Journaling--The Way to Self-Awareness

Each week we spend a few minutes on a self-awareness question with the intent of helping our players know more about who they are. We believe you cannot change who you are if you are not first aware of your characteristics. Last week we asked them a three part series of questions.
1. Define mental toughness.
2. List the three players who you believe possess the best mental toughness on the team.
3. Rate your mental toughness on a scale from 1-5 with 1 being the lowest and five being the
highest and then explain why you gave yourself that ranking.

The definitions were right on target:
"Accepting Criticism and learning from it."
"Limiting negative reactions and thinking in a positive way."
"The ability to keep working hard even when things are not going your way."
"Digging deeper when you think you can't push any more."
"Staying strong in the mind no matter what obstacles you face."

Even though I loved their definitions and found them for the most part to be right on target, what I loved even more was their honesty in their self-ratings. We went around the room with each player explaining her rating. In settings like this, some players would be intimidated, not wanting to share their high rankings for fear of being considered conceited or on the opposite end of the spectrum, sharing a low ranking which might show incompetence.

These players, however, spoke without fear of judgment which proved to the coaching staff two important points--the team has already evolved to the place of unconditional acceptance and our players are willing to be vulnerable in front of one another. Many great things can be accomplished with a group of people who can accept each other for who they are but at the same time be willing to push each other to expand to a different level.

This is a team with a high level of mental toughness. It is evident in their timed sprints, when I am demanding they run faster, and instead of faltering, of feeling they cannot possibly do what I demand, they encourage one each other to get it done.

One of the best moments on the court came last week when we were running 1-80-1's which are a series of sprints building up to eight and going back down. This was after our 15 minutes of defensive slides. I was at the point where I was ready to provide them with an incentive for meeting the times when I offered to reduce the sprints sets if everybody made it. When a couple of people failed, I heard a player yell, "You have to keep running hard even if we didn't make it. It is not about the sprint sets; it is about getting better. Keep running hard."

Because she yelled that, I offered another incentive. This time they all made it.

PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.