Getting your youth athlete to become self motivated to work hard
How do you motivate your kid to want to do what it takes to achieve their goals?
You can remind and nag them only so much and you know, deep down, that will only go so far and ultimately it has to come from inside them for long term success.
Don’t you want your kid to learn Self Motivation?
Not just for sport, but for life?
What if your kid came out of his/her basketball experiences with the life skill embedded in his/her belief system of:
Follow through and commitment.
From talking to countless sports parents and coaches and asking them what they ultimately want for their kid through sports, they say they want them to be happy.
Consistent daily happiness does not come from achieving a goal.
That’s short-lived and never guaranteed.
No, scientific studies now prove that consistent happiness comes from GOING for a goal!
Achieving the goal is ecstasy, joy and excitement.
You want both for your kids, right?
Here’s a couple clips from the Basketball Mental Toughness training for parents and coaches to see how I use easily understandable terms to help kids learn follow through and commitment so they can be consistently happy going for a goal and experience the thrill of achieving the goal.
Welcome back to week 2. We are going to jumpstart what you learned in week 1. This week is all about the word: Intention…and it simply means “What I’m putting my mind on. What I’m doing.”
Your first intention for this training needs to be to start with a DECISION. That’s how you go from thinking about achieving something into ACTION to make it happen. I am going to explain why this point is so very important. It can make or break you in sports.
Many basketball players dream about winning and being the star or maybe get a college scholarship, but rarely do they make a solid DECISION they are going to make it happen. Winning is not something you can leave to chance or luck. Trust me, all basketball players who are at the top of their game made a decision to get there.
A decision is nothing more than a thought that you put powerful energy into. You stand behind it.
Here’s a couple examples of what this might be like:
“I am going to make the A team for my travel club”
“I will average 10 points a game or better for this season”
Stop for a second and decide what your decision is going to be..
If you don’t make that decision what you are actually doing is giving yourself an “Out” or an escape hatch if you fail. If you do that, you’re actually decreasing your chances to win and succeed. You want to really Start taking advantage of the REAL power of making a clear decision for anything you want! Here’s another one:
“I’ve decided my goal is to play basketball on a D1 college team.”
I hope you’re starting to get that So much of your success depends on how you think. What you believe. Remember that from Week 1!
Without making a decision, you are operating at only half speed. You also leave yourself wide open to a destructive force called “procrastination. (with a strike through the word)” This is where you keep putting things off or make up reasons why something else is more important to do now instead of your training, workouts or studying.
Once you make a decision, your wheels will start turning and you will come up with a plan of attack. The feeling of “wanting to do things” to get your goal will start happening automatically and your body will get antsy to take action. You will naturally want to do things like go down to the gym and shoot free throws for an extra hour…or run wind sprints on your own time. Your DECISION is like a match lighting a fire.
But that’s just the start of it! I bet you want to pour gas on that fire inside you to fire yourself up, right? So, the next step is to make a DECLARATION. A declaration is a statement of your DECISION! It’s different in that you are going to take your DECISION, which is a thought, and make it real with written words and speaking it out loud.
Stop right now and write down your declaration of your decision. Your declaration is really important not only to declare to yourself but to your friends, family and teammates and coach! This will make your DECISION real to you and will get those who care about you to support making it happen, including holding you accountable if you want it.
I am going to give you an example from my own life…
My own son, Austin, told me he wanted to get better at golf. I said “what for?” He said, he loved it when he played well. I told him, that’s nice but that is not going to get you better! How much are you working on your game? I was honest with him and told him he wasn’t doing much compared to other kids who were serious about playing their sport. He wasn’t going anywhere with “just wanting to get better” as his goal.
As we talked more and I dug deeper, he spoke about how he really wanted to play golf at the college level and get a scholarship. That was the first time he had ever allowed himself to say those words out loud! I told him to make a DECISION right then and there that he was going to go for it…and he did! Then, I told him to go home and tell his mom, his friends and his coach so they could support his decision.
Within a couple of weeks, he had completely changed. He was studying golf books and my mental toughness trainings. He was practicing putting in his room, swinging in the yard and a couple weeks later, got his first job at a golf course! He just went down there and asked for a job! 2 years later, he qualified for the State tournament, something he never thought he was good enough for until he made that decision. And yes, he got that college scholarship to play golf!
This works, do it!
What happens When you DECIDE and DECLARE your goal, you end up automatically behaving and performing like a person who can make things happen, and turning your dreams into reality.
You see, we are programmed at birth to follow through with our declarations and so you want to use that to your advantage! You want to say you are going to do something and train your mind that when you say you are going to do something – you do it! This way Your word means something and your actions will follow! This is extremely useful for everything in life, not just your basketball goals.
Check this out… when you do this…life actually gets easier …because you now have Direction and you don’t have to force yourself to practice or study any more. It happens naturally! No more confusion or procrastination and mom and dad or coach nagging you …instead, you become a powerhouse of action and that actually feels really good to Do things on purpose like that on a daily basis.
You have it in you to do this.
Before you go onto the next lesson, make sure you DECIDE on something you want to achieve in basketball this year. Write it down on a piece of paper. I like 3×5 cards using for this (show a card). Declare your statement to your parents, coach, friends, or whomever you want. Keep this card by your bed and look at it regularly. Michael Phelps, the first 8 gold medalist winner in swimming taped a picture of the Olympic medal to his ceiling so it was the first thing he looked at when he woke up.
Watch yourself over the next week and see how things start changing and lining up to help you reach your goals. Acknowledge them and you will keep getting more – I promise! Once you do made your decision and write down your declaration, go on to the next lesson.