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MENTAL TOUGHNESS: A Model For Health Aand Sport  Email this Article to a Friend
David F. Wright, Ph.D., PGA Because of what I do I have the good fortune of working with some very physically talented athletes. No matter how hard they work, some of them make it to their life’s goal of playing and winning on the PGA and LPGA Tours and some of them don’t. It was a puzzle to me for years why some of this great talent couldn’t make the grade. I noticed that some players of inferior physical ability would make it over those who had what appeared to be an almost flawless game. A1991 book, Learned Optimism, explains much of this phenomenon through some outstanding research. Simply stated, the person who persist in the face of adversity, regardless of the arena, wins in the long run. Research shows that people who persist win in work, love and play. People who give up, suffer more physical and emotional problems and never reach their full potential. That’s an easy call, you might say, but read on. People who persist in the face of adversity are mentally tough. They are more resistant to depression, have stronger immune systems and succeed in most arenas in which they participate. Martin Seligman is a Psychologist who has made a career out studying a model he calls learned helplessness. This is a model I was trained in years ago as one strategy to treat depression. Most people, when faced with repeated adversity, give up. Seligman demonstrated this phenomenon in a resarch study at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960’s. He took two groups of dogs and exposed them to an electrical shock by placing them on a shock grid. One group he shocked and allowed them to escape, the other group he shocked and restrained. After a few days and several trials of the shock condition, he took the restraints of the one group of dogs. The dogs that had never been restrained as always would continue to jump off the grid when shocked. Nine out of ten of the dogs that had been restrained simply laid down and took the shock. They didn’t even attempt to escape. They gave up. In a research study that was done using the 1987 Berkeley swim team, the athletes were given false feedback on their times at an exhibition meet. Olympic Gold Medalist, Matt Biondi, was a member of that team. When one of Biondi’s teammates was told his time was a second longer than it actually was, he walked to the edge of the pool deck, sat down, and began to rock back and forth. Biondi was told his time in the 100 butterfly was 51. 7 seconds when it was actually 50.2. He looked frustrated, and his coach told him to rest and he could swim the same event later. Biondi was the only swimmer that day who not only beat his false feedback time he beat his original time. At the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, it was predicted that Biondi would match Mark Spitz’s record of seven gold medals. In his first two events Biondi won first a Bronze and then a Silver. The sportscasters in Seoul began to prepare the US viewers for a "less than gold" performance from the young swimmer. Biondi responded by winning 5 straight gold medals. I have learned that it is much easier to work with a player who gets 3 or 4 over par after 5 holes and then gets it back to even than the player who shoots 4 under one day but who gives up when he gets it over par the next. Psychologist call the ability to fight back and overcome adversity mental toughness. The level of mental toughness is defined by how a person explains their successes and failures. Those of us who see adversity as temporary and specific to that particular situation are called optimists. We are considered mentally tough. Those of us who see adversity as permanent and pervasive throughout our lives are called pessimist. Pessimist tend to give up in the face of adversity. When things happen that we perceive as "unfair," the pessimist sees himself as a victim. The bad break on the drive where the ball kicked off a sprinkler head in the middle of the fairway into high rough is a good example of a situation where the pessimist sees an event as only happening to him. The frustration of these moments causes the pessimist to lose focus and his performance deteriorates. When a ball lands in a heel print in a bunker or a divot in the middle of the fairway, a pessimist would explain these bad breaks as "meant for him" and nobody else. The optimist sees these bad breaks as inevitable events that are balanced by good events. Sam Snead said that "he learned over the years that breaks even out over the long haul." According to researchers, even the pessimist wants to hear from others that everything is going to be OK in the face of adversity even though the pessimist may not have the ability to explain bad events as temporary to himself. Between 1900 and 1984 there were 22 presidential elections in this country. Seligman and his graduate students analyzed the nomination acceptance speeches for each of these elections and found that the most optimistic candidate won 18 out of 22 of those elections. The four elections where the optimist did not win were the three elections of FDR and the Nixon Humphrey election. When the results of this study were released, the 1988 presidential primary was on the horizon. There were 13 Presidential candidates and 33 Senatorial candidates. Seligman and his students were able to acquire the stump speeches for all 13 Presidential candidates and 29 of the 33 senatorial candidates. Early polls showed that Hart and Dole were front runners in the Presidential election. The analyses of the stump speeches showed that the most optimistic candidates for both parties was Bush and Dukakis. Their predictions showed that Bush would win by 6%. Bush won by 8.2%. Seligman and his students also correctly predicted 25 out of 29 (86%) of the senate races including all upsets and close races with the exception of one. So, who is in control when we vote if the masses tend to vote for the candidate who sells the most hope. We want to hear that everything is going to be OK, that bad events can be reversed and that things they are going well will have a long life. What can we learn from Seligman’s research: Is it possible that our greatest community and world leaders must be optimist to weather accusations and difficult times without "giving up" in the face of adversity? So how does this relate to your tee shot on the first hole? Sam Snead said that giving up between tee and green is as habit forming as a "high ball" before breakfast. For those of you too young to know, a "high ball" is not an inside pitch, it is an alcoholic drink. If you hit a drive sideways off the first tee and turn your back as it heads for the out of bounds stakes you have given up. You are going to have to look for that ball, unless you really give up and re-tee a ball without even looking for the first. If that is the case, you give up easily. Follow the flight of the ball until you can no longer see it and continue stare in the direction it flew for another 5 or 10 seconds. You never know when your ball might hit a tree or even an out of bounds stakes and bounce into the fairway. Hey, could it possibly be a good break!? Hit a provisional and recognize your first ball is one isolated shot and not predictive of anything but a potentially difficult second shot. Mentally dig in, be a good internal caddie. Then go look for your first shot. Go play one shot at a time without a focus on anything other than the shot you are playing. Follow every ball until it lands. Never give up on a shot, a hole, a side, a round or a tournament. Dig in and fight back until the end with a focus on one shot at a time. Remember, research shows that a pattern of giving up is related to everything from your mood to your health. You will be a happier healthier person if you set goals to persist in the face of adversity. And who knows, maybe some day you will run for office.
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