Day 2 of Mental Excellence – Commitment
A link to the complete 7-day series on mental excellence is here …
Mental Excellence 101: Develop the Mental Skills of Elite Performers
“Commitment unlocks the doors of imagination, allows vision, and gives us the “right stuff” to turn our dreams into reality.”
- James Womack
Ericsson, Krampe and Tesch-Römer’s (1993) research revealed that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become elite. The clear implication from this finding is the need to be highly committed and to believe in your potential in order to excel. Belief and commitment are at the core of Terry Orlick’s ‘Wheel of Excellence’. If you want to excel at anything then the starting point is that you must be committed to what you are doing and this is the focus of today’s Watt Works blog.
Being truly committed means being actively engaged in your ongoing professional development; committing time and energy and believing that you can become the best you can be. It is not enough to set your sights on a long term goal you must also commit to ongoing and progressive activity that will enable you to reach that goal. To this end you must set and regularly review the short-term goals that you set yourself or your team. When setting goals consider the following points:
Are your goals SMART ?
- Specific – are they well defined and clear ?
- Measurable – will you know when you have achieved the goal ?
- Achievable – are they set at the right level – challenging enough to be motivating but not so difficult that they are demotivating ?
- Realistic – if your goals are realistic you are more likely to commit to them.
- Time-Specific – have you set clear deadlines for the achievement of each goal ? This will ensure progress and ongoing development.
Setting and monitoring goals is worthwhile for many reasons. Achieving goals is motivating, improves confidence, enhances feelings of control (and consequently reduces stress) and improves focus and concentration.
The process of actively engaging in activities that you feel passionate about is highly energizing and turns work into passion. However, a related factor that makes individuals elite is their ability to remain committed through difficult and challenging times. Those who have mental excellence are not easily discouraged. Being able to learn from difficult or challenging events is essential to maintaining your commitment. Therefore it’s important to reflect upon how you cope with adversity.
Steve Peat
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
-Epictetus
The other side of commitment is balancing your needs and recognizing that you must also commit to rest and recovery. If you manage a team it can be easy to become so focused upon your goals that their needs are overlooked. If you want to maintain sustainable improvement then recovery and time away from work is essential. Therefore you and your team need to not only be committed to your goals but also committed to maintaining a life balance and ensuring time for revitalisation.
To conclude – commitment is one of the central concepts underpinning mental excellence. You must clarify and commit to your short-term goals in order to achieve your long term goals and you must ensure balance to maintain progress. Tomorrow, we’II look at self-belief and how this is another key aspect of mental excellence.
Tags: balance, commitment, concentration, confidence, control, focus, goal setting, goals, mental excellence, passion, recovery, rest, review, revitalisation, SMART, stress, sustainable
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