Step 4: Resilience

Do. Not. Quit.

Remember four elements for success:

• Skill
• Strategy
• Physicality
• Psychology (resilience)

Resilience means different things 

- "Always do your best..." even when it's hard. 

- "Stay in the moment." Others say "next play" or "play present"

- Bring energy and energize teammates.

- Play "harder for longer" than opponents.

- Maintain an aggressive 'mindset'.

- Persevere through minor injuries.

- Metaphorically, be able to 'take a punch'. 

What techniques train resilience? 

• Conditioning. "Fatigue makes cowards of us all."
• Team spirit. "It's the scoreboard, not the scorebook." Believe the African proverb, "I can go faster alone, but we can go farther together." Remind yourself, "the strength of the wolf is the pack."
  
• Mindfulness. Train yourself to be more resilient. 

In "Ten Minute Toughness" Jason Selk favors performance and identity statements for his athletes. The identity statement explains "this is who I am" and the performance statement informs "this is how I play."

Say it and become it. Six years before it happened, a former Melrose player shared, "I will be the valedictorian." Mindfulness increases self-awareness and happiness.  

You can only be as good as your self-belief. Those who do the work know they deserve success by investing in themselves. Dan Pink teaches, "Do five more." Five more minutes studying, five more pages, five more sprints, five more lifts all add up. "Self-confidence is the number one variable for human performance. If your confidence is genuinely high, this is a really good sign that you will be performing or playing at or above your potential. If your confidence is low, it will be very difficult to perform successfully."

Lagniappe. Do the work. 

Lagniappe 2. 

• Focus
• Bend, "Let your opponent know, 'I'm here.'"
  
• Explode
• Press
• Squeeze