Cody Kessel
/codykessel
I'm a professional volleyball player writing about performance, mental toughness, and team culture.
Cody Kessel
4y ago
The U.S. Navy Seals are elite in their ability to handle fear and execute in the face of adversity.
Here's four mental tools from Seal training you can use to get the job done despite great difficulty and stress.
⬇︎THREAD⬇︎
1/ Goal Setting
• Activates the higher part of our brain, the pre-frontal cortex, which helps keep the lower, survival-based amygdala in check.
• Gives the mind a clear picture of what needs to be done.
• Write it down. Read it. That alone makes it more likely to happen.
2/ Visualization
• The brain is bad at distinguishing vividly imagined events from those that actually happened.
• You can get mental reps of anything - which can also bring increased calm, clarity, and confidence
• Visualization has long been employed by elite athletes...
• Michael Phelps began utilizing visualization at 13-year old.
His Coach would tell him to rehearse the perfect race in his head before he went to sleep. In training he would push Michael, telling him to “put the tape in.”
His goggles filled with water and he still won gold.
3/ Self-talk
• You can't control your thoughts. They are an endless stream.
But you CAN select and repeat the ones that are most helpful to you and your dreams.
• Catch yourself doing something right, say, "That's like me" and continue to reinforce the desired actions...
• You can write and script out how you want to speak to yourself in certain situations:
"So journaling, writing is the most direct function to the executive function of the brain, to thought patterns"
- Jim Loehr on the Tim Ferriss Show
https://codykessel.substack.com/p/the-curated-collection-26?s=w
• We have 6,000+ thoughts per day (some researchers say closer to 60,000)
If you can tip even 1% of those habitual thought patterns more in your favor it can be a big help.
4/ Breath Control
• Unlike other animals, we CAN control our nervous system through our breath.
• Longer and deeper exhales are calming, down-regulating your heart rate and nervous system.
• Longer and more intense inhales can excite and activate the nervous system.
The TL;DR
4 Tools Navy Seals Use to Overcome Fear:
• Goal-Setting
• Visualization
• Self-Talk
• Breathing
Use one or a combination of these tools to execute consistently at the highest level.
It's supposed to be difficult.
If you enjoyed this are are interested in other ways you can get an edge on and off the court:
1. Follow me @codykessel for more
2. Check out past "mental game" posts that have resonated with others:
https://twitter.com/codykessel/status/1505158587458461699?s=20&t=_4Npdv1-byGv1I3ny-0Tnw
Cody Kessel
Ship 30 for 30
4y ago
#Ship30for30 was a great success.
I have been writing online for 7 years and wish this class existed earlier. Are you also interested in becoming a digital writer? Sign up at the link here
Some reflections and takeaways:
30 days pass by faster and faster as I get older 😅
• Even more of a reason to set up good systems and habits.
Clear > Clever
• Reader is confused? they're gone.
No one is reading your blog. Go where the readers are.
• Optimize for the new digital reality.
For Who/So That
• Niche down uncomfortably. Or write for one person.
Community is Key
• Community accountability is a cheat code for action and consistency.
• It empowers and energizes the human in all of us. Surround yourself with others on the same mission as you.
• I learned so much from connecting with others on the same path. Personally and from their writing.
And so much more...join the next cohort here.
Very excited for the next steps on my digital writing journey! Thank you all for sharing your likes, comments, feedback, follows, and ideas.
Cody Kessel
Ship 30 for 30
4y ago
📱In 2022, an age of exponential distraction, protecting and managing your attention is an increasingly rare and valuable skill. Our brains are old hardware and they are under attack from all sides:
"The modern struggle:
Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower,
fasting, meditating, and exercising,
up against armies of scientists & statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, & medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games & addictive drugs." - Naval
Tools I use to fight back:
1. Configure Your iPhone to Work For You, Not Against You
• Turn off all push notifications 🔕
• Schedule daily "Do Not Disturb" time slots
• App time limits (Instagram/TikTok)
• See the link above for more ideas
2. Keep Your Phone Out of the Bedroom 📵 🛏
• Buy an alarm clock (most frequent excuse)
• Set the backup alarm on your phone that is charging in another room
• A Phillips SmartSleep sunrise alarm clock has worked great for me
• This means that your wind-down and wake-up happen phone-less👍
3. Harness More of Your Dopamine for what YOU need to do
Atomic Habits boils the process of developing good habits down to four rules:
• Make it obvious (Cue) 👈
• Make it attractive (Craving) 👀
• Make it easy (Response) ✅
• Make it satisfying (Reward) 🎁
Cody Kessel
Ship 30 for 30
4y ago
"Where you invest your love, you invest your life." - 🎵 Mumford & Sons
In many ways it is just that simple.
Sometimes our priorities and actions don't match up, though:
“Don’t tell me your priorities. Show me your calendar.” — Shane Parrish
Time blocking is a great first step that many don't take, but it leaves out a crucial ingredient:
The real currency of life is energy ⚡️
Dr. Jim Loehr elaborates:
"I began to learn that our most important resource as human beings is not time. We were fed a bill of goods when the time management industry said that if you want to be successful, the most important thing you need to do is to carve out time, align it with your deepest values and just devote time to those highest priorities.
Because I could watch athletes competing, playing, practicing, and it wasn’t amount of time that they spent, it was the energy they brought to the time they had aligned with what the objective was. And I said, the most precious resource we have is not time but energy. We are vessels of energy. And as long as we have energy, we can have an impact. And I began to realize that every time you invest energy in something, you spawn growth. If you give a lot of energy to sarcasm and cynicism, and scapegoating what’s going on, those grow in your life."
-Jim Loehr on the Tim Ferriss Show
Check your calendar, check your energy, where is it all going?
Cody Kessel
Ship 30 for 30
4y ago
The basic reason for having a brain is for movement.
We know this, in part, because of the sea squirt:
The sea squirt spends the first part of its life swimming about the ocean. At a certain point in time, it decides to attach itself to a rock for the remainder of its life. As soon as it does, it eats its own brain, it's own nervous system, for food.
It EATS IT OWN BRAIN because it no longer needs to move.
The stereotypical deep thinker is a lone, hunched over, cerebral, chin scratching or beard stroking old monk.
It should be changed to a walking human.
• Einstein's daily walk was sacred to him.
• Darwin went for three 45 minute walks every day.
• Kahneman and Tversky frequently took outdoor walks.
• David Thoreau penned in his own journal:
“Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.
"Why Walking Helps Us Think" from The New Yorker:
Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.
Log off and go for a stroll! Or schedule your next walk with a friend now. Better thinking, better writing, better health.
Cody Kessel
Ship 30 for 30
4y ago
Choosing Joy
“Basketball is a form of play, of course, but it’s easy for players to lose sight of this because of the pressures of the job. As a result, my primary goal during practice is to get the players to reconnect with the intrinsic joy of the game."
Greatness is Making Those Around You Better
“…the true measure of a star was his ability to make the people around him look good." 🏐 Karch Kiraly was and is a master of this in the volleyball world.
Full Engagement
“Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I’m doing. I get unhappy when my mind begins to wander, during wins as well as losses. Sometimes a well-played defeat will make me feel better than a victory in which the team doesn’t feel especially connected.
This hasn’t always been the case. As a young player, winning meant everything to me. My sense of self-worth rose and fell depending on my personal performance and how my team stacked up…” See Part 1 for more on this
Sport is life with the volume turned up
"That’s when I come alive: on the basketball court. As the game unfolds, time slows down and I experience the blissful feeling of being totally engaged in the action…
That’s when you realize that basketball is a game, a journey, a dance- not a fight to the death. It’s life just as it is.”