We’ve reached the end of the year, and I know many of you can look back on your mental game work and claim solid progress. Congratulations! With progress comes momentum and I want to give you a few reminders on how to capitalize on that momentum vs. falling into some of the classic traps that come with it.
Regular readers here know that I often focus my advice on strengthening your weaknesses and identifying mistakes – with good reason. So much progress comes from your C-game. But the point of eliminating C-game mistakes is to ultimately take your A-game higher. And when you have momentum behind you, it’s a powerful time to plan for what’s next, especially as we finish up the year, take some time off, and look forward to 2025.
If you’re booking successes with your technical skills, your results, your overall mental strength, this is an ideal time to think about where your focus should be for the next 6-12 months. Right now you have a good understanding of what progress looks like and how you did it, which means you’ll be better than you previously were at predicting what an effective next phase looks like. It’s obviously still just a prediction with no guarantees, but putting your increased knowledge to use can keep your motivation high.
Motivation is what’s most important at this stage. If you don’t identify your next set of priorities, or goals, you run the risk of getting complacent.
If you don’t continue to focus on maintaining and improving your mental game it will inevitably slide backwards. As you climb up to the next level of mastery, you will be met with different challenges. Success doesn’t mean you are on easy street, or that the next level is assured.
For some of you that means your motivation, focus, or clarity of mind can dip and you slip into more of a B-game mode because you are satisfied with where you are at. Or, more often the case, you simply haven’t updated your goals to properly reflect your increased capacity. B-game is good. But A-game is better. By being planful and practical, you can reach your A-game more often.
On the flip side, there are some of you who will get a taste of success and try to ride that momentum into huge leaps forward instead of planful steps. You can’t just ride the momentum and expect that everything from now on will turn to gold. You still need to have a practical plan to ground your actions, otherwise you risk becoming overconfident.
Your goals and plan can, and should, be aspirational. But they need to be achievable. Stop and ask yourself some guiding questions:
- Where do you want to be in 6-12 months?
- Are you clear on the specific steps you are taking or are you just expecting success to occur?
- If you are clear on those steps, do you have them written down and know how you will measure if you’ve completed them?
- What are the risks (including in your mental game) to your plan and how will you mitigate them?
A balance of inspiration and pragmatism is the recipe you’re looking for right now.
If you approach your momentum with a view of being inspired to move forward while having a practical plan to execute, you’ve got a better chance of continuing to succeed. So as you think of 2025, find that balance and make your momentum work for you vs. just trying to ride it.
Lastly, some of you are still striving to build momentum. If you haven’t made much progress with your mental game, and you’ve been trying (you’re not just new here), it’s likely you haven’t quite gotten to the root of what’s causing the problems you are experiencing and this blog is a good place to start.
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