Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

What about Jackie Joyner-Kersee, hailed as the greatest female athlete of all time? Between 1985 and the beginning of 1996, she won every heptathlon she competed in. What exactly is a heptathlon? It’s a grueling two-day, seven-part event consisting of a 100-meter hurdles race, the high jump, the javelin throw, a 200-meter sprint, the long jump, the shotput, and an 800-meter run. No wonder the winner gets to be called the best female athlete in the world. Along the way, Joyner-Kersee earned the six highest scores in the history of the sport, set world records, and won two world championships as well as two Olympic gold medals (six if we count the ones in other events).

Was she a natural? Talent she had, but when she started track, she finished in last place for quite some time. The longer she worked, the faster she got, but she still didn’t win any races. Finally, she began to win. What changed? “Some might attribute my transformation to the laws of heredity.… But I think it was my reward for all those hours of work on the bridle path, the neighborhood sidewalks and the schoolhouse corridors.”

Sharing the secret of her continued success, she says, “There is something about seeing myself improve that motivates and excites me. It’s that way now, after six Olympic medals and five world records. And it was the way I was in junior high, just starting to enter track meets.”

Her last two medals (a world-championship and an Olympic medal) came during an asthma attack and a severe, painful hamstring injury. It was not natural talent taking its course. It was mindset having its say.

Naturals Shouldn’t Need Effort

Did you know there was once a strong belief tha you couldn’t physically train for golf, and that if you built your strength you would lose your “touch”? Until Tiger Woods came along with his workout regimes and fierce practice habits and won every tournament there was to win.

In some cultures, people who tried to go beyond their natural talent through training received sharp disapproval. You were supposed to accept your station in life. These cultures would have hated Maury Wills. Wills was an eager baseball player in the 1950s and ’60s with a dream to be a major leaguer. His problem was that his hitting wasn’t good enough, so when the Dodgers signed him, they sent him down to the minor leagues. He proudly announced to his friends, “In two years, I’m going to be in Brooklyn playing with Jackie Robinson.”

He was wrong. Despite his optimistic prediction and grueling daily practice, he languished in the minors for eight and a half years. At the seven-and-a-half-year mark, the team manager made a batting suggestion, telling Wills, “You’re in a seven-and-a-half-year slump, you have nothing to lose.” Shortly thereafter, when the Dodger shortstop broke his toe, Wills was called up. He had his chance.

His batting was still not good enough. Not ready to give up, he went to the first-base coach for help; they worked together several hours a day aside from Wills’s regular practice. Still not good enough. Even the gritty Wills was now ready to quit, but the first-base coach refused to let him. Now that the mechanics were in place, Wills needed work on his mind.

He began to hit—and, with his great speed, he began to steal bases. He studied the throws of the opposing pitchers and catchers, figuring out the best moment to steal a base. He developed sudden, powerful takeoffs and effective slides. His stealing began to distract the pitchers, throw off the catchers, and thrill the fans. Wills went on to break Ty Cobb’s record for stolen bases, a record unchallenged for forty-seven years. That season, he was voted the most valuable player in the National League.

Sports IQ

You would think the sports world would have to see the relation between practice and improvement—and between the mind and performance—and stop harping so much on innate physical talent. Yet it’s almost as if they refuse to see. Perhaps it’s because, as Malcolm Gladwell suggests, people prize natural endowment over earned ability. As much as our culture talks about individual effort and self-improvement, deep down, he argues, we revere the naturals. We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary. Why not? To me that is so much more amazing.

Even when experts are willing to recognize the role of the mind, they continue to insist that it’s all innate!

This really hit me when I came upon an article about Marshall Faulk, the great running back for the St. Louis Rams football team. Faulk had just become the first player to gain a combined two thousand rushing and receiving yards in four consecutive seasons.