I was recently asked in an interview what I thought through my work in sports therapy was the greatest “mental skill” an athlete could possess? After pausing for a moment, I answered the question, but rather than minimizing my comment to what was the most important mental skill for athletes, I expanded my opinion to what I thought was the most important mental skill for people.The answer to the question, regardless if we are talking about athletes or everyday people, is the ability to develop a strong human resiliency toward stress, adversity, and failure. In other words, the ability to inoculate oneself from adversity in life, and to develop appropriate, effective means for warding off stress is, to me, the most important “mental toughness skill” a person can learn and master (The Life Series).I remember many years ago reading M. Scott Peck’s famously popular book “The Road Less Traveled,” and being especially taken by the first sentence in the book: Life is difficult. In the years since reading TRLT, I have found this insight to be especially applicable when working with people experiencing distress in their life — in other words, the problems they deal with are very “normal” when you place them within the context of how challenging and “difficult” life can be for all of us. Rather than looking at problems as unique and as an indicator of how unsuccessful a person is, I try to remind people that life is difficult — and that we all experience the same kinds of problems in life. And while we all have unique situations and circumstances we deal with, it really doesn’t matter how we experience stress, frustration, adversity, and failure (i.e. through a bad game, a relationship breakup, or a school/work failing), we all feel the pain of “coming up short” in life on any given day.The real concern I have, then, is how people respond to their unique stress and adversity. In sports I see this everyday — a youngster will look great in practice conditions, but then comes the game and he “chokes,” or freezes up, resulting in poor athletic outcomes. Of course, it is very normal to have bad days and occasionally “choke,” but what I am most interested in is how he responds to the situation? Does he pout and feel sorry for himself, or does he pick himself up, dust off, and become even more excited by the challenge of making tomorrow a better day?The same question is true for people who are not athletes — when adversity happens in life, is the first response to roll up the sleeves and work hard for a better tomorrow, or does the person take more of a “victim mentality,” helpless to the situation, and with little effort toward taking the responsible steps to remedy the problem?From my vantage point, it is very concerning that we are moving away from understanding and emphasizing the importance of human resiliency, and instead spending more time each year looking for organic reasons why people do things, or new pills to help them literally forget about and/or numb them from their pain. I recently saw a commercial about a an anti-depressant pill that is supposed to be used in addition to the anti-depressant pill the person is already taking —– so rather than learn cognitive/behavioral human performance improvement skills to strengthen resiliency, the message comes across as there being some medical advance through prescription medicine that will seemingly make it all just go away……..does this seem a little odd to you? Think about that — take a pill on top of another pill — just the basic paradigm seems bizarre and extreme to me (not to mention all the side effects that are mentioned throughout the ad!!).Human resiliency, to me, is a “mental skill” that can absolutely be developed and strengthened!! Of course, there are always people with unique circumstances and who may be better candidates for more advanced medicinal approaches, but for the average person (which most of us qualify to be) working hard to develop “bounce back” strategies and skills is truly where it’s at for life success to occur. Is it tough to become resilient? Of course it is — Dr. Peck told us that with his “Life is difficult” opening to TRLT!! But just because something is tough to do doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it – resiliency leads to greater self-awareness, confidence, open-mindedness, and motivation — precisely the things needed to reach our full potential, and to do so safely and without fear of side-, withdrawal-, or interaction-effects from unproven medications (some that even require a “boost” from a second medication!).Please know that I am not an anti-pharmaceutical drug person, nor am I saying that people should ignore the advances of modern medicine (no Tom Cruise here). I am concerned, however, that our knee-jerk response when dealing with problems today is becoming more and more directed at what medicines are out there to “fix” our pain, rather than going back to a simpler, and arguably more effective approach – that is, to understand pain and adversity are parts of life, and that we can (with a little effort) really overcome some pretty unbelievable things in life by exercising some patience, developing solid game plans for future success, and leaning on our support team of loved family and friends who are there to help us.So that’s my long-winded answer to the greatest mental skill to develop: Resiliency!!
