“When praises go up, blessings come down”
The holidays are over but we can’t forget about being grateful until the holidays come back next year! YOU HAVE TO BE GRATEFUL ALL YEAR AROUND!
We are grateful for you and your support. We are thankful for the opportunity to work with athletes, coaches, and teams across the nation.
Anyone who has followed Basketball Mindset from the beginning knows that Basketball Mindset Principle #1 is: I am thankful for the opportunity to play basketball. You can and should apply this to every other area of your life.
A common theme among the happiest and holiest (and now some of the best basketball players) is that they possess an attitude of gratitude. They take time to think about and even write down the things they are grateful for.
Many professional or college basketball players echo this attitude in their interviews after a game.
· Lebron James talks about being grateful for the opportunity to compete and train in almost every interview.
According to research from the Greater Good, three major benefits of having an Attitude of Gratitude are increased physical, psychological, and social well-being.
Physical
• Stronger immune systems
1. With a strong immune system, it is less likely for you to become sick. There is more opportunity for you to play at your best without being weak and fatigued.
2. With a weak immune system, you are more likely to become injured, develop an illness, miss practices or games, fall back on school work, and not play at your optimal level during competition time.
3. To help keep a strong immune system: get enough rest at night and do not staying up late, eat healthy by staying away from unhealthy foods, take your vitamins, fuel your body with nutritional foods with high protein/good carbohydrates/good fats, dress appropriately in the cold weather, and change negative stress into good types of stress.
• Less bothered by aches and pains
1. With your body feeling at 100% all the time, how could you not play at your best all the time?
2. Your body will feel less fatigued during your season, making it much easier to play the way you want to play.
3. Without gratitude, you will focus more on the negative side of life than the positive, making aches and pains more noticeable. With the right mindset, your body will feel like it never encountered any pain before.
• Lower blood pressure
1. If you have high blood pressure, it can cause heart problems, increases risk of stroke, it can damage your vision, and increase kidney problems.
2. Lowering your blood pressure will reduce heart problems, decrease chances of having a stroke, improve vision, and boost kidney health
• Exercise more and take better care of their health
1. If you do not appreciate and be thankful for yourself, it will be very hard for you to want to take care of your body.
2. Exercise is an action you should do every day for at least 30 minutes, and should strive to have a minimum of 10,000 steps a day to be considered healthy.
3. It is important to take care of yourself, and, without gratitude for yourself, it can be challenging.
• Sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking
1. With your body and mind at ease, it will make your sleeping patterns better. You will not move as much, wake up in the middle of the night, and have less nightmares.
2. If you take a nap, it should only be for 15-20 minutes. If it is anything longer than that, your body will enter a deeper sleep, making you groggy, which will make it challenging to get tasks done later in your day.
Psychological
• Higher levels of positive emotions
1. Having an attitude of gratitude inherently puts an emphasis on positive thinking.
2. In practicing this attitude, negative emotions are more easily flushed from the mind, making your overall demeanor more positive, forward thinking, and open to progress.
• More alert, alive, and awake
1. Maintaining positive emotions can have a huge effect on alertness and fatigue. Think about times that you’ve been bogged down by negativity, regardless of the cause. Did you also feel physically tired, emotionally fatigued, and worn out?
2. Negativity is often associated with sub-par physical performance. Studies have found that negative thinking actually goes so far as to affect the chemistry of multiple parts of the brain, causing a snowball effect where increased fatigue can lead to more negativity, which then increases more fatigue, which increases negativity, etc.
3. Positive thinking, therefore, has the opposite effect, and will help you feel more alert, alive, and awake, increasing overall performance in all fields.
• More joy and pleasure
1. The physical effects of positive thinking are not the only important psychological benefits. Positive thinking is known to affect the brain in multiple ways. It can actually increase the presence of the chemicals that regulate joy and pleasure.
2. The release of these chemicals has an intense effect on your psychological well-being, causing you to feel pleasure and ultimately increasing overall performance.
• More optimism and happiness
1. When everything is said and done, the effects of positive thinking on alertness, wakefulness, joy, and pleasure all compound and increase optimism and happiness.
2. Optimism and happiness, then, affect your ability to maintain positive thinking and emotions. It ultimately works in a synergistic way, where every factor affects every other factor and combines to create results that are greater than the sum of the individual parts.
3. The effect on performance can be huge. This is easily identifiable in your life. Think about times where you’ve been inspired or worked to maintain positive thinking. Did you not also feel the intense effect on your performance, which then led to more confidence and positivity?
4. Embracing an attitude of gratitude and committing to positivity are paramount to achieving and maintaining top performance.
Social
• More helpful, generous, and compassionate
1.Embracing an attitude of gratitude can increase internal thoughts of helpfulness, generosity, and compassion. This, in turn, increases, outward projections of those traits.
2.Helpfulness, generosity, and compassion have a profound effect on peer relations and can increase team spirit and communal well-being. Creating a culture in which teammates can turn to you for help is an important step in the right direction towards a positive and productive environment.
• More forgiving
1.Compassion is a key factor in understanding mistakes, both personal and external. It is crucial in maintaining a positive attitude to be able to forgive, learn, and move on.
2.Negative thoughts are often produced by an unwillingness to forgive. Think about times that you or others have made mistakes that seemed unforgivable. How did that situation affect your mindset and performance? It likely led to angry thoughts, negative emotions, and less-than-optimal performance!
3.It is important to remember that mistakes happen. Instead of allowing those mistakes to turn into negativity, look at them as opportunities for growth! We should be grateful for these opportunities, as they allow us to learn and progress.
• More outgoing
1. Positivity has a direct relationship with being personable. Aside from the previously mentioned factors, positive thinking increases self-esteem and confidence, allowing you to be more outgoing and comfortable in social settings.
2. This increase in being social can have a major effect on opportunities. Being more outgoing gives you a greater chance to create and maintain relationships with important people in your field, increasing potential opportunities for professional and personal growth.
• Feel less lonely and isolated.
1. Another major impact of being more outgoing is a decreased feeling of loneliness. This obvious effect should not be taken lightly, as loneliness and isolation can have a huge negative effect on thought and emotion.
2. Working to decrease the frequency of these feelings helps to concurrently decrease the frequency of sadness, depression, and negativity as a whole. This can therefore increase all aspects of positive thinking, which, as previously discussed, have a huge effect on performance.
Mindset Tip: Make gratitude a part of your daily training. Write down 3 things you are grateful for each day. Train your mind to be grateful!
The holidays are over but we can’t forget about being grateful until the holidays come back next year! YOU HAVE TO BE GRATEFUL ALL YEAR AROUND!
We are grateful for you and your support. We are thankful for the opportunity to work with athletes, coaches, and teams across the nation.
Anyone who has followed Basketball Mindset from the beginning knows that Basketball Mindset Principle #1 is: I am thankful for the opportunity to play basketball. You can and should apply this to every other area of your life.
A common theme among the happiest and holiest (and now some of the best basketball players) is that they possess an attitude of gratitude. They take time to think about and even write down the things they are grateful for.
Many professional or college basketball players echo this attitude in their interviews after a game.
· Lebron James talks about being grateful for the opportunity to compete and train in almost every interview.
According to research from the Greater Good, three major benefits of having an Attitude of Gratitude are increased physical, psychological, and social well-being.
Physical
• Stronger immune systems
1. With a strong immune system, it is less likely for you to become sick. There is more opportunity for you to play at your best without being weak and fatigued.
2. With a weak immune system, you are more likely to become injured, develop an illness, miss practices or games, fall back on school work, and not play at your optimal level during competition time.
3. To help keep a strong immune system: get enough rest at night and do not staying up late, eat healthy by staying away from unhealthy foods, take your vitamins, fuel your body with nutritional foods with high protein/good carbohydrates/good fats, dress appropriately in the cold weather, and change negative stress into good types of stress.
• Less bothered by aches and pains
1. With your body feeling at 100% all the time, how could you not play at your best all the time?
2. Your body will feel less fatigued during your season, making it much easier to play the way you want to play.
3. Without gratitude, you will focus more on the negative side of life than the positive, making aches and pains more noticeable. With the right mindset, your body will feel like it never encountered any pain before.
• Lower blood pressure
1. If you have high blood pressure, it can cause heart problems, increases risk of stroke, it can damage your vision, and increase kidney problems.
2. Lowering your blood pressure will reduce heart problems, decrease chances of having a stroke, improve vision, and boost kidney health
• Exercise more and take better care of their health
1. If you do not appreciate and be thankful for yourself, it will be very hard for you to want to take care of your body.
2. Exercise is an action you should do every day for at least 30 minutes, and should strive to have a minimum of 10,000 steps a day to be considered healthy.
3. It is important to take care of yourself, and, without gratitude for yourself, it can be challenging.
• Sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking
1. With your body and mind at ease, it will make your sleeping patterns better. You will not move as much, wake up in the middle of the night, and have less nightmares.
2. If you take a nap, it should only be for 15-20 minutes. If it is anything longer than that, your body will enter a deeper sleep, making you groggy, which will make it challenging to get tasks done later in your day.
Psychological
• Higher levels of positive emotions
1. Having an attitude of gratitude inherently puts an emphasis on positive thinking.
2. In practicing this attitude, negative emotions are more easily flushed from the mind, making your overall demeanor more positive, forward thinking, and open to progress.
• More alert, alive, and awake
1. Maintaining positive emotions can have a huge effect on alertness and fatigue. Think about times that you’ve been bogged down by negativity, regardless of the cause. Did you also feel physically tired, emotionally fatigued, and worn out?
2. Negativity is often associated with sub-par physical performance. Studies have found that negative thinking actually goes so far as to affect the chemistry of multiple parts of the brain, causing a snowball effect where increased fatigue can lead to more negativity, which then increases more fatigue, which increases negativity, etc.
3. Positive thinking, therefore, has the opposite effect, and will help you feel more alert, alive, and awake, increasing overall performance in all fields.
• More joy and pleasure
1. The physical effects of positive thinking are not the only important psychological benefits. Positive thinking is known to affect the brain in multiple ways. It can actually increase the presence of the chemicals that regulate joy and pleasure.
2. The release of these chemicals has an intense effect on your psychological well-being, causing you to feel pleasure and ultimately increasing overall performance.
• More optimism and happiness
1. When everything is said and done, the effects of positive thinking on alertness, wakefulness, joy, and pleasure all compound and increase optimism and happiness.
2. Optimism and happiness, then, affect your ability to maintain positive thinking and emotions. It ultimately works in a synergistic way, where every factor affects every other factor and combines to create results that are greater than the sum of the individual parts.
3. The effect on performance can be huge. This is easily identifiable in your life. Think about times where you’ve been inspired or worked to maintain positive thinking. Did you not also feel the intense effect on your performance, which then led to more confidence and positivity?
4. Embracing an attitude of gratitude and committing to positivity are paramount to achieving and maintaining top performance.
Social
• More helpful, generous, and compassionate
1.Embracing an attitude of gratitude can increase internal thoughts of helpfulness, generosity, and compassion. This, in turn, increases, outward projections of those traits.
2.Helpfulness, generosity, and compassion have a profound effect on peer relations and can increase team spirit and communal well-being. Creating a culture in which teammates can turn to you for help is an important step in the right direction towards a positive and productive environment.
• More forgiving
1.Compassion is a key factor in understanding mistakes, both personal and external. It is crucial in maintaining a positive attitude to be able to forgive, learn, and move on.
2.Negative thoughts are often produced by an unwillingness to forgive. Think about times that you or others have made mistakes that seemed unforgivable. How did that situation affect your mindset and performance? It likely led to angry thoughts, negative emotions, and less-than-optimal performance!
3.It is important to remember that mistakes happen. Instead of allowing those mistakes to turn into negativity, look at them as opportunities for growth! We should be grateful for these opportunities, as they allow us to learn and progress.
• More outgoing
1. Positivity has a direct relationship with being personable. Aside from the previously mentioned factors, positive thinking increases self-esteem and confidence, allowing you to be more outgoing and comfortable in social settings.
2. This increase in being social can have a major effect on opportunities. Being more outgoing gives you a greater chance to create and maintain relationships with important people in your field, increasing potential opportunities for professional and personal growth.
• Feel less lonely and isolated.
1. Another major impact of being more outgoing is a decreased feeling of loneliness. This obvious effect should not be taken lightly, as loneliness and isolation can have a huge negative effect on thought and emotion.
2. Working to decrease the frequency of these feelings helps to concurrently decrease the frequency of sadness, depression, and negativity as a whole. This can therefore increase all aspects of positive thinking, which, as previously discussed, have a huge effect on performance.
Mindset Tip: Make gratitude a part of your daily training. Write down 3 things you are grateful for each day. Train your mind to be grateful!