Courage over Confidence: Managing Mind Chatter and Winning the Mental Game

By Mitchell Greene

Courage over Confidence offers a new approach to conquering the mental game of sports. Written for competitive young athletes as well as professionals and Olympians, it is also a game changer for coaches and parents looking for ways to further help their aspiring athletes.

In this book, renowned clinical and sport psyc

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889266563

Book preview

Courage over Confidence

Managing Mind Chatter and Winning the Mental Game

Mitchell Greene, PhD

new degree press

copyright © 2023 Mitchell Greene, PhD

All rights reserved.

Courage over Confidence

Managing Mind Chatter and Winning the Mental Game

ISBN

979-8-88926-655-6 Paperback

979-8-88926-657-0 Hardcover

979-8-88926-656-3 eBook

To the Big Dad, my Little League and life coach

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Mind Chatter in Youth and Professional Sports

CHAPTER 2

Why Positive Thinking Doesn’t Work

CHAPTER 3

The Fundamentals of Mind Chatter

CHAPTER 4

Planning for Chatter’s Arrival

CHAPTER 5

Changing Your Relationship with Chatter

CHAPTER 6

Setting Goals to Improve Performance

CHAPTER 7

Playing with Courage

CHAPTER 8

Putting It Together

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Appendix

Introduction

In the late 1990s, New York Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch made headlines because of an epic fall from grace. What was his problem? The former Gold Glove Award winner could no longer accurately throw the ball from second to first base. The sports writers from my hometown had a field day, printing snarky, jabbing comments at every opportunity. Knoblauch had some form of mental block, causing him at times to underhand or even walk the ball to first base. On some occasions, the television cameras caught Knoblauch awkwardly staring at the baseball before he threw it, leading one columnist to write, When [Knoblauch] has time to think, he stinks (Greenberg 1999).

Back then, I was finishing up my doctoral studies in clinical psychology. I was mesmerized by Knoblauch’s demise. I could not fathom how someone as successful as Knoblauch—a four-time all-star—was now unable to hit the broad side of a barn. Tragically, Knoblauch’s throwing problems never really went away. A few years later, after a brief stint in the outfield on a few different teams, Knoblauch retired.

Before I knew sport psychology even existed, I tried to understand everything I could about Knoblauch’s issue. Instead of focusing on my graduate school courses, I was hunting down research on performance slumps, choking, and the yips. My curiosity continued even as I started out in full-time clinical practice. By day, I was providing counseling to children, adults, and families; by night, I was reading what the sport psychology experts were saying about how someone as good as Knoblauch could perform so badly. It was becoming clear to me that even players of his stature could still find themselves at the mercy of a fickle and fleeting confidence.

Now, some thirty years later, not a month goes by without a story being published about a high-profile athlete who struggles à la Knoblauch. Stars such as the Olympians Simon Biles, Mikaela Shiffrin, and Michael Phelps, as well as professionals Naomi Osaka and Ben Simmons, are revealing what it’s like to have to produce results when the entire world is watching.

Shiffrin, after admittedly underperforming at the 2020 Beijing Olympics, said she knew she was obviously good, but for some reason couldn’t get herself to believe it (Minutaglio 2022). Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa acknowledged going through a similar phase of self-doubt. He described looking in the mirror after a series of less-than-stellar performances and asking himself, Do I suck? (Loughran 2022). These great athletes are proof that no one—no matter how well-trained—is immune from being overwhelmed by negative thoughts and feelings.

In my practice, I see competitors, from junior to professional, who are feeling more vulnerable and more worried about their ability to perform than ever before. Many feel they have no ability to see their results as anything but a reflection on who they are, not just what they can accomplish on a given game day. With their identities and reputations wrapped up in their earned run averages, points per game, chip times, and national ranking, overall stress on athletes has reached epic proportions. Today, we are worried as much about the state of athletes’ mental health as we are their actual performances. With this unfortunate trend as a backdrop, I feel called upon to help.

From Clinician to Sport Psychologist

Before I made my leap into the wide world of sports, I was finding ways as a therapist to sneak my love of sports into as much of my clinical work as possible. My subspecialty, using athletics to teach social skills to sports-minded adolescents on the autism spectrum, was becoming very popular in my local community. I was inspired to start athletic-based social skills groups and camps for two reasons. First, I found social skills groups boring. Second, my clients, who happened to be fanatical about sports, had very few opportunities to play on organized teams because their gross motor and attentional skills were so poor. In response, I developed modified basketball- and baseball-related activities to teach them social interaction skills.

I made several surprising discoveries from my work with kids on the autism spectrum. I didn’t expect, years later, to learn the mental hurdles these youngsters face would resemble what hard-nosed athletes encounter. For instance, both groups have a serious dislike for uncertainty. I remember one camper who needed to know the day’s exact schedule, hour by hour. I, along with his fellow campers, tried to help him develop more flexibility in his thinking. Similarly, über-competitive athletes demand perfection from themselves and can get in their heads if they miss more than one day of training. It is common for the most competitive of athletes, just like those youngsters diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, to obsess over small details and changes in the schedule. For the members of both groups, learning how to unstick themselves from a negative cycle of rumination is one of the keys to success.

At the time, I did not know the skills I was teaching these campers would be so relevant to my future work with Olympians, aspiring professionals, and other competitors. It was not until a decade after getting my PhD, when a colleague suggested I might enjoy attending a national sport psychology conference, that my professional destiny was sealed. I left that conference feeling sky-high. As I suspected, my extensive clinical experience combined with my passion for sport would turn out to be a huge plus in my work with athletes. By the time I returned from the conference, I had decided to take the plunge. I had a resurgence of adrenaline and excitement, not unlike what I felt when I first entered private practice and every day seemed like a new and challenging adventure.

Fast-forward twenty years, and the adrenaline continues to flow. I’ve had the privilege of occupying a front-row seat from which to observe the inner musings and monologues of the best sport performers. Undeniably, the biggest psychological challenge for competitive athletes isn’t the game itself, but it’s something I have come to call mind chatter—internal conversations riddled with self-doubt, second-guessing, and negativity. As was true with Knoblauch, the dirty little secret of top performers is that few of them are immune from thinking the worst about themselves, and many—more than you might think—underestimate their chances of winning and their ability to compete with others at the top of their game.

I knew my professional background and my expertise in teaching about mind chatter could help them understand why, despite their tireless training and strong desire to succeed, their minds continually conjured up a constant procession of doubt and failure.

I have dedicated the past two decades of my career to developing tools to specifically help athletes who, in their own sports and in their own ways, need to find workable solutions to help quiet those sabotaging voices.

Mind Chatter Basics

The truth is that even when athletes know they are physically prepared—or because they know this—many cannot turn off that streaming faucet of doubt. As one Olympic rower I worked with admitted, I feel like I’m doing everything right, but my confidence seems to have a mind of its own. Worse yet, as I will explain in detail later in this book, when athletes try to ignore or block their mind chatter from streaming in, it only serves to open the faucet full blast.

The topic of mind chatter can be broken down into several components. First, and perhaps foremost, is accepting that its appearance on the scene is a given. For instance, a chattery football player will learn that no matter how well he catches passes in practice, he should be ready to experience worries about dropping one in the game. The chatter-prone baseball player will learn that it’s no surprise that his chatter is encouraging him to pay more attention to disappointing his coach than trying to get a hit. The anxious marathoner will learn to identify the I-should-have-done-one-more-long-training-run as classic chatter-talk and remind herself she is actually ready for the upcoming race. For many, the only thing guaranteed in a big game is big-time mind chatter.

Second, there needs to be recognition that having mind chatter isn’t due to a lack of mental toughness. In this book, I will demonstrate that competitors who think of themselves as wimps or cowards are almost undoubtedly handicapping themselves with false labels. Counter to conventional wisdom, negative thoughts are an integral aspect of the competitive picture and are not necessarily a sign of weakness or impending doom.

Third, positive thinking isn’t the answer. In reality, no amount of positive thinking or positive affirmations will drown out all of your chatter’s second-guessing and pessimistic predictions, although that is what you will hear many people say. Most of my clients assume I’m going to help them replace their negative thoughts with positive ones. After a few meetings, they realize the opposite is true; I’m teaching them how to make more room for their doubts, not less. This book turns a lot of conventional wisdom on its head, setting the reader on a more hopeful and productive path.

If you are wondering if you are struggling with mind chatter, here is a handy guide. An athlete whose mind is full of chatter will:

•hesitate instead of being assertive

•pass rather than shoot

•slow down when they should speed up

•worry about coaches’ reactions more than their