Rick is joined by Dr. Jason Selk this week to talk sports mental toughness and his book, Relentless Solution Focus.
Have a listen:
Dr. Selk has a unique process that helps athletes win World Series' and businesses increase productivity up to 30 percent.
“The most successful people are those who are mentally tough. They choose thoughts that biologically improve their quality of life. In this book, you will learn to achieve what you never imagined; and when things do go wrong, you will know how to deal with them simply and effectively,” explains performance coach Dr. Jason Selk in RELENTLESS SOLUTION FOCUS: Train Your Mind To Conquer Stress, Pressure, and Underperformance (McGraw-Hill; January 5, 2021), written with his associate Dr. Ellen Reed.
Twenty years ago, Dr. Selk set out to combine what he knew about cognitive neuroscience, brain chemistry, and human performance to create a training method to show people exactly how to develop mental toughness. After years of research with clinical patients and having worked with thousands of people considered “the best,” he developed Relentless Solution Focus (RSF). It’s a three-step process that has since been proven to help people win World Series, Super-Bowls, National Championships, Olympic gold medals, and increase business productivity by up to 30 percent year over year.
Mentally tough people actually choose the thoughts that cause them to take actions that lead to positive outcomes, although this is contrary to the way humans are hardwired. “Over millennia, our very survival relied on our ability to be alert to potential dangers,” says Dr. Selk. That is, we are pre-disposed to look for problems – what he calls “Problem-Centric Thought.” This negativity bias significantly limits our potential and increases stress, pressure, and underperformance.
By developing a Relentless Solution Focus (RSF) – which he and Ellen Reed have taught to tens of thousands of clients – people will not only be prepared for adversity, but will be able to thrive in it. This mind-training regimen makes it possible to reframe every problem into an opportunity for positive, productive action. The three-step process includes:
Recognize – First, recognize when negative thinking has set in. The RSF process teaches people to be alert to negative thoughts, and to use the onset of this thinking to create positive behavior change. This is critical because what anyone focuses on expands. Focusing on problems makes them larger and less manageable.
Replace – Once people recognize their problem-focused thoughts, it is essential to replace the negative thinking with more positive thoughts. The key is to do it quickly—within sixty seconds or less. To do this, people must ask themselves one simple question: What is one thing I can do right now that could make this better? Dr. Selk advises using what he calls a “The Mental Chalkboard” to ensure that people focus on solutions. Fortunately, just as focusing on problems causes them to expand, focusing on solutions has the same effect.
Retrain – “No muscle becomes strong without training, developing mental strength requires training, as well,” explains Dr. Selk. Although negative thinking is hardwired, the brain has the ability to change. RELENTLESS SOLUTION FOCUS provides specific tools – including the Mental Workout and Success Logs – that will enable readers to train their minds in only three minutes per day.
“Adversity itself isn’t controllable. What is always controllable is what you do about it. The mentally tough zero in on what can be done—the solution side of the mental chalkboard,” asserts Dr. Selk. RELENTLESS SOLUTION FOCUS will enable anyone to put his remarkable process to work for themselves
Dr. Jason Selk ,one of the nation’s premier performance coaches, has worked with business titans and superstar athletes. As Director of Mental Training for the St. Louis Cardinals, he played an important role in the team’s first World Series victory in more than twenty years in 2006, and their second in 2011. Dr. Selk, who earned a Doctorate in counseling and sport psychology at the University of Missouri, is the bestselling author of Executive Toughness, 10-Minute Toughness, Organize Tomorrow Today, and Lead Any Team to Win.
Monday, February 15, 2021 at 11:01AM 
