Take Me Out to the Brain Game - SBNation.com

The go-to phrase from Moneyball. Dyktra was going to "stick" future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton in a spring training game, when all the other rookies had stars in their eyes. Classic.

Take Me Out to the Brain Game - SBNation.com:

“Lenny didn’t let his mind screw him up. The physical gifts required to play pro ball were, in some ways, less extraordinary than the mental ones. Only a psychological freak could approach a 100-mph fastball aimed not far from his head with total confidence.”

- Michael Lewis, Moneyball

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Coach Traub's Core Concepts for Mental Toughness

MENTAL TOUGHNESS TRAINING

CORE CONCEPTS

This came in the mailbox, so I thought I would share. Good advice and a good resource for working on the mental side of the game. An important an often overlooked side of the game IMO. Enjoy.

Focus – Do you clutter your mind with too much thinking while you're trying to perform?  Focusing on the task-at-hand is a vital performance skill that can be learned with quality practice.  You'll learn to block out regrets about the past and worries about the future, recognize the correct present-tense object for your focus, and find that "trust mode" where you can truly give your best effort.

Positive Self-Talk – Self-Talk is not optional…you're going to think and the quality of your thoughts is going to determine the quality of your attitudes. Are your thoughts helping you excel or holding you back? This is where the rubber meets the road, and everyone has some good and some bad habits. Identify the good ones so you can do them again and identify the bad patterns so you can make an adjustment. It is exciting to think of what you can achieve. Your potential is absolutely astounding, and training your brain to move towards the things you want can help you fulfill that potential.

Confidence/Trust – Is there anything more important for you to perform the way you are capable of than to trust? To do this, you must not get in your own way by thinking too much and you must be confident. Great athletes consciously control their confidence level. They don't lose confidence after mistakes and they do gain it after successes. Their self-talk has a consistently Optimistic Explanatory Style that is always honest, but emphasizes positives and de-emphasizes negatives.

Self-Control – You must first control yourself if you are going to control your performance. You have little to no control of what goes on around you, but total control of how you respond. Learn to recognize your "red light" and "green light" signals. The goal is get yourself into your ideal state when it is time to practice and perform. Your internal state is comprised of your attitude and your physiology. It is useful to have multiple routines for getting you on track, both before and during competition. Your sport will provide adversity. No one stays in their ideal state all of the time, but consistent competitors come closer.

Perspective – Anyone who's ever "choked," meaning that they played below their potential when they perceived that it was a particularly important situation, should realize this: a performance/self-concept link is extremely damaging to the quality of a performance. Worry is counterproductive because it prevents the athlete from being in the moment and often turns attention towards uncontrollables. If you're worried what others will think of you, you're going to be partially distracted from the task-at-hand. Training in this area will clarify for you the perspectives that allow for the greatest performances. There is plenty of evidence to support the truth of these beliefs. Ultimately, your perspective on performance is your choice, but if you are competing with less information, you may be fighting an unnecessary uphill battle.

Routines – Wouldn't it be great if you could GUARANTEE giving your best effort every single time? You can. Not best effort ever, of course. That's not realistic. But you can control the controllables and give the best effort you possibly could give at this point in time in this situation. By using your experiences effectively, you can build routines that will make sure that you are physically and mentally at the right place at the right time. And if you define success in controllable terms (Coach Wooden: "the peace of mind that comes from knowing you did your best," this means you can guarantee success.)

Imagery - The mind/body connection is powerful, but communicating from mind to muscle can be challenging. Learn about the impact imagery has for many famous athletes and work to improve your imagery skills. Imagery is free and always available! You can use imagery before, during, and after your performances to maximize growth and winning. By running experiments (games and practices), you will figure out how and when to use imagery most effectively for you.

Goal-Setting Process – You have some big goals already. You want to prevent frustration at the distance of big challenges and prevent complacency from destinations already achieved. Certainly, you are already demonstrating goal-directed behavior often, but mounds of research indicate that writing down S.M.A.R.T. and Controllable goals will help you maintain goal-directed behavior more consistently. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." A formal goal-setting process will also ensure that each step is headed in the right direction. It is a process rather than a one-step resolution because monitoring and adjusting goals is critical.

Captain Clutch! Jeter scripts walk-off in home finale

When Pearce hit the HR to tie and knowing that Jeter would be up third in the bottom of the inning, you just felt something like this would happen. He's done stuff like this too many times in the past. What a way to go out!!

from MLB.com
Baltimore Orioles at New York Yankees - September 25, 2014 | MLB.com NYY Recap:

 NEW YORK -- There had been a healthy amount of discussion about orchestrating Derek Jeter's exit from the field, how best to provide that chance to say goodbye after this final game in the Bronx. The Yankees should have known that no one was going to script it better than he would.

After choking back tears for nine innings on his last night wearing pinstripes, Jeter stamped an exclamation point on the end of his New York career, slashing an opposite-field walk-off single in the ninth that lifted the Yankees to a 6-5 victory over the Orioles on Thursday at Yankee Stadium.

"This is all I've ever wanted to do, and not too many people get an opportunity to do it," Jeter said. "It was above and beyond anything I'd ever dreamt of. I've lived a dream."

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Dr. Tom Hanson, a highly regarded mental performance expert who also used to work with the Yankees full-time back in 2001, wrote today in his newsletter some important reasons why he believes this finish happened the way it did:

I left the Yankees feeling I'd be thrilled to have our son grow up to be like Jeter and I still feel that way.

.....

p.s. Actually, the first place to check is how much love you are blasting at yourself.  That's what I really want for my son to emulate about Jeter (and hopefully me).  Jeter loves being Jeter.  "That's easy for him, " you might say, "he's Derek Jeter." 

"No," I say, "he's Derek Jeter BECAUSE he thinks that way."  You don't become great and THEN think great.  You think great first.

Consistently, that is what you hear people say about #2, If you has a son, you wanted him to carry himself like Derek Jeter and if you had a daughter, you wanted her to marry someone like Derek Jeter ( and she probably agreed with you, like a jillion % ).

But the second point is even more important as it goes to the heart of why Jeter has been successful throughout his career.

First, he was well-prepared for success by his parents. Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay brought up some of the methods Jeter's parents employed raising him that were strong on personal responsibility, accountability and having a strong belief system in place. They raised him up well.

Second, and this is what Dr. Hanson was alluding to, he didn't put the cart before the horse as many players (and sons) do by thinking, OK when I'm successful, I'll work hard and do the things successful people do (like have an indomitable, positive mind-set). That's putting the cart before the horse. You have a positive mind-set and that leads to success.

I hate to go all Norman Vincent Peale on you, but it's true, and once again Derek Jeter demonstrated that, and many other great qualities last night.

RE2PECT!!

Mental Imaging | Human Kinetics

Mental Imaging

This is an excerpt from Tennisology by Thomas Rowland. Why waste money on Wimbledon tickets when you can imagine a perfect serve? We humans are capable of manufacturing moving pictures in our brains, so why not let motor neurons observe the mind’s own visual images to improve your service technique? Mental imaging is the technique of repeatedly projecting in one’s imagination the act of tennis play. Mental imaging has been around for a long time - not just in sport but also in such diverse realms as education, medicine, and music - and many people are convinced that it works. Hundreds of research studies have been performed in an attempt to verify this conclusion (but, unfortunately, most of these studies are considered to be of low scientific quality). There even exists an electronic journal - Journal of Imagery Research in Sport and Physical Activity - that is devoted to the subject. Sport psychologist Robert Weinberg at Miami University wrote an article titled "Does Imagery Work?" After reviewing all studies examining the efficacy of mental imagery, he concluded that "the weight of all this evidence most certainly would point to the fact that imagery can positively influence performance."20 In mental-imaging studies, participants are typically randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: imagery with a positive outcome (e.g., a service ace), imagery with a negative outcome (e.g., a double fault), and control (nonimaging). Most investigations of this type indicate that mental rehearsal of a positive outcome improves performance, whereas negative imaging leads to deterioration. Just how or why mental imaging works remains a mystery. It’s possibly all a matter of stimulating motivation. However, fMRI does reveal that objective changes in particular brain centers can be observed when an individual performs mental imaging. This suggests that any positive effects of mental imaging are more than psychological. Evidence also suggests that, in addition to directly improving performance, mental imaging might enhance mental skills that influence performance. For example, it might increase self-confidence, suppress competitive anxiety, and improve motivation. However, because this body of research certainly has its limitations, the final answer regarding the efficacy of mental imaging isn’t in. Some studies have assessed the effects of mental imaging when used just before an athletic competition rather than as a training tool. In such studies, the specific effectiveness of mental imaging is often difficult to isolate because it was used along with other mental skills, such as relaxation. It is difficult to verify whether the research participants actually used valid imaging techniques, and very few studies have been conducted in real competitive situations. Also, not all research information on mental imaging in tennis is consistent. For example, Ricardo Weigert Coelho and colleagues at the Research Center for Exercise and Sport Science at the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil demonstrated that a combination of observation and mental imagery improved serve accuracy in national-level 16- to 18-year-old tennis players but that this intervention had no effect on skill in the serve return.4 The authors felt that this finding was consistent with the idea that the athlete can precisely visualize the serve in his mind because it is a predictable motion that the server controls. The serve return, on the other hand, is unpredictable and thus cannot be so easily imagined visually. However, Nicolas Robin and colleagues in the Laboratoire Performance, Motricite et Cognition in Poitiers, France, showed that 15 sessions of imagery training improved the accuracy of serve returns in experienced French players.14 This study also examined the extent to which a player has the ability to create mental images. They found that good imagers (as determined by a questionnaire) had better results than poor imagers, although the latter still showed more improvement than nonimaging participants. The general consensus is that these investigations support the idea that repeated mental imaging of a motor task or complex sport skill can improve performance of that task or skill, at least to some extent. However, these studies suggest that mental imaging is not as effective as physical training, so one still has to put in the hours of organized practice. But, for many people, mental imaging appears to help. The following tips and guidelines might help optimize your ability to gain skill via mental visualization training. Create an image of tennis play as viewed from the stands or put yourself right into the action on the court. While you yourself might be the player you are portraying in this brain video, it is probably best to use your favorite professional tennis player, who is likely a superior model. Don’t just close your eyes and watch your mind’s imagery - get right in there and make it real. Sense the kinesthetic motion of your muscles as they move. Feel the heat and sweat. Hear the crowd roar and the racket striking the ball. Perform mental imaging in a peaceful environment for at least 15 minutes 2 or 3 times a week. Studies indicate that mental imagining can be effective in youths as well as the elderly. Watch it as the action occurs. Researchers initially believed that imagining in slow motion was better because it allowed more time to focus on different parts of the physical act. Now, however, most sport psychologists feel that you should imagine in real time because you want your brain to learn the motion as you’re going to use it - at full speed. Try it with some soothing Debussy or Tchaikovsky. At least one study suggests that background music may make mental imaging more successful.

Read more from Tennisology by Thomas Rowland.

Shake it Off and Step Up!

Good advice.

There is a parable about a farmer whose old mule fell into a dry well. After assessing the situation, the farmer sympathized with the mule but decided that neither the mule nor the well was worth the trouble of saving. Instead, he planned to bury the old mule in the well and put him out of his misery.

When the farmer began shoveling, initially the old mule panicked. But then it dawned on the mule that every time a shovel load of dirt landed on his back he could shake it off and step up.

This he did blow after blow. “Shake it off and step up, shake it off and step up, shake it off and step up!” he repeated to encourage himself. It wasn’t long before the mule, battered and exhausted, stepped triumphantly out of the well.

What he thought would bury him actually benefited him—all because of the way he handled adversity.

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Sports Are 80 Percent Mental: Coaches Should Reward The Effort More Than The Skill

This articles (below) have an awful lot of Carol Dweck and Mindset: The New Psychology for Success and Angela Duckworth's True Grit in them. Perseverance and effort as the keys to success in sports as well as many other life endeavors.

Football coaches verbalize it better with "It's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up". Of course, in football they spend a lot of time knocking each other down, so that makes sense from a coaching / motivational perspective. 

But think about baseball. 

Not a lot of time spent getting physically knocked down in baseball. Unless you're the high school version of Barry Bonds watching your moon shots leave the yard. Then maybe getting some extra dirt in your diet.  

But think about the mental aspect of the game or your life outside the game. How many times do we mentally or emotionally get knocked down and stay down rather than bounce right back up? Or check out and stop playing hard, so to speak, for innings or games or days or weeks on end? Oh yeah right, I'm the only one this happens to!! OK folks!!

There is so much valuable wisdom for athletes, students, teachers, parents and coaches tied up in some of the quotes below that they do bear repeating.  Definitely something to work on. 

Those life lessons from the ball field, you gotta love 'em!! Now, if we could just stop giving everyone in T-Ball a trophy, we might just have a chance to turn things around a bit.  


from 80percentmental.com:
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental: Coaches Should Reward The Effort More Than The Skill:

Our youth sports culture is similar to the classroom.  Kids who are divided into “A” or “B” teams at an early age are taught that their development path is set; the skills they have now are the same skills they will have in the future.  It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle as the “A” teams get better coaching, play in the better leagues against better competition and the talent gap widens.

 Often, parents can also, unknowingly, contribute to this cycle.  As in school, when a child is told that his or her success is due to his brain not his effort, the perception begins that when they do eventually struggle with a math test or a tougher opponent, there is little they can do to improve.

Jin Li, a psychology professor at Brown University, has also been studying cultural differences in learning and teaching.  One of her research projects recorded conversations between parents and children to hear the language used.  

 There were subtle differences between American and Asian parents when complimenting their kids.  While the Americans praised with phrases like, “you’re so smart”, Asian parents focused on the struggle, “you’ve worked so hard on learning that and now you did it.”

 “So the focus is on the process of persisting through it despite the challenges, not giving up, and that’s what leads to success,” Li said in the same NPR interview.

 Every young athlete will face challenges as they move up the ladder from youth clubs to high school to college.  Instilling them with the belief that they can improve through hard work will keep them motivated to get to the other side of the wall.  Their support team of parents and coaches can help this process by rewarding the learning process.

“Think about that [kind of behavior] spread over a lifetime,” Stigler concluded. “That’s a big difference.”

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Why Boosting Perseverance Predicts Success More than a Harvard Degree

Posted: June 25th, 2010 by Michele Borba

http://www.micheleborba.com/blog/2010/06/25/why-perseverance-counts-more-than-a-harvard-degree-focus-on-what-really-matters-mom/

Did you know that more top CEOs in United States graduated from a state college than an Ivy League University such as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton?

Shocked?

Research is showing there’s a far more important predictor of a grad’s future success than the prestige of the school or faculty or even the price of tuition. What matters far more is the  graduate’s “personal drive quotient.”

Nothing beats stick-to-it-ness and hard work when it comes to boosting success-absolutely nothing. And research continues to confirm that crucial fact.

 One of the most fascinating recent studies on student achievement was conducted by Harold Stevenson, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. Stevenson sought to answer a question many Americans ask, “Why do Asian students do better academically than American students?”

Since 1979, Stevenson’s team of researchers conducted five intensive cross-national studies analyzing students’ achievement in the United States, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Hundreds of hours observing students and interviewing their teachers, the researchers reached a conclusion: a critical key lies in what parents emphasize about their children’s learning. Here’s the difference in parenting styles:

Asian parents strongly stress the value of effort with their children.  Over and again they tell their children, “Work as hard as you can, and you will be successful.” By expecting their children to work hard, and emphasizing the attitude: “there are no excuses for poor grades, you just didn’t work hard enough,” perseverance is nurtured in Asian children. And the parental expectations had a remarkable effect on their children. The researchers found on the whole, Asian children worker longer and harder than their American counterparts because they had recognized their success was based on how hard they worked.

Instead of prioritizing how much effort our kids put into their learning attempts, research found that most American parents emphasized: “So what grade did you get?” or “How many did you miss?” or “Did you win?”

The researchers also found that the effort a child put into their process is not nearly as important to the American parent as the end product of the grade or score.

Stevenson also found American parents place a greater emphasis on their children’s innate abilities. They tend to lower their academic expectations for their children if they perceive them to have lower academic abilities.

An Asian parents’ philosophy is different: any child can succeed regardless of an IQ score or handicap–success is all a matter of how hard you are willing to work.

Just think a minute of the long term effect of stressing effort could have on our children!

Our kids would learn from an early age that there’s nothing that can stop them from succeeding if they put their heart and soul into their endeavors. They would see mistakes or failures as just temporary setbacks, instead of as excuses to quit. If they just keep on trying, and use their mistakes as learning clues, they’ll ultimately achieve their goals!

Daniel Wolpert on Why you have a Brain - To hit a fastball, of course!!

Yogi Berra is credited with saying "You can't think and hit at the same time". As usual, Yogi was correct, apparently you cannot 'consciously' think and hit at the same time. However, you can think 'subconsciously' and hit. Who'd have thunk it?

Metrics for the subconscious organization
http://blogs.sas.com/content/valuealley/2012/01/17/metrics-for-the-subconscious-organization/

Think about what it’s like to learn to ride a bicycle, or play the piano, or hit a fast ball, or to coach a group of middle schoolers to do the same. If asked to explain how you stay balanced on a bicycle, you probably couldn’t do it. If you tried to think about each finger finding the right piano key, you could never play a series of chords let alone an entire song. A fast ball reaches home plate in four-tenths of a second, two-tenths faster than your conscious brain can register it. Yet somehow, you still manage to ride a bike, play the piano, and hit that fast ball, often with considerable skill. What’s going on here?

A new book out by David Eagleman entitled, “Incognito – The Secret Lives of the Brain”, investigates these types of abilities and explains how much, how very, very much of what we do and what we think is managed by subconscious processes completely outside of our conscious control and often beyond our conscious awareness (i.e. temperature control, digestion). It was Freud who first described this “iceberg” of mental processes, with 90% of it below the conscious surface, now further advanced by modern science, which has discovered that your subconscious makes its own decisions several tenths of a second before the conscious mind is aware of that decision. The “you’ of your subjective conscious experience is a minor player when it comes to most of what it is your body does, primarily brought into action only when there is a tie vote or a conflict among your subconscious processes. How do we know this is true, that the brain really works that way? Because you can hit a fast ball. Some part of your brain made the decision to pull the trigger and swing away before your conscious self was made aware of that decision.

Great stuff from Sports are 80 Percent Mental. This is where science meets real-life, on the baseball field.

"So, our brain is constantly doing Bayesian calculations to compute the probability that the pitch that our eyes tell us is a fastball is actually a fastball based on our prior knowledge.  Every hitter knows when this calculation goes wrong when our prior knowledge tells our brain so convincingly that the next pitch will be a fastball, it overrules the real-time sensory input that this is actually a nasty curve ball.  The result is either a frozen set of muscles that get no instructions from a confused brain or a swing that is way too early. "

Sports are 80 Percent Mental...

---

Daniel Wolpert On Why You Have A Brain Posted: 31 Mar 2012 06:35 PM PDT Daniel Wolpert is absolutely certain about one thing.  "We have a brain for one reason and one reason only, and that's to produce adaptable and complex movements," stated Wolpert, Director of the Computational and Biological Learning Lab at the University of Cambridge.  "Movement is the only way you have of affecting the world around you."  After that assertive opening to his 2011 TED Talk, he reported that, despite this important purpose, we have a long way to go in understanding of how exactly the brain controls our movements. Daniel Wolpert The evidence for this is in how well we've learned to mimic our movements using computers and robots.  For example, take the game of chess.  Since the late 1990s, computer software has been playing competitive matches and beating human master players by using programmed tactics and sheer computing power to analyze possible moves.  However, Wolpert points out that a five-year-old child can outperform the best robot in actually moving chess pieces around the board. From a sports context, think of a baseball batter at the plate trying to hit a fastball.  It seems intuitive to watch the ball, time the start of the swing, position the bat at the right height to intercept the ball and send it deep.  So, why is hitting a baseball one of the most difficult tasks in sports?  Why can't we perform more consistently? The problem is noise.  Not noise as in the sense of sound but rather the variability of incoming sensory feedback, in other words, what your eyes and ears are telling you.  In baseball, the location and speed of the pitch are never exactly the same, so the brain needs a method to adapt to this uncertainty.  To do this, we need to make inferences or beliefs about the world. The secret to this calculation, says Wolpert, is Bayesian decision theory, a gift of 18th century English mathematician and minister, Thomas Bayes.  In this framework, a belief is measured between 0, no confidence in the belief at all, and 1, complete trust in the belief.  Two sources of information are compared to find the probability of one result given another.  In the science of movement, these two sources are data, in the form of sensory input, and knowledge, in the form of prior memories learned from your experiences. Thomas Bayes So, our brain is constantly doing Bayesian calculations to compute the probability that the pitch that our eyes tell us is a fastball is actually a fastball based on our prior knowledge.  Every hitter knows when this calculation goes wrong when our prior knowledge tells our brain so convincingly that the next pitch will be a fastball, it overrules the real-time sensory input that this is actually a nasty curve ball.  The result is either a frozen set of muscles that get no instructions from a confused brain or a swing that is way too early. Our actions and movements become a never-ending cycle of predictions.  Based on the visual stimuli of the approaching baseball, we send a command to our muscles to swing at the pitch at a certain time.  We receive instant feedback from our eyes, ears and hands about our success or failure in hitting the ball, then log that experience in our memory. Wolpert calls this process our "neural simulator" which constantly and subconsciously makes predictions of how our movements will influence our surroundings. "The fundamental idea is you want to plan your movements so as to minimize the negative consequence of the noise," he explained. We can get a sense of what its like to break this action-feedback loop.  Imagine a pitcher aiming at the catcher's mitt, releasing the ball but then never being able to see where the pitch ended up.  The brain would not be able to store that action as a success or failure and the Bayesian algorithm for future predictions would be incomplete. Try this experiment with a friend.  Pick up a heavy object, like a large book, and hold it underneath with your left hand.  If you now use your right hand to lift the book off of your left hand, you'll notice that your left hand stays steady.  However, if your friend lifts the book off of your hand, your brain will not be able to predict exactly when that will happen.  Your left hand will rise up just a little after the book is gone, until your brain realizes it no longer needs to compensate for the book's weight.  When your own movement removed the book, your brain was able to cancel out that action and predict with certainty when to adjust your left hand's support. "As we go around, we learn about statistics of the world and lay that down," said Wolpert.  "But we also learn about how noisy our own sensory apparatus is and then combine those in a real Bayesian way." Our movements, especially in sports, are very complex and the brain to body communication pathways are still being discovered.  We'll rely on self-proclaimed "movement chauvinists" like Daniel Wolpert to continue to map those routes.  In the meantime, you can still brag about the pure genius of your five-year-old hitting a baseball.

---
Try This!!!
From exploratorium.edu
http://www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/reactiontime.html

Click on the "play ball" button, then move your cursor over the part of the screen that shows the baseball field. As soon as you see "swing batter," click on your screen as fast as you can.

Fastball Reaction Time imitates a 90-mph fastball thrown by a major league pitcher. While this exhibit doesn't test if you could actually hit a fastball, it does test whether you could react in time to hit one. When you see the "swing batter" screen, a signal in your eye sends a message to a part of your brain that controls your muscles. Your brain must then send a signal to your muscles, telling them to click. Although it takes some time for the signal to travel along each nerve, the major delay in your reaction time occurs at the junction points in between the different nerves involved, and between the nerves and the muscles in your fingers.

Neuroplasticity: one of the most extraordinary studies of the 20th century

FROM SAN DIEGO EXAMINER:
Brain changing for sports and weight loss
http://www.examiner.com/fitness-in-san-diego/brain-changing-for-sports-and-weight-loss

Neuroplasticity -- our ability to allow the billions of interconnected neurons in the brain to adjust their connections and pathways in response to changes within our bodies and our environments -- is one of the most extraordinary developments of the 20th century.

No matter what skill you want to perfect, you can; your brain is wired for it. All it takes is practice. You will find an example of exceptional practice routine by Ben Hogan. He mastered his golf swing by practicing in slow motion -- being mindful of and perfecting the small movement components of his swing."

Ben Hogans' slow motion practice routine

In Praise of Acknowledgment (over praise)

Some interesting stuff to think about for coaches from the world of teaching.

ac·knowl·edg·ment/akˈnälijmənt/
Noun:
1. Acceptance of the truth or existence of something.
2. The action of expressing or displaying gratitude or appreciation for something.

The value of acknowledgement over praise - Differentiating between acknowledgement over praise

Not in praise of praise
by Louise Porter, PhD - Child Psychologist
http://www.louiseporter.com.au/pdfs/the_value%20_of_acknowledgement_over_praise_web.pdf



http://www.mgol.net/2011/12/positive-reinforcement-words-of-praise-vs-acknowledgment/

“Many well-intentioned teachers have used praise to improve children’s self-esteem and self-image, but the outcome can be just the opposite.

Research from the field supports this conclusion. Alfie Kohn (1999), noted author of Punished by Rewards: The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, explains the potential damage to children when adults use praise.

Children learn to depend on adults for figuring out what is right or wrong, instead of developing this ability themselves. Rather than rely on their intrinsic motivation to learn, learning or “performing” is done in order to please others.

Children lose the interest and ability to work and learn on their own.

By contrast, children who can evaluate their own performance with encouraging feedback from interested adults remain involved.

Moreover, they are self-correcting, that is, they can ask questions of themselves and work to solve problems on their own. Learning is inherently satisfying.

Furthermore, “praise” implies judgment.

Preschoolers know that if you can judge them favorably, you can also judge them unfavorably.

Exploring or trying something new might result in “failure” from the adult’s perspective, so children stick with what is safe and has earned them praise before.”

----

FROM PROMOTING RESPONSIBILITY & LEARNING
Marvin Marshall's Monthly Newsletter
http://MarvinMarshall.com

Volume 11 Number 12, December 2011
Distributed to 15,945 subscribers


http://marvinmarshall.com/

In last month's newsletter, I shared how acknowledging a
person's behavior is more effective than praising the
person. For example, saying, "You treated your bother with
real consideration" is more empowering and has a greater
positive emotional impact than saying, "I am so pleased by
the way you treated your brother."

Reinforcing and empowering self-understanding is much more
useful for the person than praise, which shows no indication
for judging progress.

HERE ARE TWENTY POTENTIAL PERILS OF PRAISE (which are
eliminated by using acknowledgments):

1. Praise prompts a dependence on others for approval.
2. Praise can increase learned helplessness if young people
rely on approval in lieu of their own motivation.
3 Praise can generate disappointment for those who don't
receive it when others do. This can be interpreted as
"punished by praise."
4. When teachers, for example, use praise to tell students
they are good because they know a right answer, young
people can logically conclude that they are bad when
they do not know the right answer. This equating of
knowledge with goodness is dangerous.
5. Young people grow to depend on praise--and may even
demand it.
6. When praising behavior that adults want to encourage,
the message is that poor behavior is the norm. Young
people often live up to such expectations.
7. Praise often discourages creativity if the young become
more concerned about pleasing others or conforming to
adults' expectations than on finding their own
solutions to problems.
8. Praise can make some children fearful of not being able
to live up to expectations.
9. When praise is consciously employed as a technique for
influencing young people to choose some desirable
behavior, the prase is often perceived as insincere.
10. When students, for example, are praised every time they
sit up straight, wait in line, listen, or engage in
routine behaviors, they often start to experience the
praise as silly or irrelevant.
11. Young people who become accustomed to receiving frequent
praise come to interpret the absence of praise as a
negative evaluation.
12. Praise given to one person, or a even to a few, often
is translated by the others as a negative evaluation of
themselves.
13. Praising some children in front of their peers can be
counterproductive if these youngsters experience the
attention as embarrassing.
14. Praise given to have children feel better can prompt
a loss of faith in themselves and become discouraged.
15. The practice of profusely praising low-performing
students for trivial accomplishments can perpetuate
their putting forth minimal effort.
16. Praise given to students for minimal performance can
actually worsen, not improve their functioning.
17. Students may doubt their own ability or lose
confidence if they perceive that their performance does
not warrant praise--leading students to have thoughts
such as, "The teacher must really think I'm hopeless if
I'm praised for that!" or "How could the teacher think
that was good?"
18. When a youngster is experiencing a problem, it is often
accompanied by personal dissatisfaction. Praising here
either goes "unheard," has the youngster feel that the
adult doesn't really understand, or provokes an even
stronger defense of the person's low self-evaluation.
19. If the praise does not fit with the child's
self-image, it can invoke resentment as the youngster
may perceive it as an attempt at manipulation.
20. When a person feels that the praise is not sincere, but
delivered to manipulate behaving in a certain way, it
can undermine intrinsic motivation.

This does not mean that you should never use praise; it is
natural to praise. The point here is to limit its use and
consider using acknowledgments instead. An easy was to do
this is to just eliminate reference to yourself, as in,
"I am so proud of...."

People want to be recognized. Acknowledging what a young
person has done accomplishes this without some of the
problems of praise.

Are you a Creature of Bad Habits?

There are many days I wonder about falling victim to practice. Definitely a creature of habit, just have to make sure that I'm choosing the right habits and mind-sets.

When I coached, I had to struggle to remember not to frame the talk around negatives like "Don't walk this guy" or "Don't give him anything good to hit". "Don't" leaves too many open variables and options for the mind to consider. You don't effectively convey what you want the athlete to "DO". Often you end up subconsciously talking the athlete into the outcome you wanted them to avoid.

From the New York Times:
A Creature of Bad Habit: Why Mistakes Are Repeated
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: July 18, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/sports/baseball/19score.html

Daniel M. Wegner, a psychologist at Harvard, is a professional scientist, not a professional athlete, and in a recent issue of Science magazine, he reviewed the research on the problem. A recent article in The New York Times explored the social implications.

When the pressure is on, Wegner wrote, the unconscious attempt to avoid errors consistently increases their likelihood of occurring. The same happens with words and thoughts as it does with physical actions. Tell someone, “Don’t think about a white bear,” and you can almost be guaranteed that for the next 10 minutes, white bears are all the person will think about.

Under even a little stress, the problem becomes worse. If you tell people not to think of a given word, then give them a word association test under time pressure, they are likely to blurt out the forbidden word as a response. The concentrated attempt not to think about it becomes just another way of thinking about it. Wegner calls this “the ironic return of repressed thoughts.” Baseball managers, and athletes suffering with the disorder, may have other words for it.

It can become quite embarrassing, and not just on a baseball field or a golf course. Experiments have shown, for example, that if you ask people to concentrate on suppressing prejudices like racism, sexism or homophobia, they blatantly express those biases despite — or perhaps because of — the effort to control them.

In one experiment, researchers put eye-tracking cameras on soccer players and instructed them to avoid a particular part of the goal in making a penalty kick. Guess which part of the goal their gazes most often fell?

Are you Mentally Tough Enough?

From the Sports Performance Bulletin:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/are-you-mentally-tough-enough-42023

Good article explaining what mental toughness is and how it can be developed and improved.

Four factors that allow athletes to have mental toughness include:

1) Self belief -- an unshakable belief in your ability to achieve something.
2) Motivation -- an internal desire to succeed and to respond to setbacks with increased determination.
3) Focus -- an ability to concentrate only on the task at hand and completely ignores any distractions from others or from your own internal voices.
4) Composure -- regaining psychological control after any unexpected events or distractions.

A seven-step program to develop mental toughness would include:

1) Have the right attitude -- have confidence and stay positive, through thick and thin.
2) Develop your mind for success -- use visualization or mental imagery techniques.
3) Develop Good Habits -- develop systematic routines.
4) Develop poise and composure -- let go of mistakes and trust your stuff.
5) Control negative self-talk -- give yourself positive suggestions.
6) Know that failure can lead to future success -- stay focused on the process, not the results.
7) Be a Clutch Player -- be willing to step it up and do your best when it matters most.

Fw: THE BEGINNERS MIND

Some interesting concepts for coaches, teachers or parents to understand when dealing with the developmental stages athletes and students are navigating while learning new skills.

03.15.09 Beginner's Mind

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."  Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi

(Courtesy of Will Taylor, Chair, Department of Homeopathic Medicine, National College of Natural Medicine, Portland, Oregon, USA, March 2007.)

The Four Stages for Learning a New Skill
The Crossfit methodology continually challenges us to expand our capabilities in a variety of facets. I found this model very interesting as it can pertain to just about any skill. We often don't think about the progressions we naturally experience as we strive to suck less. Being aware of these stages helps us better accept that learning can sometimes be a slow and frequently uncomfortable process.

Stage 1 - Unconsciously unskilled or incompetent . We don't know what we don't know. We are inept and unaware of it. We don't know we suck...

Stage 2 - Consciously unskilled or incompetent.  We start to learn at this level when sudden awareness of how poorly we do something shows us how much we need to learn. We now know what we suck at...

Stage 3 - Consciously skilled or competent. Trying the skill out, experimenting, practicing. We now know how to do the skill the right way, but need to think and work hard to do it.

Stage 4 - Unconsciously skilled or competent. If we continue to practice and apply the new skills, eventually we arrive at a stage where they become easier, and given time, even natural. Firebreather!

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http://www.petercoyote.com/zenmindcdx.jpg

Shunryu Suzuki (1905-1971) was a direct spiritual descendant of the great thirteenth-century Zen Master, Dogen. This inspiring work ranks with the great Zen classics, in a voice and language completely adapted to contemporary sensibilities. Suzuki's words breathe with the joy and simplicity that make a liberated life possible. As he reveals the actual practice of Zen as a discipline for daily life, one begins to understand what Zen is really about.

The practice of Zen mind is beginner's mind. The innocence of the first inquiry - what am I? - is needed throughout Zen practice. The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind that can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything . This practice of Zen mind is found throughout the book. Directly or sometimes by inference, every section of the book concerns the question of how to maintain this attitude through your meditation and in your life. This is an ancient way of teaching, using the simplest language and the situations of everyday life.

---
The Beginner's Mind

By Peter Kaufman

http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2011/10/the-beginners-mind.html

In this book, Suzuki encourages us to have the beginner’s mind. What this means is that we should never feel as if we have something all figured out. We should always be hungry for more information and view ourselves as works in progress. I think one of the most basic ways to think about the beginner’s mind is to speak of intellectual curiosity—to have this insatiable desire to gain more knowledge and wisdom because we know there is so much more to learn. As Suzuki says, “In the beginner’s mind there is no thought, ‘I have attained something.’”

When most of us first entered school we epitomized the beginner’s mind. We were so excited to learn anything and everything. We had this unlimited intellectual curiosity. We were constantly asking questions such as: Why? How? When? Where? But after years of being told what we must learn, when we must learn, and how we must learn, much of this curiosity has been extinguished. And after years of memorizing the answers that teachers poured into our heads just so that we could regurgitate these answers on quarterly exams, many of us have actually come to dislike learning.

To make matters worse, we live in a hyper-competitive and hyper-individualistic culture where we are constantly vying to out-do each other and acting as if we know it all.

This makes many of us much more used to having an expert’s mind than a beginner’s mind. We have that “been there, done that” attitude. We feel as if once we’ve learned something or experienced something there is nothing more to be gained and we can move promptly onto the next topic. Or we think that just because we know someone’s characteristics—maybe their race, their gender, their sexuality, their social class or even their hobbies—we feel confident that we know what type of person they are and whether or not they are our kind of people.

These are all examples of the expert’s mind. At the very least, the expert’s mind results in narrow-mindedness and closed-mindedness where we shut others out and strengthen arbitrary borders instead of work together to build bridges. At the very worst, the expert’s mind results in prejudice, discrimination, fanaticism, and oppression—things we see all over the world each day.

How to Memorize Anything You Want: A Quick Primer on Mental Mapping | The Art of Manliness

I meant to post this article when it first hit my e-mail some time ago and I forgot, so obviously I need some work in this area. I'll have to remember (somehow) to get back to it and dig into the details.

This all seems so easy when somebody like this expert or former basketball great Jerry Lucas describes how he memorized the Manhattan phone book.

But to me it always seemed as if you had more stuff to remember when the initial problem you have is remembering stuff. I already feel as if I have a bad case of information overload at times.

Nevertheless, this is good stuff.


How to Memorize Anything You Want: A Quick Primer on Mental Mapping | The Art of Manliness:

"Editor’s note: This is a guest post from two-time USA Memory Champion, Ron White.

What if you could play a game of cards with your buddies and recall every card that had been played? You can.

What if you could meet a client today and six months later see him at a football game and recall his name along with his wife’s and kids’ names? You can.

What if you could look at a 50 digit number for 90 seconds and then repeat the number forwards and backwards from memory? You can.

So how do you master your memory to this level? By utilizing a simple system of mental maps, you will be amazed at the amount of knowledge you will be able to store."

He says it's fun, but I found it to be frustrating. Especially since I could more easily remember trivial, historical sports stuff, but forget important things like peoples names.

So how do you master your memory to this level? By utilizing a simple system of mental maps, you will be amazed at the amount of knowledge you will be able to store.

Here’s how to begin:

Select 5 rooms in your home or office.
In each room, number 5 large items. Number these items 1-25. The first item in the first room is #1, the first item in the second room is #6, the first item in the third room is #11, and so on. For example: Bedroom–1. desk, 2. bed, 3. tv, 4. dresser, 5. computer…Bathroom-6. toilet 7. window, 8. shower, 9. sink, 10. towel rack…etc. Remember, this is just an example.You want to select the pieces of furniture in the way they flow around your particular room.
Practice saying these pieces of furniture and their corresponding numbers over and over until it becomes second nature to say them forwards or backwards. We will refer to these pieces of furniture as “files.”

Now whenever you wish you to recall something, turn it into a picture and imagine it interacting with this piece of furniture.

Let’s say that you want to memorize all the Super Bowl winners. Once you have your files (the pieces of furniture) memorized, the next item of business is to turn whatever you wish to recall into a picture.

So you would be looking at a list that looks like this:

Green Bay Packers
Green Bay Packers
New York Jets
Kansas City Chiefs
Baltimore Colts
Dallas Cowboys
Miami Dolphins
Miami Dolphins
Pittsburgh Steelers
Pittsburgh Steelers

In order to remember anything, it must be an image that you can imagine. For example, if you wanted to recall the number 593787, it might be tough to recall. But a photo album with a coffee cup in it would be easy to remember. That is my picture for 593787. For now, lets address turning the football teams into pictures, a much simpler task that turning 593787 into an image.

What could you picture for the Green Bay Packers? Perhaps packaging. Coming up with an image for the Jets is easy–just picture an airplane jet. For the Chiefs, you would picture an Indian chief. The Colts would be a horse and the Cowboys a cowboy. This is pretty simple actually when you’re dealing with teams.

FEAR OF SUCCESS OR FEAR OF FAILURE?

Sometimes you have to make an honest evaluation of where you are before you can decide where you are going.

Otherwise you're just lost.

Some great stuff on the topic from greater minds than mine. The clip from the movie Coach Carter is awesome. A very underrated book and sports movie.

Many of us are familiar with the concept of the fear of failure. But what about the fear of success?

Believe it or not, having a fear of success is actually quite common. Many people who have this fear aren't even aware that they have it, which is why it's holding them back from achieving their goals and dreams.

The passage has such inspirational power that it is now a stand-alone mantra for a generation of exceptional individuals who wish to motivate themselves and others to live up to their fullest potential.

---

From the movie Coach Carter:

Our Deepest Fear...



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OUR DEEPEST FEAR
by Marianne Williamson. from A Return to Love


Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

(A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles", Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3])

---


FEAR OF SUCCESS:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/fear-of-success.htm#nopopups

Fear of Success

Overcoming Fear of Change

Laura's boss has just announced that the company has won a bid to create a national marketing campaign. And he's asked Laura if she wants to head this project. All that she has to do is let him know that she's interested by the following Friday.

Laura always hoped for an opportunity like this. She knows her work and management skills qualify her for the job - and she knows that it would likely lead to a promotion, or at least to some much-deserved recognition.

However, by the time Friday arrives, she has created a list of reasons not to head the project. And by the end of the day, she still hasn't talked to her boss.

Does this situation sound familiar?

Fear of success is actually quite common, and it can cause us to lose out on opportunities in life. When we're too afraid to take risks and move forward on our goals - either consciously or subconsciously - we get stuck in one place, neither moving forward nor backward.

In this article, we'll examine the fear of success: what it is, how to know if you have it, and what you can do to overcome it.

Fear of Success

Psychologist Matina Horner first diagnosed the fear of success in the early 1970s. Her findings, especially as they related to fear of success in women at that time, were incredibly controversial.

Since then, however, most scientists and psychologists agree that fear of success exists for both men and women.

Fear of success is similar to fear of failure. They have many of the same symptoms, and both fears hold you back from achieving your dreams and goals.

Signs of Fear of Success

The biggest problem for many people is that their fear of success is largely unconscious. They just don't realize that they've been holding themselves back from doing something great.

If you experience the following thoughts or fears, you might have a fear of success on some level:
You feel guilty about any success you have, no matter how small, because your friends, family, or co-workers haven't had the same success.

You don't tell others about your accomplishments.

You avoid or procrastinate on big projects, especially projects that could lead to recognition.

You frequently compromise your own goals or agenda to avoid conflict in a group, or even conflict within your family.

You self-sabotage (member only article) your work or dreams by convincing yourself that you're not good enough to achieve them.

You feel, subconsciously, that you don't deserve to enjoy success in your life.

You believe that if you do achieve success, you won't be able to sustain it. Eventually you'll fail, and end up backing a worse place from where you started. So you think, "why bother?"

Causes of Fear of Success

Fear of success has several possible causes:
We fear what success will bring - for example, loneliness, new enemies, being isolated from our family, longer working hours, or being asked for favors or money.

We're afraid that the higher we climb in life, the further we may fall if we make a mistake.

We fear the added work, responsibilities, or criticism that we'll face.

We fear that our relationships will suffer if we become successful. Our friends and family will react with jealousy and cynicism, and we'll lose the ones we love.

We fear that accomplishing our goals, and realizing that we have the power to be successful, may actually cause an intense regret that we didn't act sooner.
Overcoming Fear of Success

You can use several different strategies to overcome your fear of success. The good news is that the more you face your fears, bring them to the surface, and analyze them rationally, the more you're likely to weaken those fears - and dramatically reduce your reluctance to achieve your goals.

Take a realistic look at what will happen if you succeed with your goal. Don't look at what you hope will happen, or what you fear will happen. Instead, look at what is likely to happen.

It's important not to give a quick answer to this. Take at least 15 minutes to examine the issues, and write down answers to questions like these:
How will my friends and family react if I accomplish this goal?

How will my life change?

What's the worst that could happen if I achieve this goal?

What's likely to happen, and what's the best that could happen?

Why am I scared of accomplishing this goal?

How motivated am I to work toward this goal? How can I increase this motivation?

What am I currently doing to sabotage, or hurt, my own efforts?

How can I stop those self-sabotaging behaviors?
Where you identify risks and problems, make a plan to mitigate those risks or solve those problems. And where you identify actions that need to be taken, add these to your To Do List or Action Program.

Another useful technique is to address your fears directly, and then develop a backup plan that will overcome your concern.

For instance, suppose you don't push yourself to achieve a promotion partly because you secretly fear that you'll be so busy working that you'll never see your family, and partly because you might be forced to make choices that would destroy your integrity.

To overcome these fears, start by addressing your workload. You could set a rule for yourself that you'll always be home by 7 p.m. You could tell this to your boss if you're offered the new position.

For issues involving integrity, you always have a choice. If you set maintaining your integrity (member only article) as your top goal, then you'll always make the right choice.

By creating backup plans that address your fears, you can often eliminate those fears entirely.

Tip:
Sometimes people will react negatively to your success, particularly if they've been perceived as being more successful than you in the past. If people are this small-minded, and they can't rejoice in your success, do you really want to know them?

Key Points

Fear of success is common, but many of us don't realize that we have it. Self-sabotaging activities - such as procrastination, negative self-talk, and fearing what the success will bring - may hold us back from achieving our goals and dreams.

If you think that you suffer from a fear of success, identify why you're afraid of accomplishing your goals. The more you face your fear and analyze what you're worrying about, the better able you'll be to deal with these issues and move forward with your life.

FEAR OF FAILURE:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/fear-of-failure.htm#nopopups

Overcoming Fear of Failure

Facing Fears and Moving Forward

Have you ever been so afraid of failing at something that you decided not to try it at all? Or has a fear of failure meant that, subconsciously, you undermined your own efforts to avoid the possibility of a larger failure?

Many of us have probably experienced this at one time or another. The fear of failing can be immobilizing – it can cause us to do nothing, and therefore resist moving forward. But when we allow fear to stop our forward progress in life, we're likely to miss some great opportunities along the way.

In this article, we'll examine fear of failure: what it means, what causes it, and how to overcome it to enjoy true success in work, and in life.

Causes of Fear of Failure

To find the causes of fear of failure, we first need to understand what "failure" actually means.

We all have different definitions of failure, simply because we all have different benchmarks, values, and belief systems. A failure to one person might simply be a great learning experience for someone else.

Many of us are afraid of failing, at least some of the time. But fear of failure (also called "atychiphobia") is when we allow that fear to stop us doing the things that can move us forward to achieve our goals.

Fear of failure can be linked to many causes. For instance, having critical or unsupportive parents is a cause for some people. Because they were routinely undermined or humiliated in childhood, they carry those negative feelings into adulthood.

Experiencing a traumatic event at some point in your life can also be a cause. For example, say that several years ago you gave an important presentation in front of a large group, and you did very poorly. The experience might have been so terrible that you developed a fear of failure about other things. And you carry that fear even now, years later.

Signs of Fear of Failure

You might experience some of these symptoms if you have a fear of failure:

A reluctance to try new things or get involved in challenging projects.

Self-sabotage - for example, procrastination, excessive anxiety, or a failure to follow through with goals.

Low self-esteem or self-confidence – Commonly using negative statements such as "I'll never be good enough to get that promotion," or "I'm not smart enough to get on that team."

Perfectionism – A willingness to try only those things that you know you'll finish perfectly and successfully.
"Failure" – A Matter of Perspective

It's almost impossible to go through life without experiencing some kind of failure. People who to do so probably live so cautiously that they go nowhere. Put simply, they're not really living at all.

The wonderful thing about failure is that it's entirely up to us to decide how to look at it.

We can choose to see failure as "the end of the world," or as proof of just how inadequate we are. Or, we can look at failure as the incredible learning experience that it often is. Every time we fail at something, we can choose to look for the lesson we're meant to learn. These lessons are very important; they're how we grow, and how we keep from making that same mistake again. Failures stop us only if we let them.

It's easy to find successful people who have experienced failure. For example:

Michael Jordan is widely considered to be one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And yet, he was cut from his high school basketball team because his coach didn't think he had enough skill.

Warren Buffet, one of the world's richest and most successful businessmen, was rejected by Harvard University.

Richard Branson, owner of the Virgin empire, is a high school dropout.
Most of us will stumble and fall in life. Doors will get slammed in our faces, and we might make some bad decisions. But imagine if Michael Jordan had given up on his dream to play basketball when he was cut from that team. Imagine if Richard Branson had listened to the people who told him he'd never do anything worthwhile without a high school diploma.

Think of the opportunities you'll miss if you let your failures stop you.

Failure can also teach us things about ourselves that we would never have learned otherwise. For instance, failure can help you discover how strong a person you are. Failing at something can help you discover your truest friends, or help you find unexpected motivation to succeed.

Often, valuable insights come only after a failure. Accepting and learning from those insights is key to succeeding in life.

Overcoming a Fear of Failure

It's important to realize that in everything we do, there's always a chance that we'll fail. Facing that chance, and embracing it, is not only courageous – it also gives us a fuller, more rewarding life.

However, here are a few ways to reduce the fear of failing:

Analyze all potential outcomes – Many people experience fear of failure because they fear the unknown. Remove that fear by considering all of the potential outcomes of your decision. Our article Decision Trees will teach you how to map possible outcomes visually.

Learn to think more positively – Positive thinking is an incredibly powerful way to build self-confidence and neutralize self-sabotage. Our article Thought Awareness, Rational Thinking, and Positive Thinking is a comprehensive resource for learning how to change your thoughts.

Look at the worse-case scenario – In some cases, the worst case scenario may be genuinely disastrous, and it may be perfectly rational to fear failure. In other cases, however, this worst case may actually not be that bad, and recognizing this can help.

Have a contingency plan – If you're afraid of failing at something, having a "Plan B" in place can help you feel more confident about moving forward.
Using Goal Setting

If you have a fear of failure, you might be uncomfortable setting goals. But goals help us define where we want to go in life. Without goals, we have no sure destination.

Many experts recommend visualization as a powerful tool for goal setting. Imagining how life will be after you've reached your goal is a great motivator to keep you moving forward.

However, visualization might produce the opposite results in people who have a fear of failure. In the article "Tantalizing Fantasies: Positive Imagery Induces Negative Mood in Individuals High in Fear of Failure" (published in the journal Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol. 21, No. 4), researcher Thomas Langens showed that people who have a fear of failure were often left in a strong negative mood after being asked to visualize goals and goal attainment.

So, what can you do instead?

Start by setting a few small goals. These should be goals that are slightly, but not overwhelmingly, challenging. Think of these goals as "early wins" that are designed to help boost your confidence.

For example, if you've been too afraid to talk to the new department head (who has the power to give you the promotion you want), then make that your first goal. Plan to stop by her office during the next week to introduce yourself.

Or, imagine that you've dreamed of returning to school to get your MBA, but you're convinced that you're not smart enough to be accepted into business school. Set a goal to talk with a school counselor or admissions officer to see what's required for admission.

Try to make your goals tiny steps on the route to much bigger goals. Don't focus on the end picture: getting the promotion, or graduating with an MBA. Just focus on the next step: introducing yourself to the department head, and talking to an admissions officer. That's it.

Taking one small step at a time will help build your confidence, keep you moving forward, and prevent you from getting overwhelmed with visions of your final goal.

Note:
Sometimes, fear of failure can be a symptom of a more serious mental health condition. If fear of failure affects your day-to-day life, it's important to speak with your doctor to get advice.

Key Points

Many of us sometimes experience a fear of failure, but we mustn't let that fear to stop us from moving forward.

Fear of failure can have several causes: from childhood events to mistakes we've made in our adult lives. It's important to realize that we always have a choice: we can choose to be afraid, or we can choose not to be.

Start by setting small goals that will help build your confidence. Learn how to explore and evaluate all possible outcomes rationally and develop contingency plans; and practice thinking positively. By moving forward slowly but steadily, you'll begin to overcome your fear of failure.

But the cowardly , the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers , the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death. - Revelation 21:8

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” -Patrick Henry