It’s All in Your Head: How Your Mental Processes Define Your Limits

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Bennie Fowler, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

The following is adapted from Silver Spoon: The Imperfect Guide to Success.

In her hit book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck makes a powerful distinction between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

Someone with a fixed mindset tends to believe that situations and abilities can’t be altered. A person with a growth mindset, however, understands that we can always change, always become better, and always find ways to contribute more. “This,” she says, “is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”

People with the right mindset are more likely to believe that they can influence their future and to do the things that prove themselves right. That means preparing to succeed mentally as well as physically. It means digging deep when adversity hits and using that experience to thrive. It means finding motivation and trusting the processes that lead to growth.

Mental Strength Shows up in Challenging Times

When life is easy, you can skip the hard work of learning and growth. It’s only when adversity shows up that you’ll be tested. That’s when you’ll discover who you truly are.

In 2015, I made the roster of the Denver Broncos. Ultimately, we would win the Super Bowl that season, and I would catch Peyton Manning’s final pass in the NFL.

When the year started, however, that looked like a distant dream. I had a good preseason. I caught ten passes. In one game, I led the team in receiving yards with sixty-seven, and I scored in our last preseason game against the Cardinals. Despite these achievements, I didn’t play offense for the first two games of the regular season, against the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs.

In week three, we traveled to Detroit to face the Lions, and I was itching to get into the game. This was a hometown crowd for me, and I was eager to show everyone what I could do. The coaches decided who played, so that was out of my hands.

What did I do? I concentrated on the things I could control. Every player on the field has a precise role to play and after each game, each player receives a report on how well they handled their assignment. Did they run the right route? Did they block the safety? Did they run their route deep enough to take the cornerback out of the play? Leading up to Detroit, I carefully visualized all these things so I would be ready if I got into the game.

I got into the Detroit game for our third offensive drive. The coaches were letting me show what I could do. Although Peyton was throwing primarily to Demaryius Thomas, Emmanuel Sanders, and Owen Daniels in that game, I was targeted four times. I caught all four passes, gaining fifty yards total. Each catch was a first down.

When I was on the field, I never felt like I was in a high-pressure situation. I wasn’t nervous. I felt no anxiety. I felt like I had been there before. I felt like I’d run those plays before and knew precisely what was going to happen. I wasn’t thinking about what was going on or how it was going on. I let things happen just as I had visualized them. After the game, I was swept over by a sense of relief and satisfaction.

My mental preparation had worked. I’d played great. At home. In front of my family. People I knew. It was awesome.

Love the Process

Dr. Rick Perea is a sports psychologist who worked with the Broncos. Many teams make sports psychologists available to players, and Dr. P is one of the best. He’s helped so many people. When he worked for the Nuggets in the NBA, he helped one player improve his free-throw shooting by merely changing the way the player took a deep breath at the foul line.

Dr. Rick is an expert on every aspect of mental preparation. When he talks about motivation, for example, he draws a comparison between process and outcome.

People who focus on outcomes have extrinsic motivation. They’ve got to be All-Pro. They’ve got to get that new contract or that deal with Adidas. They’ve got to make so many catches in the next game. Many people, including many professional athletes, are too focused on extrinsic motivation.

The other end of the spectrum is intrinsic motivation. People who concentrate on intrinsic motivation focus on the process they need to follow to achieve their desired outcome. They concentrate on mastering the things they can control. Like footwork. Knowing their routes. Throwing a good block. Intrinsic motivation is about being the best you can be today with what you can control.

Rick explained the science and psychology behind this to me. When you focus on process and the things you can control, your anxiety diminishes. When your anxiety goes down, you’re on the parasympathetic side of your autonomic nervous system.

When you’re on the parasympathetic side, your heart rate goes down, breathing is relaxed, muscle tension decreases, and your thinking is clarified.

You perform better.

When you’re on the sympathetic side of things, your breathing is more rapid and shallow, your heart rate is elevated, and your muscles tense up. It’s like, “Oh shit. What am I going to do?” It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do for a living: when you’re on the sympathetic side, performance declines.

Dr. P isn’t saying not to have goals. Of course, you should have goals. State them. Write them down. Put them out there. Then put them away in a shoebox and focus every day on the process that will help you reach them.

“Think of it this way, Bennie,” he told me recently. “When you’re playing in your backyard or at the park or rec center, you play freely, without fear. It’s when you’re playing on Sunday in front of a hundred thousand people and the television cameras that the sympathetic system rears its ugly head. The great players can tap into their parasympathetic in those situations. They’re free. Trust that and stay in that parasympathetic side of things where thinking is clear and muscles are relaxed. That’s where performance lives.”

How’s Your Mindset?

The University of Alabama is, and has been, one of the most successful football programs of all time. They’ve been a threat to win the national championship every year for the last decade or more. But when you visit the University of Alabama football facility and read the inspirational messages on the wall, you don’t see anything about winning.

Instead, there are signs like “Love the process” and “Be the process” and “Trust the process.” When you understand that you live in the process every day, then your outcome will come to you instead of you having to search it out. Success will come to you.

Winning is a symptom of process. Developing mental strength is a huge part of what they do. In the NFL, teams like the New England Patriots win so much because they have the right climate and the right culture. It’s not their Xs and Os. It’s what they do every day to improve their chances of winning.

You have to have a healthy mindset because you never know when your opportunity is going to come. If you keep working and grinding every single day, your mind is getting sharper and sharper.

What are you doing to improve your mental strength? What are you doing to focus on intrinsic motivation and to trust the process? That’s where your success will come from.

For more advice on developing your mindset, you can find Silver Spoon: The Imperfect Guide to Success on Amazon.

Bennie Fowler is a six-year veteran of the NFL. He began his career as an undrafted free agent signed by the Broncos in 2014. He spent four years with the Broncos and was a member of the Super Bowl 50 championship team in 2016. Bennie played college football at Michigan State University, where he was a member of the 2014 Rose Bowl championship team. Bennie holds the annual Bennie Fowler youth football camp in Detroit, Michigan, is an in-demand speaker trained through the NFL Speakers Bureau, and lives in Denver during the offseason.