In this episode Coach Jason discusses a strategy that has been proven to increase performance instantly in athletes from t-ball to the big leagues. Full of insights, practical knowledge and relevant stories–this podcast will be sure to take your game to the next level.

Listen to the podcast here:

Fake it Until You Make It

 

Welcome to the Full Force Life podcast, the show where we dig in deep into the mental side of some of the sports’ greatest athletes, the guys who played at the highest levels. We discover what their mental strategies were. When things weren’t going well, how do they get themselves back into a hot streak and hopefully back into that zone? How do they prepare themselves? What are the examples of focusing and bringing out the very best and doing it at a consistent pace, a consistent level and just being the very best that they can be both on and off the field? For myself, having been a professional player for more than fifteen years, four of them with the Texas Rangers at the Major League level, my mind was always trying to find the edge. The little details that I could to be more consistent to unlock a little bit more of the potential that I knew I had deep inside. I really had ended up leading to this obsession where more than just sports psychology, I wanted to find things that could make real shifts, real changes in people, real new beliefs.

People are always talking about the importance of confidence. You need to be more confident. I hear it all the time. I was reading this post just the other day on social media and they’re talking about how do you get yourself out of a slump? It was great advice. The first part was, keep things simple. Get back to the basics. Stay through the process; great advice. Number two was, be confident. Any athlete will tell you, if you’re struggling, if your swing doesn’t feel right, if you’re not getting the results over a length of time that you normally do or that you expect to, you don’t feel very confident. Just being told to be confident, to feel confident isn’t enough to make that shift.

<figure id="attachment_729" style="width: 300px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Fake it Until You Make It: How do we really actually train ourselves to be confident?</figcaption></figure>

How do we really actually train ourselves to be confident? That part of the program with the Peak State and the Full Force Life, we go more in depth in some of the programs, the 30-day challenge and things like that where we can put tasks, situations in front of us that we have to break through. That’s the greatest way to build true self-esteem, is to take on those big challenges that we don’t think we’re capable of, to go through those hard, those trials, those challenging times. That for me is the biggest shift in building and developing true self-esteem.

There are other ones when you get really good at something. You develop a great swing. You start to have confidence in that swing. That only can come through developing that competence in that skill. This idea of feeling confident is something that over the last couple of years has taking route in my mind because if you could feel confident, if you can make a little shift in just how you feel it in your body and you were able to take on bigger challenges or take more risk or more likely just to go for it because at that moment you felt a little extra confidence. If you could do that while you’re learning a new skill, would you not learn it faster and get to that competent level where now you have confidence in your capabilities? Couldn’t you just get there quicker? If you were able to take a few extra actions in those trials, those challenges that are up against you, would you not break through those barriers and get true self-esteem? True esteem in yourself where you appreciate, you admire who you are like that true, radiating inner confidence.

All those things come from these little moments where we take the action and over time, these little actions add up to these great big things. For me, this idea of how do we feel a little extra confident, this moment so we take that action, we take that risk. For me, that’s one of the simplest things that I teach but it’s the most profound. People will get a little bored and they’ll start rolling their eyes when they hear me talking about how we use our body language is going to change how we feel. If we want that little extra boost of confidence in our body, we’ve got to take on a more confident posture. This isn’t just some positive thinking. This is the change in how we feel. We feel it, we take that risk, we take that challenge and potentially we get the result that we want to. You stay in that posture, you’re not going to feel as bad. You’re going to be a little more tolerant of how you feel now. You’re not going to be hurt as bad and you’re going to be more likely to go ahead and try it again. This is something that is scientifically proven in fact.

To make sure that we’re on the same page, what I want you to do is I want you to come up with a couple different images in your mind. First, create one that is of a sad, upset, maybe frustrated person. You know what they look like. Is their head up or their head down? Down, right? Shoulders back, shoulders slouched forward? They’re slouched forward. What’s their voice like? I’m now with my head down and my shoulders forward and you can already hear my voice. It’s not too exciting right now, isn’t it? If I really start to think about things that make me sad, I can really tone that voice down a little bit more. Obviously, you don’t breathe very deep in this place. That’s a sad person. I know you recognize what they look like.

<figure id="attachment_730" style="width: 300px" class="wp-caption alignright"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Fake it Until You Make It: Make an image in your mind of what a happy, confident person looks like.</figcaption></figure>

We shake that out. Now, make an image in your mind of what a happy, confident person looks like. They’re standing a little extra tall. Their shoulders are back and they’re breathing really full and deep. Their voice has that tone. Their eyes are focused, think of a predator. Think of that lion walking across the savanna in Africa and he’s going to the watering hole and he’s got that strut. He’s moving with this purpose, this intention. It’s just a relaxation to him. That’s what I think about when I see this confident person. We know what it looks like. We recognize it in others.

The next step of it, what I want you to imagine is there has been these studies that have been done many times in people who stand like they’re a superhero. What’s the famous Wonder Woman pose where she’s got her hands on her hips? If you’re a man or a woman, if you stand with your hands on your hips, it’s actually a territorial stance. It’s what it is when you make yourself real wide. What actually happens in your body if you stand like this, you hold this pose with your head up, your shoulders are back, your elbows are out, your hands on your hips. If you stand like this for one to two minutes, your testosterone levels will raise 20% and your cortisol levels will actually drop down too. What does this mean? When you have higher, elevated levels of testosterone like we mentioned earlier, you will be more willing to take risks to accept the challenge. If you fail, you’re going to be more tolerant of that failure. You’re not going to be bothered by it. It’s not going to drag you down. In fact, it might spurn you to go ahead and take another action. Go ahead and take another risk.

When we change our body posture, our body language, we’re not just changing how we feel. We’re actually changing our biochemistry, which is putting us in another elevated level of being a peak performer as well. The point that I always make especially to the young players when I talk to young players, “You’re very, very, rarely ever going to outplay how you feel in this moment.” What I mean by that is if you are walking up the plate and you feel like a four, a level of four confidence, you’re not going to have a result that’s goi