February 21, 2022

REDLEG STATE OF MIND #10–22

Monthly newsletter of the Cincinnati Reds Mental Skills Program. What we’re pondering and promoting to optimize your mental performance.

Theme: Value identification and how it impacts your performance. In other words, how does knowing what matters to you, what makes you tick, drives your productivity and make your experience more fulfilling?

What are values?

Values are the things that matter most to us (e.g., honesty, fitness, fairness, trust, consistency, dependability, etc.). Hegarty and Huelsmannn (2020) define values as “those aspects of life that have a special resonance, or important to us, and which ideally drive our behaviour.” Values are personal to you and you alone. They are principles or qualities that guide us living a truly good life, a life we want to live, defined by us alone, no one else. Our thought is: Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to take what you value, the things you enjoy most, any and everywhere you went? It sounds like it would be a lot of fun plus everyone would get a front row seat to the real you, the authentic you, you at your best.

What is value-driven behavior and how does it help us perform?

Doing things based on what matters to you.

• Choosing and doing what matters to you increases vitality. Values-based choices, or self-directed meaning by choice, is one of the most powerful motivational systems that we know. It directs your actions and increases persistence, and predicts positive outcomes.
• Values are guideposts, giving us direction that guide how we navigate difficult situations.
• Another way to think of it is: how would you hope others would view your actions? What would make you proud of how you are in training and competition, no matter the outcome?
• We want to have these values identified and accessible to us so we can bring it to mind to keep us engaged functionally, moment-to-moment.
• Having a strong connection with our values helps direct our actions and we are less likely to be pulled off course by erratic, unpredictable, and disruptive emotions.

Issues:

When we become highly competent and proficient at tasks, we tend to lose sight of why we do what we do to begin with. We get wrapped up in the immediacy of our actions and the achievement of our short-term goals. This can undermine the motivational power that our values have on our behavior, and then fulfillment that brings. Think of it this way: Goals are our destinations, but values-in-action are how we get there as effectively and efficiently as we can. We can influence our effectiveness, efficiency, and experience by incorporating what we care about on a daily basis into our actions.

What to do:

1. Identify your values

2. Make your values salient

3. Live your values

Value Identification:

Sport Career Memory (Here’s to you…): This is a great exercise for players and coaches. Adapted from Hayes (2019).

1. Put yourself in the future, after your career is over, and determine what would give you deep satisfaction, or contentment, about how you engaged in your life and sport?
2. How would you have to train, prepare, and compete that would be important to you, regardless of the final win/loss record?
3. How would you like your career to be remembered by others?
4. Imagine at your retirement, at an event to honor you, people close to you raise their glasses and a person important to you says, “here’s to [your name], and then says something. What do they say? How do you want to live your life so that what happens in that moment resonates deeply with this as a life well-lived, and as a job well done?

The Funeral: This is a great exercise for everyone to consider. Adapted from Hegarty & Huelsmann, 2020)

1. Fully relax and imagine you are attending your own funeral. Pick three or four people to get up and speak about the kind of person you were in your life. It can be anyone, even if you think of someone and you immediately think “no, not them,” they are probably a good individual to pick.
2. Imagine how you would like them to have seen you. This is not based on reality, what your life has been thus far. This is truly an exercise based on how you want your life to be.
3. Then answer the question: How do you want to have lived your life and how would that be reflected in what these people saw in you at your funeral?
4. Reflect deeply on this exercise, taking your time, or potentially doing it multiple times. Picking our common themes from what individuals saw during the imagery will be a good clue to what your core values may be.

The Tombstone Exercise (Adapted from Hegarty & Huelsmann, 2020)

1. Thinking about the previous exercises, draw a tombstone on a piece of paper and in a few words write down the kind of person you would like to be remembered as (e.g., “RIP: he was a good person and even better friend, you could always count on him.”)

Make your values salient:

· Write your values down in multiple places multiple times. See how they land on you now that you have identified them. Does it feel right? Is it really what you care about? Do you think about them regularly?

· Make a family motto out of it. In my house when putting my kids to sleep we repeat, “be kind, humble, and grateful.”

Live your values:

1. Identify four-five small behaviors that support, or aligned with your identified values. Preferably things that you aren’t already doing or things you are doing but not consistently.
2. Schedule at least one per day to complete within the next week, hitting different values as much as possible.
3. Journal or notice how you feel during and after you engage in these actions.

Train your ability to notice valued activity and its impacts on your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Incorporating what matters most to you into your actions on a daily basis helps bring your best self to your daily life, helps you be more consistent with your tasks and those around you, and helps you live a life worth living. Remember, being engaged in the present moment (Present Moment Focus) will allow you to know when best to leverage your value system as needed.

A note from Tyler Klein, Cincinnati Reds Mental Skills Coordinator:

This will be the final newsletter from me to the Reds. I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. If you are reading this then you have supported the Mental Skills department and our goal to continuously increase awareness, knowledge, and practice of mental training within the Cincinnati Reds. Being a coordinator has been rewarding beyond belief and I hope that I have been a positive influence within the organization. It is relationships and people that matter to me and I am so grateful that I got to meet and spend a little time with you, Reds people. I will forever be thankful for this time and opportunity and wish this club and everyone involved in it the absolute best in the future.

V/r,

Tyler

#TrainYourBrain, #UpYourGame, and #BeComplete

- Tyler and Oscar

Be sure to follow us on the following Social media platforms:

Slack: #mentalfitness (#trainyourbrain for pitchers)

Instagram: @redsmentalskills

Twitter: @Redsbrain

Youtube: Redsmentalskills

Hayes, S. C. (2020). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Principles of becoming more flexible, effective, and fulfilled. Audible.

Hegarty, J. & Huelsmann, C. (2020). ACT in sport: Improve performance through mindfulness, acceptance, and commitment. Oakamoor, UK: Dark River.