The Habit Of Quitting

An Excerpt from The Game Within

Mental toughness is forged in the white heat of the crucible of impending failure and endures the frigid cold in the shadow of possible defeat.

In every contested game an athlete is subject to physical and mental fatigue. In those moments, the mind gives internal voice to the option of quitting. A player’s mind will suggest that giving up for a play or the remainder of the game are reasonable choices. Since this voice can only be heard by the individual athlete the decision falls squarely on his or her shoulders. The choice is black and white; acquiesce to weakness and quit or remain committed to the fight.

The human brain is an amazing organ in that it has the capability to house two major functions of human existence. It can monitor and control countless bodily functions without any conscious effort. It is also the holder of the mind. The mind controls decision making ability in each of us. The thinking activity in the human brain is a powerful force which can be used for strength and success but it also has the power to encourage weakness. It is the place where bad habits and tendencies are formed and where the best of intentions and the worst failings are given a voice. Quitting is a reaction to forces or events that cause an individual to give in to the brain’s urgings to remove stress. It is a voluntary mental response to conditions that create discomfort. This response exists in all of us but there are some who seem to be able to overcome the fragile urgings of the mind. This ability to be resilient in the face of adversity is a form of mental toughness that can be learned. 

A mountaineer finds himself stranded on a sheer slope. The weather has changed to a bitter freezing cold. He is trapped and cannot escape. As he sits in the cold, his brain subconsciously begins to assess the peril. It independently determines that survival is now in doubt. Slowly and without prompting, the brain begins to discontinue certain bodily functions it deems unnecessary for survival. The most obvious of which is the shutting down of blood flow to the extremities to keep warm blood flowing to the internal organs essential for life. This is the beginning of frostbite and the loss of fingers and toes. The human brain will always independently respond to threatening stimulus with survival as the primary objective. 

I had a golf coach when I was a young boy who taught me many things about the physical and mental aspects of the game. I will always remember one piece of advice he gave me concerning the mental approach because over the years I have come to believe that it is universal to all sports and more importantly life. He told me to never fool around swinging a golf club for it can create a bad muscle memory that has the potential to become a long-term swing problem; that I should always be aware of a behavior that could become the source of a bad habit. The universal message was that the mind is where, if given an opportunity, weakness can flourish.

In the case of the mountaineer it is an involuntary reaction by the brain to survive. The brain does not consult with the conscious mind of the poor soul who is freezing to find out if they are in agreement concerning the sacrificing of fingers and toes. It simply makes functional decisions to sustain life. This is quite different than the mind entertaining and supporting a bad habit such as quitting. Quitting is a habit that can be easily formed when one succumbs to the false suggestions of the conscious mind. In an exclusive internal dialogue the mind implores the athlete to quit by providing a multitude of reasons for less effort. It beguiles the athlete with the suggestion of inevitability of defeat, it becomes the fertile ground of blame, and it has the power to create phantom pain. The mind will relentlessly question further effort and  propose the idea of quitting. The athlete is then left with answering the weakness of the mind with negative or positive reaction. 

An athlete can overcome the stimulus to quit when under physical stress of competition by learning how to face this negative mental challenge in training. Training must trigger the mind’s negative responses to physical stress to enable the athlete to understand when the urge to quit occurs. This can only be achieved by making training so difficult it brings out the moment of mental weakness and the internal voice that accompanies it. This voice and the action of quitting it suggests must become a common refrain associated with training. Then the weakness of the mind can be something the athlete is aware of, trains for, and has experience in disregarding. Proper preparation for competition can create the necessary mental strength to face physical adversity and the possibility of failure. The choice of quitting, the instant that an athlete’s mind questions the idea of remaining committed to the struggle is a common occurrence. Those who are able to remain engaged and advancing forward are those who have trained themselves to answer the mental suggestion of quitting with actions that tell their mind “No”.