Rehearse the Resistance: Why Elite Performers Prepare for Adversity, Not Just Success

Visualization is one of the most widely used mental performance tools in sports and performance, but many people use it incorrectly. In this episode, Zach explores why elite performers shouldn’t just visualize success, but also mentally rehearse the adversity, setbacks, and pressure that come with pursuing meaningful goals.

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Transcript

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What if I told you that one of the most popular mental skills in sports and high performance is also one of the most misunderstood? Visualization has become a staple in performance psychology, leadership, and personal development. But many people only use it to imagine success. They imagine winning the championship, having a breakthrough in their own individual performance, or producing a perfect outcome. Yet research suggests that the most effective mental preparation doesn't just involve creating a compelling vision for the future, it also involves anticipating the inevitable challenges along the journey and mentally rehearsing how you want to respond to them. Adversity, in essence, is all part of the process. So today on the podcast, we're going to discuss why elite performers and leaders don't just visualize success, they also rehearse for adversity too. Hey coaches and leaders, I got a quick question for you. You spend a lot of time building game plans for those you lead, but when was the last time you built one for yourself? If you're looking to sharpen your leadership skills, strengthen your team culture, or find better ways to support and challenge your athletes in the mental game, I'd love to help. I'm offering a free coaching call where we can talk through your current challenges and create a simple game plan for what might move the needle most for you, your players, and your program. Most coaches I know obsess over developing their team, but they neglect the person in the mirror. This call is a chance to invest in you because a better you is going to produce a better them. And if that sounds helpful, you can grab a time at Callenly.com slash Zach Brandon. That's Callenly.com slash Zach Brandon, or just check the link in the show notes. I'd love to connect and explore how I can best support you. Now the concept and skill and practice of visualization isn't new. Humans have practiced versions of this for centuries. Military leaders, for example, have long rehearsed scenarios before battles. Stoic philosophers practice something called premeditatio malorum or the premeditation of evils, where in essence they would intentionally reflect on potential setbacks or challenges beforehand. Now, this was not intended to be some pessimistic practice, but there was actually this strongly held belief that this form of mental preparation for challenges could help one become more steady and more stoic in situations where it can be most difficult to show up in this way. In our current society and our world, sometimes people have misunderstood visualization as simply positive thinking, or they've compared it to what all sometimes gets lumped with the like manifestation. But historically, many of the most effective forms of mental rehearsal weren't just about imagining success. They were also about preparing for reality. This is not to say that visualizing one's goals or desired outcomes isn't worthwhile or useful. We do know that having a compelling vision of your future and mentally rehearsing that and imagining that can play an essential role in our motivation here in the present moment. It gives people something emotionally meaningful to move toward. And in difficult moments, when we start to lose sight as to why we started our journey in the first place, having that clear and compelling vision of the future and that outcome we're trying to produce can help kind of propel us. It in essence can help remind us or re-spark that why as to why we started in the first place. But where most people unintentionally misuse visualization is that they stop at the outcome. They visualize the championship, they visualize a successful season, a breakthrough, an achievement. But what they never or rarely mentally rehearse is the reality required to get there. That includes setback, that includes uncertainty, that includes fatigue, frustration, pressure, and difficult decisions. Now there's two researchers by the name of Shelly Taylor and Lee Ann Pham who at the at UCLA conducted a study where one group of students visualized earning an A on an exam while another group visualized the process of studying. So they imagine themselves sitting down, removing their distractions, focusing, and following through on the actual behaviors that in essence would help produce success on the test. The students who visualize the process perform significantly better. Now why? Because visualization becomes most useful when it prepares us for action. It's optimal when it primes us in the form of behavior. That's why I love the idea of visualizing like choice points. Not just the moments where things go right, but can you imagine yourself in those moments where it would be very easy to drift? The moment where you're exhausted and you still choose to be disciplined, the moment where you're frustrated, and yet you still choose to remain composed. The moment where you lose and you still choose to keep things in perspective, or a moment of conflict that might show up, and yet you still choose to communicate and have the conversation that is needed rather than avoid it. Um or even the example of oftentimes where doubt might enter and yet you still choose to stay committed to your goals or to your values or what's most important to you. This also connects very closely to the work of Gabrielle Ottenjan and her research on mental contrasting, which has found that pairing a compelling vision of the future with the honest acknowledgement of obstacles can actually improve our self-regulation and our follow-through. And I've been thinking about this a lot more recently, even on a personal level, um, because one thing that I've uh reluctantly agreed to do is uh next month I'll be competing in a Ragnar Mountain Relay race with seven others. And it's uh for those that are not familiar with Ragnar, it's basically an overnight team relay race where we're um each person will run upwards of 15 plus miles over the uh course of three legs, and it's gonna be up through the mountains. Uh, we're doing it out in Oregon, so it's gonna be really fun. Uh, hopefully some great views along the way. However, what I also know will be built into this is a lot of very challenging moments, especially with the way the course is set up. Um, and so there's gonna be some difficult climbs in the middle of the night, there's gonna be difficult um legs with limited rest in between. So, one of the things that I've been doing on a personal level is trying to start to simulate some of that in my training. Now, I have no idea whether or not this is gonna help. In theory, it will, uh, but we will see. I am not exactly um the most fit or or apt to call myself a runner, but things that I've been doing, running a couple of times a day instead of just running once, training under some fatigue. Definitely preparing for some of the discomfort that's gonna arise and thinking ahead as to what I want to tell myself in some of these moments when things are gonna get difficult. Again, whether this is physical and or even on the mental side, it can be really beneficial for us to start to train our response to this inevitable adversity that many of us will face along our journeys. Now, all of this to say, I think oftentimes visualization or mental rehearsal mainly gets attached to uh a practice and a technique that can be incredibly valuable for athletes and performers. And yes, that is true. But I also think this has important implications for coaches and leaders. Because just like we would encourage athletes to mentally prepare for performance, leaders can also mentally rehearse for leadership under pressure. Every meaningful season is going to encounter some form of adversity. There's gonna be moments where confidence starts to dip for your players or even amongst the staff, communication will get tested, standards all of a sudden might slip or somebody might fall below the line with them, uh, frustrations will arise, external pressure will start to creep in and increase, and difficult conversations are gonna become paramount. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that leaders will make sometimes is assuming that they'll simply figure it out emotionally in the moment. But if you've never thought about how you want to respond beforehand, it becomes very easy to default into reaction instead of intentional leadership. So if you're a coach or a leader and it it can be incredibly useful to mentally prepare for how do I want to respond in certain circumstances? How do I want to respond when our team all of a sudden loses a few games in a row? When a key player maybe starts to underperform, and it might be time to shuffle the lineup or make some changes to the team setup, when your staff all of a sudden becomes emotionally drained, or when the criticism from outside the locker room gets really loud, um, or just when the season, in essence, and how it unfolds stops matching the original vision that you had before the season started. What message do you want your behavior and your words to communicate in those given moments? So I think that's an important piece here. So my challenge for all of us is regardless whether you plan to use this with your players or for yourself, is to remember to not just visualize the destination, visualize the demands of the journey too. Ask yourself, how do I want to respond when these moments of adversity arrive? If you're a coach or leader, rehearse your leadership intentionally. Leadership isn't rarely going to be tested when things are easy. It's going to mostly be tested when uncertainty starts to creep into the environment. And the more mentally prepared you are for those moments, the less likely you are to abandon your values and your standards when that pressure increases. So, all this to say, don't forget, like visualization, it's a great tool. It is probably the most widely used mental skill out there. It's incredibly powerful. But the goal isn't simply to imagine success, it's to prepare yourself for the decisions, the behaviors, and the responses that meaningful success is going to require, which is gonna be a lot of challenges along the way.