Renowned author and coach with a unique blend of experience as a former D1 softball player, Certified Mental Performance Consultant, and a distinguished 15+ years honing the mental toughness and resilience of Soldiers through expert teaching and training. Passionate about empowering today's youth.
Every coach or leader has seen it: someone you work with, coach, or mentor struggling with confidence, stuck in self-doubt, or unable to bounce back from mistakes. It’s heartbreaking to watch their joy or passion fade while feeling helpless to make a difference. But as a coach, leader, or mentor, you can guide your people toward mental toughness and resilience with a simple but powerful framework: Discover, Build, Apply.
This framework, drawn from my book How to Teach Mental Skills to Athletes, offers practical strategies to help your people thrive not just in work, school, or sports but in life. Throughout this article, I will use references to sports, but the principles can be applied to any performance domain. If you are in a position to help coach or mentor people, these tools and tips will be relevant.
1. Discover the foundation of mental toughness
The first step to building mental toughness is helping people develop self-awareness. Without understanding what drives their performance or holds it back, they can’t make meaningful improvements.
As Billie Jean King once said, “Self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.”
The Discover process has many tangible outcomes. First, encouraging reflection improves skill retention and transfer. For example, teaching a mental skill that helps an athlete manage nerves during a big play can also help them take a big exam in school—if you ask them to think critically about it.
Second, by asking reflective questions, you are promoting independent learning. As the saying goes, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime." By asking good questions, you are teaching people to engage in the learning process for themselves. You are showing them how to discover, not just doing it for them.
Third, by asking questions, you are building rapport and a relationship with your people. You are getting to know them, how they think, how they respond, and how their brain and body work. You are showing them you care about their experience. I have always been a firm believer that people don’t care what you know until they know you care. By involving them in reflective discovery practices and showing that their input matters, you are saying loud and clear, “I care about you!”
How coaches can help people discover
Ask reflective questions
Questions like “What went well today?” or “What can you do differently next time?” encourage the person to analyze their performance without judgment. This practice builds critical thinking and ownership of their progress.
Focus on controllable
Teach your people to concentrate on what they can control, like effort, preparation, and mindset, rather than external factors like weather or umpire calls. For example, if an athlete blames a bad hop for an error, ask, “What could you do differently next time to handle that situation?”
Create a safe environment for reflection
People need to feel they can admit mistakes without fear of criticism. As a coach, prioritize understanding over judgment. This openness fosters trust and encourages learning.
2. Build developing mental skills
Once people understand their barriers, they need tools to overcome them. This step is all about deliberate practice and equipping your people with mental strategies that work.
To better understand your people’s mental and emotional state, it is important to train them to communicate their needs. You should always uphold standards and team rules or norms. However, sometimes you might need to throw out your practice plan because your team is too overwhelmed, tired, or beat down to take any more “correction.” Sometimes, they just need to have a bit of fun or experience short-term wins to build back their confidence.
Another reason for building people’s ability to understand and voice their needs is that it facilitates their own discoveries. It helps them develop the ability to solve problems on their own. Obviously, you’re there to support them and give help as needed.
This is a crucial skill for everyone, not just athletes. Teach them to identify what they need to improve, and they will find their own solutions. This helps them understand that there’s no one right way to learn, develop, and grow.
Helping people build a growth mindset and strong communication skills sets them up for success. Give them effective feedback that emphasizes progress over perfection and remind them that growth takes time. It won’t happen overnight. Encourage them to ask for what they actually need.
How coaches can help people build mental toughness
Growth mindset
People with a growth mindset see challenges as opportunities to learn. Encourage progress over perfection by asking questions like, “What’s one way you can grow today?” This shifts their focus from comparison to personal development.
Pre-performance routines
Help people create routines that transition them from chaos (school, travel, etc.) into focus. With athletes, this could include deep breathing, visualization, or setting a specific goal for practice or competition.
Provide effective feedback
Provide constructive feedback that’s:
Specific: Focus on actions and strategies, not vague praise or criticism.
Timely: Deliver it when people are receptive. Depending on the context, in the heat of the moment, it isn’t always the best choice. Consider whether feedback needs to be shared immediately or if it can wait.
Collaborative: Involve people by asking reflective questions like, “What worked for you in that performance?” or “How do you think you could fix that next time?”
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3. Apply turning skills into habits
Mental skills are only useful if people put them into action. The final step is helping people apply their tools in everyday life.
Besides mental and physical skills, the other thing you should help your athletes apply is a game plan. While this may seem obvious to you, young people often overlook the importance of mental preparation and planning for their opponent or upcoming situation. In sports, if you know who you are getting ready to play and what kind of team they are, athletes can strategize how to maximize their success.
Teach your people how to meet the challenges they will face, whatever their skill level. This helps them focus on what they can control and put their energy and efforts in the right places.
I worked with a cross-country runner who had difficulty reaching competitive times. She had the ability and had previously run those times but was struggling with her confidence after a poor performance. I asked her, “What is your race plan? How do you get ready to run?” And she looked at me like I was crazy. I asked a few more questions like, “Do you have a pace you are trying to run at? Do you run the first mile the same as the third?” She responded with, “I never really thought about it. I just warm up and go run.”
Well, you can probably guess why she was struggling. She had absolutely no plan for how to run the race she wanted. Just getting her to think through that and create a plan helped her immensely. She habitually started too fast and had no energy at the end. I helped her develop a simple race plan and a better pre-race routine, and she started doing much better running at her normal race times.
In any sport or life, having a game plan is crucial.
People need to have an intention or a plan for achieving the outcomes they want. Success doesn’t just happen by chance. This is why successful pro athletes or teams study game footage. They are trying to learn as much as they can about their opponent so they can build a game plan to set themselves up for success.
Even if you don’t have access to “game footage,” develop effective strategies based on what you are getting ready to do and who you are doing it with. Obviously, any game plan might need to shift as real-world competing conditions change. But having a starting point for how you are specifically going to approach the situation makes it easier to succeed.
The “game plan” should not just be technical and tactical. It should include all elements of the sport or situation but also prepare them for distractions and common problems that are likely to occur.
In sports, how will they deal with a bad call, poor weather, a mistake, or an error? In life or business, what will they do if things don’t go according to plan? What are some likely obstacles that could arise?
Helping people build a plan for these types of moments allows them to have more confidence because they feel prepared and ready. When they feel prepared to use specific strategies to overcome challenges, it helps them manage their nerves because they know what to do.
These are the simple things you can do to help them apply skills they’ve learned from the discovery and build process. Whatever they’ve come up with, hold them accountable for actually doing that thing. For athletes, this will help them play well with confidence, calm, and the ability to be clutch while they do it. But for anyone in any performance domain, being more confident and calm is always a good thing.
You do not have to be a mental skills or sports psychology expert to lead your people in the Discover, Build, Apply method. People learning what works for them is valuable. It’s best for people to write down their discoveries so they can remember them later.
Strategies for application
Encourage intentional preparation
Guide people to show up with a plan. For example, a batter might decide to focus on their timing against off-speed pitches during practice. A person who prepares with purpose consistently outperforms those who “wing it.”
Game plans for success
Help your people create plans not just for technical skills but for handling distractions, mistakes, or nerves. For example, in sports:
What will you do if the weather changes?
How will you reset after a bad call?
Hold people accountable
Check-in regularly to ensure your people are implementing their tools. Consistent application turns mental skills into lasting habits.
Why it works
The Discover, Build, Apply framework simplifies the process of coaching mental toughness while fostering trust, growth, and resilience. It empowers athletes (or anyone being coached or mentored) to own their journey and equips coaches with practical tools to guide them.
Are you a sports coach who wants to help your athletes build confidence, stay calm under pressure, and perform their best when it counts? My book, How to Teach Mental Skills to Athletes: Confident, Calm, and Clutch Coaching Companion, provides step-by-step strategies to implement this framework in your practices and games.
If you would like to learn more about how to develop and foster mental toughness and resilience in young people, sign up for my free newsletter here.
Read more from Valerie Alston
Valerie Alston, Mental Performance and Resilience Coach
Drawing from a rich background as a former D1 softball player and a Certified Mental Performance Consultant, she boasts over 15 years of experience dedicated to teaching and training Soldiers in the intricate art of mental toughness and resilience. As a distinguished author and coach, she brings a unique perspective to the realm of performance enhancement. Currently, her passion lies in empowering today's youth, leveraging her expertise to build and foster resilience through sports and mental toughness training, ensuring the next generation thrives in both their athletic pursuits and broader life challenges. With a comprehensive approach to athlete development, she extends her expertise to parents and coaches. Committed to enhancing understanding, she collaborates with them to impart valuable insights on building the mental toughness of young athletes, fostering an environment that nurtures resilience and unleashes their full potential.
