Latest / Mental Per4mance Daily with Adam Rutz / Saban: Rat Poison
Transcript
- Adam Rutz: Sometimes the most dangerous thing that happens after a win is believing that you've arrived. In 2017, Nick Saban and his number one ranked Alabama Crimson Tide traveled to College Station, Texas to take on Texas AM. Now, if you know college football, you know Kyle Field is one of the toughest environments in the country to play in. There's over a hundred thousand fans all hoping to watch you lose. But Alabama went on the road, took care of business, And came away with a 27-19 victory. And after the game, despite all the praise his team had been receiving from the national media, Sabin wasn't interested in hearing about how great Alabama was. He referred to that constant positive coverage as rap poison. Now think about that. Why would a coach call praise poison? Because when you start believing the headlines, you can stop paying attention to the little details that got you there in the first place. Your preparation starts to slip, your standards start dropping, and suddenly the outside noise begins influencing how you operate. And here's the mental performance lesson. Praise and criticism are both information, but neither one should dictate your focus or your standards. Think about a quarterback who's called a superstar after a big game on Saturday. Or a business owner who just had a record-breaking sales month. That's great. Celebrate it. appreciate it. But does that success change the fundamentals that produced it? Does it mean you can suddenly skip watching film or cut corners in your preparation or stop executing the process that got you there? Absolutely not. And the same goes from the other side. One bad review or bad performance or ugly loss doesn't suddenly mean you're incapable of being great. You've got to learn to separate useful feedback from emotional noise. So Here's a simple mental performance tool that you can use today. Whenever you receive praise or criticism, ask yourself three questions. Number one, is there something useful I can learn from this? Number two, is there something here that's within my control? Number three, what's the action I need to take? If there's a lesson, apply it. If it's just noise, release it. Then Get your attention right back to the process and the next opportunity in front of you. Because you can absolutely enjoy success, but don't become satisfied with it. And remember, criticism can be one of your greatest teachers, but don't ever allow it to define who you are. Mindset, process, discipline, execution that's mental performance daily.