Day 1 of Mental Excellence – Overview
A link to the complete 7-day series on mental excellence is here …
Mental Excellence 101: Develop the Mental Skills of Elite Performers
What do psychologists mean by mental excellence and how does it relate to your personal and professional development ?
In this first blog, I’m going to introduce the concept of mental excellence and some of the research that underpins this aspect of Sports Psychology. Before we begin, it is important to realise that mental excellence and mental skill development is just one aspect of sport psychology. At Watt Works, the support we provide includes a range of services of which mental skill development is just one.
Identifying, defining and developing mental excellence has been an important aspect of applied psychology since the early days of sport psychology. There are various philosophies of practice within sport psychology and the Cognitive-Behavioural Approach has been a significant influence. This approach is based on the principal that the psychologist should develop and empower their clients to be in control of their thought processes (Poczwardowski et al. 2004) and that behaviour can be changed through the empowerment of controllable thinking. The development of mental skills empowers individuals and teams to take control of their mental processes and develop mental excellence.
So what do we mean by mental excellence ?
Research by leading psychologist Terry Orlick has found that people who excel often have the same mental skills. Orlick’s research has investigated the mental skills of elite surgeons, astronauts, musicians and sportspeople amongst others. This research led to the development of a model of mental excellence - and this is directly applicable to the world of business and organisational life. The model of excellence is comprised of the following mental skills:
- Belief and Commitment
- Mental Readiness
- Full Focus
- Distraction Control
- Constructive Evaluation
- Positive Images
Over the remaining next 6 days of this series, we will be exploring each of these mental skills in turn and how each skill can developed. Having a toolbox of mental skills leads to mental excellence and mental excellence underpins elite performance. So, if you’re interested in getting to an elite level in whatever you do – in either your personal, professional or sporting life – you’ll get real value from the next 6 days.
Tags: belief, cognitive-behavioural approach, commitment, constructive evaluation, distraction control, elite, full focus, mental excellence, mental readiness, mental skill, Orlick, performance, positive images, Sports Psychology
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