Brian Johnson (Heroic +1 #1,669) discusses Darren Donnelly’s book The Mental Game, a sports fable about a struggling professional golfer who learns mindset lessons from a mentor. Brian reads and highlights a key passage advising that self-talk should direct rather than deceive: tell yourself how you want to feel and what you want to happen next, and actively ‘talk to yourself’ rather than passively listening. He emphasizes two takeaways: (1) self-talk’s purpose is direction, not deception; (2) don’t listen to yourself — talk to yourself, all day, every day.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. As we've discussed many times, I love Darren Donnelly and his great sports fables. We covered all of them in his Sports for the Soul series. Check out our notes. These are all linked in this one on Think like a warrior. Old school grit, relentless optimism. Victory favors the fearless life to the fullest and the turnaround. So when I saw that Darren had a new book in his series called the Mental Game, I immediately got it, read it and loved it. This book features a professional golfer who is struggling to make it on the PGA Tour. He has the opportunity to spend time with one of the greatest golfers of the era who gives him some life changing wisdom. It's fantastic. Super inspiring. Quick reading, pure gold. Check out the notes. We've got a link to get the book as well. Now like all his other books, it's packed with wisdom wrapped up in a great heroic sports story. Today I want to chat about my favorite idea in the book. Let's get to work. Darren has the struggling golfers wise mentor tell us, and I quote, what you have to remember is that the point of self talk isn't to deceive yourself. The point is to direct yourself. You don't have to keep describing the negative situation. You already know what it is that you're facing. If you let that negative voice say whatever it wants in tough times, it will keep reminding you that of how bad the situation is and all the things that are likely to go wrong because of it. This is when you have to take charge and talk positively to yourself. Tell yourself how you want to feel, not how you already feel. Tell yourself what you want to have happen next instead of ruminating on what already happened. This will shift your focus. Then he says what you focus on most tends to come about. Therefore you want your self talk and directing your focus to the thoughts, actions and results you want, not what you don't want. And finally, he says you have to take control of your self talk. Don't listen to yourself. Talk to yourself. Recognize that there is an ongoing battle taking place in your mind. You must take an active role in this battle. End quote. That's a really powerful passage. Two things I want to emphasize. First, the point of self talk is not to deceive yourself, it's to direct yourself. Second, and this is genius, we don't want to listen to ourselves. We want to talk to ourselves. That's a huge distinction. I repeat, the point of self talk is not to deceive yourself. It's to direct yourself we don't want to listen to ourselves. We want to talk to ourselves. When? All day, every day, especially today.
