kids was incredible, we blasted the music and sang aloud. Before quitting, I wouldn’t have driven home.
There is a saying that if you want “To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” I know my goals and I have never once written down drinking as part of the plan. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, It took me a long time to realize that sacrificing short-term gratification for long-term and big picture satisfaction is best for me. And this is just one part of my life.
I even became fearful writing this and thought, “what-if” I go out tonight and drink? Wouldn’t I be a fraud and a failure? Just in case I mess up, maybe its best not to write this post. We are all going to mess up, but it’s not about the setback, it’s about the comeback. When we mess up, we just start over, but I’m going to try to not let fear win. Taking things one day, one moment, at a time is what it takes for success in anything.
Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge:: The Importance of Mental Toughness
Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
August 8, 2015
5,000 push-ups & 5,000 sit-ups every day…
Herschel Walker was made fun at school and never went out to recess because he was afraid of getting beat up. His teacher used to put him in the corner of the room because he had a speech impediment, and called him “special.” His father used to give him a quarter to buy a snack at school. Herschel would give it to another kid, so they could buy a snack as long as they would talk to him. After the kid had finished his snack, he would go back to making fun of him.
The last day of school in 8th grade, he went out to recess and got beat up, bad. He said to himself “never again….When your name is called, you have to stand up.”
Mental Toughness is often caught rather than taught. From that Hinge moment in school, he didn’t train to become a great athlete, he trained to become a super hero. How did he do it?
He did 5,000 sit-ups & 5,000 push-ups every day! Herschel also ran on a dirt track every day, with a rope tied to his waist dragging a tire.
He transformed himself from one of the slowest guys in the school, to one of the fastest in the state of Georgia by the 9th grade.
During an interview with Jim Rome, Herschel was asked when was the last day he missed a workout? He replied “NEVER.”
Sometimes, our mess becomes our message. Mental Toughness means doing what others aren’t willing to do.Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge:: The Importance of Mental Toughness Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
August 5, 2015
Don’t question your Mental Toughness
There is “no question” about it. Did this cliche’ emerge in sports? I’m not sure, it’s just where I hear it most often.
What I’ll hear from competitors is how often they question themselves. “how did I do that?” “what are you doing?” “why am I out here today?”
Mental toughness doesn’t ask questions. I don’t hear an athlete playing well, ask themselves “how are you playing so well?”
Questions during competition emerge after mistakes and make sense, but they are rhetorical, and they aren’t answered. All they do is lead to more questions or merely go unanswered.
Don’t question your own mental toughness!
Things will go bad, and we aren’t going to always play our best, so we will need to make adjustments. But, questions don’t lead to many positive adjustments, just more questions.
So, we need to give ourselves instructions about what to do NEXT.
Try statements instead.
“Okay, next play,” “wow, that wasn’t the best,” “stay aggressive,” “find a way.”
These statements can even be motivational, but I’ve found that the best make instructional adjustments. We don’t need questions about ourselves or our play, we just need to develop a habit of telling ourselves what to do next.Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge:: The Importance of Mental Toughness Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
July 25, 2015
End practice early?
There are not many secrets to success. However, one secret that I think holds true is the ability of one more. When we are tired and fatigued, the key is to be able to endure just one more. One more rep, writing one more page, one more sales phone call. Just one more builds mental toughness. Often, it is effective. Yet, there is a prerequisite to implementing this strategy and that is we first must have the passion and will to do “one more.”
As parents and kids, we have heard and announced this just “one more” technique. We push, just a little bit, (some unfortunately, a lot) for our son or daughter to give more effort. Add up the number of practices and seasons of one more and that is a lot of externally driven passion in the form of nagging, or strong-arming our son or daughter into practice.
Hall of Fame tennis coach Jeff Smith, used a different technique to help build the passion in his son Bryan Smith. He would end practice early… He would first tell Bryan how long they were going to hit tennis balls on the court. The time would vary to 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or an hour. So, if they were going to hit for 45 minutes, after 20 or 25 minutes, he would end practice and tell Bryan they were ending.
Bryan, having fun, didn’t want to end early. He would ask his dad to continue and the seed of passion was slowly built without the nagging, pleading, or coercion of one more.
Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge:: The Importance of Mental Toughness Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
July 17, 2015
Winners, Losers, & At-Leasters
Excerpt from my next book: Don’t “Should” on your kid. Released Fall 2015.
Wade was a very talented 12-year-old hockey player, but he was a coach’s nightmare. He would only play hard when he felt like it, which was, unfortunately, only about a quarter of the time.
Not surprisingly, Wade’s father also worked whenever he felt like it. He had Dilbert comic strips up in his office and often bragged about how little he worked.
Children will become in many ways what their parents are, and we shape their belief systems. However, parents cannot give away what we don’t possess ourselves.
There are three types of people: winners, losers, and at-leasters.
These are not only three types of people, but actually three distinct beliefs that we form as children. They shape who we eventually become.
Winners and losers make up a very small percentage of the population. For example, when anyone discusses athletes in life, no one really talks about the twentieth or fortieth best athlete in that sport. They reference just a select few, the very best, the top .1 percent. Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Lebron James, Missy Franklin, etc. They are referencing winners, athletic geniuses blessed to excel. These people will be successful in any situation.
Losers, on the other hand, are born from a combination of poor circumstances and choices and a belief that everything turns out bad for them. These are the victims in life. It never is about them; it’s someone else’s fault. Again, a very small percentage of the population.
Most, however, are the at-leasters. At-leasters are not losers—far from it. They are involved, active, and in it. But, they lack the ingredients at becoming winners. They believe that “at-least” we showed up, “at-least” we weren’t last, “at-least” we weren’t as bad as them. It’s a defense mechanism that protects them from the pain of not being winners. It is a struggle for at-leasters to get out of their comfort zones. We have all been there, but we don’t have to live there.
At-leasters go through the motions. Settling is okay. Playing it safe was good enough. Our comfort zone was comfortable. We would rather be a “maybe” than a “no.” Be good, but just not too good. If I was really good one day, I’ll just say, “Yeah, but I’m not that good.
The “at-least” mentality is toxic and systemic. The environment of youth sport has perpetuated at-leasters.
Youth sport that gives everyone a trophy has created an at-least mentality. At least we got a trophy… We don’t create winners by making everyone NOT losers.
However, youth sport often stresses winning so much over development that it has also created a culture of at-leasters. The short-term is magnified and the long-term is miniaturized. The long-term is looked at through a telescope and the short-term through a microscope.
No one wants to lose, but when we only emphasize winning over development, it causes us to self-protect. One way or another, “at least we weren’t last” creeps into our mentality. We rarely create winners or mental toughness by only treasuring winning.
Athletes today have become perfectionists and safe. They will do everything they can to please coaches and parents. Athletes learn that in order to please coach and parents is to just not lose.
It’s hard to be driven when you are being driven. We can also inadvertently drive a child into the at-least mentality. It’s not about you—it’s about them. We can’t make it about us, and it cannot become about us. We fail when and if it does. The best sport parents seem to be behind the scenes, providing encouragement and a supportive environment.Dr. Rob Bell is a Sport Psychology coach. DRB & Associates based in Indianapolis works with professional athletes & corporate athletes, coaches, and teams building their Mental Toughness. His 2nd book is titled The Hinge: The Importance of Mental Toughness Follow on twitter @drrobbell or contact drrobbell@drrobbell.com
Check out the new film & e-book, NO FEAR: A simple guide to mental toughness .
July 10, 2015
Parenting is Contagious
When it comes to parenting, your example isn’t the main thing, it’s the only thing. As a professional speaker and author who studies and writes about what the best do better than the rest, I was blown away by what was possibly the most amazing audience I’ve ever spoken to.
I recently spoke at the Collegiate Strength & Conditioning Coaches Association annual convention. Those folks are leadership personified. The biggest, fastest, strongest, healthiest group of people you’ll ever meet.
What they do in their daily work with the people they lead (college athletes) applies to each and every one of us in the work we do leading our children at home and our employees in the workplace. As I thought about the phenomenal impression they all made on me it got me thinking about precisely what leadership is at its core. Even more so, it made me take a long hard look in the mirror.
You’ve probably hear the expression he or she “just gets it”. Well, when it comes to leadership these coaches ALL “get it”. I didn’t see any negative, lazy, disengaged, unhappy, overweight or unhealthy looking people sitting in that audience anywhere. ZERO… not a single one. I also didn’t see them drinking at the bar late into the night which is a common occurrence at most conventions. These folks were the epitome of high performance. They didn’t live vicariously through the success of their athletes either. They were too busy creating their own success. They were the epitome of mental toughness and simply walked their talk.
The entire experience was a great reminder that when it comes to parenting, your example isn’t the main thing, it’s the only thing. Think about it… How do these coaches convince world-class athletes they are capable of being bigger, faster and stronger? Quite simply they do it by being bigger, faster and stronger themselves.
“Our lives are a mirror, what we give out gets reflected back to us by others.”
Whatever you’re doing is contagious. We are all living proof of that statement. I know from experience:
Balance is contagious. I found that when I wasn’t modeling balance for my team, they weren’t balanced.
Negativity is contagious. When I criticized the officials, my players did.
Conversely, when they were nervous during a big game or a key timeout, if I was calm their nerves would settle and they’d become calm. Calm is contagious.
Think again before criticizing your child, their coach, or the officials. Bite your tongue instead of yelling at your child to run faster or work harder. Besides, yelling is a poor excuse for coaching and for parenting.
I recently had an executive coaching client complain to me that most of his employees were “negative and low effort” (his words not mine). I encouraged him to stop keeping “banker’s hours” and be more positive and kind to them. Which, to his credit he did, it’s no small surprise that they just posted their best quarter since 2006.
We need to be the change we wish to see in others. Kids need a model to see not just a motto to say. They crave authenticity and can sniff out B.S. a mile away. Their B.S. meter is calibrated with even more sensitivity and is more accurate than the adults you lead.
I share this with you because being at the CSCCa convention was an important reminder that I need to heed this advice as much as anyone. I have a 9 year old who is ADHD. If I want her to be less impulsive and more mindful, I need to practice mindfulness and emulate it better for her. I also have an 11 year old child who is entering a very emotional stage and prone to drama and outbursts. If I want her to be calm and patient, guess what I have to get better at.
About John Brubaker | Performance Consultant
John is the author of two award-winning books:
John Brubaker is a nationally renowned performance consultant, speaker and award-winning author. More importantly he’s a husband and a father. John teaches audiences how to obtain better results in business with straightforward tools that turbo charge performance. Using a multidisciplinary approach, “Coach Bru” helps organizations and individuals develop their competitive edge.
