Don”t forget!  My special Thanksgiving sale is on for a short time only – until Monday, November 30th.

I am offering my mental game training programs for $20 less than the normal investment of $67. That’s right…instead of $67, you only pay $47!

In addition to the programs, I am giving an extra special bonus – I will offer a complimentary telephone coaching session to anyone who invests in either of these programs! Simply let me know you have purchased a program and we will arrange a time to talk about anything related to the mental game of cheerleading!

Please go to the Products page on this blog for more information.  (The price will list as $67 until you go to checkout.)

Thank you all for following my blog!

I wish you a most happy Thanksgiving!

Impulse control is the second skill on the Resiliency list created by Dr. Karen Reivich.  For cheerleaders, controlling the desire to act on feelings is important.  Highly resilient people are able to tolerate ambiguity so they don’t rush to make decisions. They sit back and look at things in a thoughtful way before acting. 

Impulsive people act before they think.  Another way of putting it is: ready, fire, aim!  I’m sure you know this can get you into all sorts of trouble! 

One way to manage this is to create a wedge between your impulse to act and the action itself.  Imagine a remote control device with the “pause” button.  When you watch a DVD, you can move it forward, backforward or pause it.  When in “pause” mode, you create the space to do something else.  You might get something to eat, answer the phone, or whatever but you are in control for a period of time. 

It’s the same with other things in life.  You can choose to “pause” to create the space in which to think about what you will do next.  If you get in the habit of hitting the “pause” button, you  will make better decisions for yourself and you won’t’ regret saying or doing something down the road.

In a previous post I wrote about the 7 skills associated with resilience. The first one, according to Dr. Karen Reivich, is Emotional Awareness and Regulation which is the ability to identify what you are feeling and to control and manage those feelings.

Why might this be important for a cheerleader? Excellence in any sport is all about control. A wise cheerleader will be able to identify those things that can be controlled and those things that cannot. Energy and focus should be placed on those things that can be controlled, of course, and the most important thing to control (and the only thing totally under your control) are your emotions.

The first step is to become aware of what you are feeling. A useful guide is something called the RULER which was created by Professor Marc Brackett, the deputy director of the Yale University’s health, emotion and behavior laboratory.

RULER stands for Recognize, Understand, Label, Express, and Regulate:

Recognize emotions to obtain valuable information about the environment. Feelings provide information. There is nothing inherently “bad” about feelings – even so-called negative ones. Suppressing emotions may actually lead to an increase in the feelings you do not want to have! Make note of what you are feeling. You do not need to act on the feelings, just notice them.

Understand the causes of emotions to predict behavior. Your feelings will vary depending on the way you interpret an event. If you see something as threatening, you will experience fear or anger; if you see something as funny, you will feel experience a positive sense of amusement; if you experience a loss (of a person, a situation, or self esteem), you might feel sad or helpless.

Label emotions to describe feelings precisely and accurately. Try to develop a rich vocabulary to describe how you feel. For example, if you are amused by something you might feel charmed, delighted, entertained, or pleased. If you are sad, you might also feel disappointed, morose, depressed, blue, or unhappy.

Express emotions appropriately to communicate messages effectively. There are many ways to express emotions including nonverbal ways and speaking or writing. There are also times to express feelings and times when you should not! Expressing your feelings in the middle of a competition is obviously not the right time!

Regulate emotions to harness their constructive power. Knowing how and when to express feelings is important but knowing how to modulate the intensity of feelings is useful too. This does not mean to suppress feelings but rather to turn the dial down on their intensity. Big feelings can be reduced in size to something that is more manageable for you and for others around you.

It has been a little over a year since I launched Confident Cheerleading and my success is due to readers like you. As an expression of my thanks and to commemorate our national day of gratitude – Thanksgiving, I am offering a special price reduction on 2 of my programs.

For a short time only – until Monday, November 30th – I am offering each program for $20 less than the normal investment of $67. That’s right…instead of $67, you only pay $47!

And – as an extra special bonus, I will offer a complimentary telephone coaching session to anyone who invests in either of these programs! Simply let me know you have purchased a program and we will arrange a time to talk about anything related to the mental game of cheerleading!

Here are the 2 programs:

The first program is The Mental Game of Cheerleading: Training for Competitions. This is a comprehensive step-by-step mental skills training program to maximize success in cheerleading competitions.

This 2-CD audio program plus 40-page Action Guide provide you with everything you need to break through barriers, immediately improve concentration, eliminate distractions, and transform your performance.

This program will change forever the way you practice and prepare for competitions. For more information please go to the Products section of this blog or http://www.confidentcheerleading.com/competitions/.

The other program is The Mental Game of Competition: Training for Tryouts! This is a complete mental skills training system that will maximize your success on tryout day. It is a 2-CD audio program plus a 54 page Action Guide loaded with practical information and worksheets – all designed to help you get on the team you want!

Please see the Products page on this blog or go to http://confidentcheerleading.com/competitions/Tryouts-Product.html

This is my way of thanking you for your interest in Confident Cheerleading.

Whether you invest in one (or both!) of my programs or not, I truly am grateful for your continued support. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Warm regards,

Pamela (Dr. Pam)

Do you think resilience is innate (we are born with it) or can it be learned? No matter what you believe, we can all agree that resilience is an important ingredient for cheerleading success (and life success, too!).

Of course I believe it can be learned and so does Dr Karen Reivich who is co-author of The Optimistic Child, with Professor Martin Seligman, and co-author of the Resilience Factor.

Dr, Reivich says that there are (at least) 7 skills associated with resilience. All can be learned and incorporated into your life. Here they are:

1. Emotional awareness and regulation.
This is primarily the ability to identify what you are feeling and, when necessary, the ability to control and manage your feelings.
2. Impulse control.
Highly resilient people are able to tolerate ambiguity so they don’t rush to make decisions. They sit back and look at things in a thoughtful way before acting.
3. Optimism.
This refers to ‘realistic optimism’ not pie-in-the-sky optimism. People who are blindly optimistic do not have a brand of optimism which facilitates problem solving: in fact it interferes with it. So for optimism to help resilience, it needs to be wed to reality.
4. Causal analysis
This means the ability to think comprehensively about the problems you confront. Folks who score high in resilience are able to look at problems from many perspectives and consider many factors.
5. Empathy
People who score high on emotional awareness and understand their own emotions tend also to score high on empathy – the ability to read and understand the emotions of others. This is important for resilience for two reasons: first, it helps build relationships with others and then this builds social support
6. Self-efficacy
This is confidence in your ability to solve problems. This is partly about knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are and relying on your strengths to cope. Reivich stresses that this is different than self esteem. In other words, it is not just about feeling good about yourself, it is what she calls “a skills based mastery notion of coping.”
7. Reaching out
By this Reivich means being prepared to take appropriate risk. People who score high on resilience are willing to try things and think failure is a part of life.

Take a few moments to consider this list. On a scale of 1 – 5, with 1 being low and 5 being high, how would you rate yourself on each dimension? Stay tuned for ways to improve your score!

We all like to feel good about ourselves and cheerleaders are no exception.  Cheerleading coaches and cheer parents can play a role in enhancing self esteem but not in the ways you might think!

Somewhere along the line, people got the notion that praising children (of all ages) would increase self esteem.  (I have addressed this somewhat in previous posts.) As I mentioned before, praising for effort is far better than praising for ability.

Ultimately, children are in charge of their own self-esteem.  The best thing parents and cheerleading coaches can do is to teach cheerleaders to love challenges, enjoy mastering new skills, and to learn how to cope with and capitalize on setbacks and mistakes.

These are skills that will help them boost their self-esteem for the rest of their lives

Cheerleading coaches and cheer parents tell me that some cheerleaders get extremely frustrated when they struggle to learn new skills.  When they cannot “get it” right away, they give up.  This is too bad because mistakes are the building blocks to success – if you have a championship mindset.  That is, if you view mistakes as opportunities to learn and improvel if you view setbacks as challenges that can be overcome – then you will succeed!

Take a look at this video for inspiration!

It happens every day.  You, as a cheerleading coach, are constantly giving feedback to your squad as you observe them in practice. But did you know that the way you offer praise can affect the motivation of your cheerleaders? 

Psychology professor, Carol Dweck, studied what happens when people praise others for ability versus praising for effort and the effect this has on young people’s motivation and performance. 

The results showed that 90% of young people who were praised for effort (“you worked really hard on this;” “your persistence is helping you succeed,”) wanted to perform tasks which were challenging and from which they could learn (and not necessarily immediately succeed). 

Two-thirds of young people praised for ability wanted to carry out a task which ensured further success; they weren’t as interested in being challenged.  

When both groups were given a set of harder problems, the students who were praised for their ability (“you are so smart;”  “you are really good at this”) reported the least enjoyment. They were also the least likely to take problems home to work on.  Also, the students who were praised for their ability (not effort) demonstrated considerable negativity after failure (“I am stupid”) even though they had had a previous string of successes! 

The group that had been praised for ability also showed a significant decline in performance compared to those who had been praised for effort. 

The group that had been praised on effort continued to enjoy the task even when they encountered problems and they were more likely to persist when they confronted challenges. This group (effort) on the whole performed much better than the other group (ability). 

How does this translate to cheerleading?  Well, I would suggest cheer coaches will enjoy more success with their cheerleaders when they praise them for their efforts rather than their abilities.  Why should this be true?  Effort is something we can control.  We either exert effort to learn, to improve, to refine, or we do not.  It’s a matter of choice.  Ability is innate; we either have it or not and thus we cannot control it per se.

So take note of how you give feedback to your cheerleaders.  It’s fine to say, “good job!” or “great focus on that last jump” but be wary of saying, “you’re the best flyer we’ve ever had.”  Even if this is true, add to this: “…your focus and practice time is paying off; you’re really enhancing your natural talent by all your hard work.”