How To Focus On A Goal And Build Your Mental Strength
I’ve been running for almost 12 years. I didn’t start early in life. I started when I was 45 years old. Overweight, and living an unbalanced lifestyle that included a lot of work, travel and eating out, and not a lot of consideration for my long-term health.
In the first few months of running, I didn’t know how I would run continuously for 30 minutes, as I huffed and puffed my way around the streets of Rathfarnham. Then after my first 5km race I thought about tackling a 5 mile race. The distances kept increasing, 10km, half marathon, marathon. I didn’t know then that there were distances beyond that. Well of course I knew there were longer distances, I had driven them, but I didn’t know people ran further.
Annually, approximately 330,000 runners participate in ultra marathon events (ultra marathons are any events longer than a marathon distance of 42.2km, the most popular distance is 50km) compared with 18.1 million who take part in road races, up to marathon distance, each year.
I had completed 15 marathons before I signed up for my first ultra marathon. I was keenly aware of the role the mind plays in running events, especially when it comes to long distances. When the going got tough (and it always got tough) I was always looking for more.
The Irish rugby team won the Grand Slam in 2018 (for the second time in my life, and only the third time ever). The coach was Joe Schmidt and when I heard Dr Olivia Hurley, sport psychologist, referred to as Joe Schmidt’s secret weapon, my ears pricked up. I saw that Dr Hurley ran a course in sport psychology in IADT and I enrolled. It not only helped me become a better endurance runner, it spilled into all aspects of my life. Learning how to improve mental strength had just as much effect on my work life as it did my running. When it comes to psychology the same rules can apply to sport as life.
A really proud moment came at the end of 2020. Both my son and I graduated from college at the same time. Him in Computer Science, me in Sport Psychology.
Mental Practices Available To Help Attain Our Goals:
Mental strength is about awareness, resilience and determination. When things get tough, those with mental strength find a way, not an excuse.
Concentration is a skill. In ‘Pure Sport’, John Kremer & Aidan Moran (2008), they note that concentration is never really lost, it is misplaced, allowed to wander or misdirected.
Training your mind, as well as your body, to cope with fatigue and stress, and learning to perceive it positively, may be just as important as how far you push yourself physically in training. There is a saying: the more I sweat in training, the less I bleed in battle. In your day-to-day life you can train your mental resilience. Try doing things that make you uncomfortable, e.g. switching to a cold shower each morning for a set time before stepping out. Do the hard things in your day first. Teach yourself to face difficulty head on. Be accountable, be positive and guard your thoughts (they are yours).
To achieve big goals, or overcome challenges, you need to be brave. To be brave you need to be vulnerable. When you decide to take risks, you must be prepared to fail. These failures build you and remake you into a stronger person. Failure is not a reason to list your shortcomings but a reason to celebrate your bravery.
Visualisation gives us a sense of being successful and overcoming difficulties before we actually go through them. It allows us to find solutions to problems while also setting positive expectations, rehearsing a positive outcome and building courage. Widely used by top athletes, it is not limited to sport. ‘Evidence suggests, just as in sport, that this mental imagery leads to better clinical performance. This improvement in performance is confirmed by randomised controlled trials showing that learners exhibit superior technical skills after a short period of mental practice whether performing tasks such as simple suturing and cystoscopy or complex laparoscopic cholecystectomies.
(‘Surgeons in training may benefit from mental visualisation’, Sonal Arora, BMJ 2013;346:e8611)Don’t feel guilty about your talent or dedication. It’s ok to put yourself first. Sometimes when you strip everything else out - it’s you holding yourself back. Believing that you deserve something, will go a long way to getting out of your own way.
Self-talk is an incredibly powerful psychological skill that can be used to shape the internal, subconscious beliefs we hold about ourselves. What we say, either in the privacy of our own minds or aloud to the world, has a direct impact on ourselves and our beliefs. The opinions of others don’t decide who we are; who we are is decided by what we tell ourselves.
The more I sweat in training,
the less I bleed in battle.
Techniques To Try For Achieving Your Next Goal:
If you have a goal in mind that you are looking to accomplish, why not employ sport psychology techniques and exercises that elite athletes use. While professional athletes will remain physically superior to us no matter how we train, we can strive to be a mental match. The following exercises take practice and will only work if you perform them on a regular basis.
EXERCISE 1: Concentration
As described above, concentration is not lost, it is misdirected or allowed to wander.
External distractions can easily pull us off task.
Try these three things the next time you want to complete a task…
Give yourself a timeframe and set a timer (on your phone or egg timer). 25 or 30 minutes is a good place to start. It’s long enough that you will get a chunk of work done, but not too long that it is painful or overwhelming. Once the timer sounds, take a short 2-5 minute break and, if there is more to do on your task, set the timer and start again.
During this period, turn off notifications on your phone. Too often a distraction, dictated by someone else’s schedule, breaks our concentration and sets our mind wandering. The notification will be there for you at the end of the session and, unless you are awaiting an urgent message that requires a timely response, it can wait until you are ready.
If you share a space with others (working from home or in the office), let those around you know that you are going into a deep work session. If you have an office, a post-it note on the door should do the trick. Again, the aim is to do the work on your terms and avoid distractions imposed by others.
EXERCISE 2: Visualisation
If you watched the recent Formula 1 series on Netflix ‘Drive To Survive’ you see driver Esteban Ocon sitting in a makeshift car at home, eyes closed, holding a steering wheel, practicing driving a particular race. He knows the racetrack completely. Every turn, when to brake, accelerate, change gear and he plays it over and over again, in his mind, in preparation. The brain is not hardwired, but is neuroplastic, and has the ability to change its structure and function in response to experiences real or imagined. Visualisation gives athletes a sense of being successful and overcoming difficult parts of races before they actually go through them. Visualisation can be done whenever you have a few minutes to yourself (e.g. lying in bed, sitting on the bus or in the shower).
You could apply this technique preparing for any event, be it an interview or playing an instrument in a band or training for a sporting event, like a marathon. Try incorporating these visualisation routines a few times a week:
If you know where the event will take place, use that to your advantage when visualising yourself in the situation. The venue where your band is playing the gig or the street you will be on at the start line of a race. If you aren’t familiar with the ‘where’, it might be possible to visit the location in advance or look them up online. For example, marathon organisers regularly drive the route and you can watch a video to become familiar with it. Get whatever information you can to fill in as much detail as possible for the visualisation.
Now, close your eyes and picture yourself at the event you are preparing for. Look around. What can you see? Are there other people there? Are you in a room or on the street? Sitting or standing? Look down and look at what you’re wearing. Feel confident in your body and put a smile on your face. Take a few minutes to run the whole event through in your head. If it’s a race, look around as you run by the landmarks, getting refreshments at the water stations, hearing the spectators clapping and cheering you on. If it’s an interview, hear the panel ask you questions and imagine how it feels to have exactly the right answer come to mind as it’s needed. Take the visualisation right through to completion.