The Mental Edge: Performance Trainer & Former DI Softball Coach Julie Jones… What Would the Worst Team Do?

By @BruntjensElla

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Sometimes, when we look at the worst action possible, it will help us identify, the BEST way to proceed! In other words, we need to identify ideas or situations “to flip on their heads,” so to speak, to help us reach our peak!

Extra Inning Softball has partnered with former DI softball coach Julie Jones (Akron, Cleveland State) and current Mental Performance and Mindset Coach to help give athletes, coaches and others in the softball world the “Mental Edge.”

Julie spent 26 years leading Division I softball programs with her mission being simple: to build smarter students, stronger athletes and better people.

Today, she also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Ursuline College teaching well-being and performance, mindset training, athletic coaching and career development courses in both the undergraduate and graduate studies programs.

Continuing her work of helping student-athletes reach their goals on and off the field, Julie regularly sends Mindset Made Simple Tips to players and coaches across the country as well as posting them on her site, SSB Performance.

Today’s “Mindset Made Simple is a brilliant exercise in reverse psychology or “inversion thinking,” i.e. identifying what losing behavior looks like and then doing the opposite!

With the holiday break coming up, Coach Julie has worked with one of her DI teams to focus on “what can we do (or NOT do) to come back as unprepared for the spring season as possible.”

And then, hopefully, once the bad alternatives are ID’d, the players will choose to work hard and come back ready to excel and succeed!

Here’s this week’s Mental Edge if you’d prefer to watch it:

*****

I can find a problem…in anything, with anything…period.

I am not sure this is a gift, but I do know it is our human tendency. We see threats immediately. It takes a bit longer for the good to sink in.

Since our negativity bias is so strong, let’s put it to work.

Insert inversion thinking!

What is inversion thinking you ask? Mathematician Carl Jacobi first used inversion thinking in the 1800s, encouraging his students to invert equations as they were trying to solve them.

Alex Hormozi gave an example of inversion thinking: 28 ways to stay poor (as opposed to being successful)!

I am no mathematician, but I found this approach intriguing when listening to The School of Greatness podcast as guest Alex Hormozi, founder at Acquisition.com, listed 28 ways to stay poor.

It was genius! I laughed at the absurdity and loved the approach!

What a great way to think about things! We can always find reasons things won’t work (unless our ego gets us too close to the issue, of course), especially as we think about what others may do!

To take this thought one step further, I am sure you have experienced something that taught you more through finding what you don’t want to do than what you do want to do!

This week I encouraged one of my Division I softball teams to think about what the “worst team in the country” will do over winter break. In other words, what can we do (or not do) to come back as unprepared for the spring season as possible?

It is the age-old coaches’ nightmare.

Get your team in tip-top shape…send them home for break…and get them back a few short weeks before the first game in whatever shape they show up! As we know, our performance is the result of our lagging indicators, so we hope that the choices our athletes make over break are productive when they catch up to us!

Back to my team, each athlete will think about what losers will do. They will write down what comes to mind and think about how counterproductive these choices would be. They will also write down simple ways they can avoid these pitfalls.

As they move through break, they too will be faced with these same choices. Having now associated this list of actions or inactions with a lack of commitment to being the best, I hope they will be reminded of who they want to be when they return to campus. As they consider skipping workouts or face other loser behavior, they can go back to their pitfall avoidance strategies!

Finally, once they have identified the best ways to sabotage the hard work they put in before break and come back to campus in the worst possible position, they will take a moment to picture what they want when they return:

How will it feel?
What will it look like?
How can their new list of “how to avoid being the worst team in the country” help them stick to their plans?
What systems can they implement to benefit from inverting what they want and using our brain’s innate tendency to find the problem and judge the choices of others (especially those we think don’t add up to our efforts or intentions)?

How can YOU use this type of thinking to help you find solutions or stay on track? And what ideas or situations do YOU need to flip on their heads to help yourself reach your peak?

I can’t wait to read the “loser lists” this week…and I hope they serve as a mirror to get us back to campus ready to face 2023 as the winners we intend to be!

How can you have the worst week ever? 😊 How can you least effectively manage the moments? Think about it…

Then do the opposite!

Julie

To learn more from Julie check out her social media sites below; to contact her personally, she can be reached via email at: juliej@ssbperformance.com