The magic of thinking big for fitness coaches
The magic of thinking big (1959) outlines why believing in ourselves is key to success. You will learn how you can achieve any goal you set. The methodology is based on numerous interactions with business leaders who have seen both: Failure and success.
David J. Schwartz (1927 - 1987) was a Professor at Georgia State University. In addition, he was the president of the leadership consulting firm Creative Educational Services. The big book summarises his experience from 3000 lectures.
Why you should care about big goals
Going up a division or getting to the playoffs starts with thinking big. If you and your team have no aspirations apart from having a drink in the clubhouse you won't go far. If you want sponsors to pay for your beer, better make a plan to make them think it is worthwhile sending the crates your way for free.
If you want to be a good coach it likely that it will help that you elevate your team to the next level. However, how you get there is up to you. Make it worth your while. You only have one life so you might as well shoot for the stars.
What happens when you think big
I started this blog in 2014. Most people in training at my employer saw this as a necessary evil to get through onboarding. The project annoyed them. Some of them had a bad attitude towards it. Without exception, the ones who strived in the company took it seriously with a positive attitude.
Now, this blog has more than 20.000 readers a month and still counting. I have become a better athlete than I have ever been in my entire life. Now I want to inspire coaches to be better so that fewer teenagers drop sports in their formative years like I did. It did me no good that I focused on the wrong things in my twenties.
Why you do not think big
Thinking big is a skill which is not necessarily taught in school. The routine fact memorization makes our brains rigid. This boxes you in and keeps you from fulfilling your full potential. Creative thinking makes our brains adaptive and flexible. Think of the dreams you had as a child and how fast you were able to learn. Thinking big can connect you back with your inner child to achieve greatness.
What you experience in school might also happen at home. Even the people closest to you will doubt your big dreams. Winning the Super Bowl is madness. You better stick to your day to day job. Building an Online empire does not pay the rent. Go work in your uncle's garage instead. Something like this has probably already crossed your path. It is not nice and it is real.
The truth is this kind of thinking is not healthy or normal. In fact, it is one of the main things that keeps people from becoming successful. Surround yourself with people who believe in your dreams and help. A single person usually does not "pull themselves up" to a higher level with no help. It is more common to be lifted up by the people around you. Identify them early and foster relationships with them.
A good step towards fostering better relationships is to get rid of your bad attitude. If you have an underlying bad attitude it will generate different reactions from the people around you. Bad attracts bad. You will often find that someone who did not fulfill their dreams or goals have a bad attitude to go with it. Harder to make the case the other way around. Failures are busy with finding excuses for why they failed. Succesful people dust themselves off and look for another way to try.
With a positive attitude, it will become easier to set big hairy goals. Big hairy goals are pointless without action. Act and learn from the setbacks or delays. Use them as opportunities to learn and avoid them in the future.
When you are building a team as a coach, surround yourself with ambitious, positive people. This gets the job done quicker and easier. When someone gets injured, analyze the situation in which it happened. Was it overtraining? Do your tactics put players at the peril of being injured? Was it a lack of focus on the day because of stress at home? All of these factors come into play when you want to build a high performing world-class team.
How to build confidence to get more sponsors
Thinking big starts with confidence. The easiest way to establish confidence is a success. Where you can start yourself and with your team is to form better habits. These can be small things like cleaning out the facilities together after a match. Once you can afford to hire someone to take care of it because you moved up a division. The extra discipline and team spirit developed while cleaning the facilities might have helped to achieve that.
Once the facilities are clean you might be able to assign a designated spot to every player in the changing rooms. The next step to be more professional and organized. This, of course, does not work when everyone's stuff is all over the place. These little steps will set you on a path in which you feel 100 percent capable of doing anything you set your mind to.
The more you and your athletes believe in yourselves, the more creative power is released. This means even the most challenging tasks like making the playoffs or even winning them become feasible. Just as long as your level of belief matches the task's difficulty. Once your team starts believing in themselves something else will happen: Other people will start believing in you too.
The byproduct will be that you will create a support system by inspiring others to place confidence in you. If this sounds a bit fluffy confidence is the start of any relationship. We are talking more players who come regularly to fill your roster in lower divisions. A bit further up the ranks, this will attract local sponsors. You might even go international. This all starts with the little things.
While a positive attitude helps to build confidence in you and your team you also need to evolve. For this creative thinking helps. Ask yourself each day "How can I do a better job today" to improve your training schedules and be at the front of the pack. Install this thinking in the team so that I keep self-improving. A great book to read on this topic is Extreme Ownership written by Jocko Willing.
Treat everyone you know and encounter as if they were important. You will notice how they will start treating you in the same way. If you want to be successful, do what successful people do. Create a high-quality environment for yourself and your team. Do this by making sure that your home, the pitch, the lockers, changing rooms, showers, social circles and the leisure time you spent are of the highest quality. High quality means that they encourage you to grow as a person and as a team.
Buy books written by experts in the fields you are interested in. Pay tuition to take classes and enhance your knowledge. Sign up for thought-provoking journals. Make investments in your knowledge and enhance the power of your mind. Always asking "What can I do to make myself more deserving of the next opportunity?"
Conclusion
Attitude is at the core of being successful. From there it is the daily grind. Day by day become better. This blog built with over 500 different articles. We are still counting. Rome was not built in a day. It was built brick by brick and battle by battle over centuries. Start with the small things and build your way to the big things you always dreamed of.
Further reading
- 12 practical tips for fitness coaches to be healthier
- As a man thinketh for fitness coaches
- Best apps for fitness coaches
- Choose yourself for fitness coaches
- Deep work for fitness coaches
- Finish for fitness coaches
- Grit for fitness coaches
- How fitness coaches get mindfulness easily
- How fitness coaches get unlimited power for their clients
- Mastery for fitness coaches
- Rework for fitness coaches
- The ONE Thing for fitness coaches
- The power of now for fitness coaches
- The power of positive thinking for fitness coaches