Developing mental skills and resilience
An extended conversation with Dr. Stephen Gonzalez, Assistant Athletic Director for Leadership and Mental Performance at Dartmouth College.
When Stephen Gonzalez competed at the University of Pittsburgh, he noticed something about his fellow runners. All of them had talent and everyone worked hard, but some of them had a little something extra that wasn’t always obvious or easy to spot. It wasn’t their physical attributes that stood out, but their mental approach that gave them an edge.
A decade or so later, Dr. Stephen Gonzalez is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) at Dartmouth College where he is the Assistant Athletic Director for Leadership and Mental Performance. He works with student athletes to develop strategies to not only deal with difficult moments, but learn from them and thrive.
“That mental side of things is something we’re still trying to understand how to do systematically,” Gonzalez says. “My mission in life is very simple. I’m trying to better the world and people's lives through sport. With that comes failure and success, and learning how to manage both of them.”
What follows is an edited transcript of a long conversation between Stephen and myself that I hope will lead to more conversations for the Running, Probably community. As a public service, this piece has been unlocked for all readers. If you’d like to support this kind of work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
Paul Flannery: One of things that’s fascinating about running is that you start out thinking about the physical side: workouts and data and all those kinds of things. But it really comes down to a mental approach.
Dr. Stephen Gonzalez: Absolutely. I used to love the t-shirts that cross country teams wore that said, ‘Our sport is your sport’s punishment.’ And it’s true. When you mess up, you’re going to run laps. Why do we look at running as a form of punishment? Because it’s hard.
It's not just physically hard. It’s mentally hard as well, because it’s redundant. If you can’t find a place of serenity and joy and meaning in doing something rhythmic over a long period of time, it can be a real moment of suffering.
It’s interesting that we condition people to see it like that, and you, I or other people who run, are perceived as these crazy people. Why would you enjoy something that we were all conditioned to hate?
Everyone who’s been through it knows the first few times you run, you’re sore, you’re tired, you wonder if you can keep going. If you can just hang on for a couple of weeks, all of a sudden your body starts to respond and you notice, ‘Well, my capacity has gotten a little better. This is cool. Let me see if I can do a little bit more.’
Eventually, you get to a point where running becomes a comfortable thing. But then we start to push time and/or distance, and that becomes how we’re going to judge our competence as runners. Then it goes beyond how far you ran, or, how fast. It’s also about what you’ve gained from this process. What kind of knowledge or insight have you gained about yourself and others?
It’s lost on a lot of people who are hyper competitive because they just see outcomes. For the masses who participate in running, I think we’re looking for something beyond basic fitness. I think it's self discovery. There’s a variety of emotional insights and cognitive insights. That’s really cool to see.
PF: I could go in so many different directions, but one thing I wanted to talk about is the data we get from our watches, and the subjective judgments that come with it. When I look at my Coros app it tells me that my running performance is Poor because I’m recovering from a race. That kind of negative reinforcement can get in your head.
SG: As human beings we love simplicity. We like duality and not gray areas. And so, we think these data points are really great because they boil it down to something simple: You’re doing great, or you're doing poorly.
We know there is so much more to it, and that’s why human beings just can’t be boiled down into an algorithm. Otherwise we would have laws of human behavior, and we don’t. We have theories. Our theories try to anticipate and control why things happen, but they’re not laws.
When we look at racing and training, yes, there’s a formula. You need to do intervals, threshold runs, and long runs. In between, you need to have your glue days where you’re running easy and allowing yourself to recover.
We know from decades of physiology research, that’s going to lead to pushing thresholds, and limits and making us faster and stronger, etc. It’s tempting to think, is it really that simple?
What I find in my profession -- and this is with rowers, swimmers, runners -- yes, your training is an equation. We know how to increase human capacity, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to enjoy the process.
PF: Where would you start with someone to help them get in touch with their motivation?
SG: We have to understand that motivation isn’t as simple as people make it out to be. There is a spectrum. We have amotivation on one end, where there’s no human behavior. We’re just not interested, we don’t care, and we’re not going to participate.
You have external motivation kind of in the middle of the spectrum. One side of external motivation is where fear and consequences are the drivers. Am I doing it because I want to, or because I don’t want to have a negative consequence? That’s not a sustainable form of motivation long term, but it’s very powerful in certain moments.
Eventually, you get yourself more toward what’s called identified regulation, and it's the highest form of external motivation. That’s where we really identify with what we’re doing, and we’re gaining something from it. If you love your job, that’s where you are.
People are always told to get to intrinsic motivation, which is the far end of that spectrum. We’re intrinsically motivated to feel a sense of accomplishment, to seek knowledge, or experience awe that revitalizes the human spirit. If you’re hitting those categories, you’re going to have a really healthy sense of motivation.
So, there’s the spectrum. Where do you fall? What’s your relationship with running? Depending on where you’re coming from, that helps me understand how healthy and sustainable your motivation may be. If we have a disconnect, now we have to get into why, and get into strategies we can provide to help you make that happen so you sustain your training.
PF: One thing that’s been working for me. I ask myself every few months: What’s my motivation? And then, allowing the answer to change. Right now it’s just about having enjoyable moments, whereas before it was about training for a race. What are some strategies that are helpful for people to understand their motivation?
SG: It’s really easy to look at time goals or distance goals. We can’t always control those outcome measures. You can show up on race day and you’ve been training in 50 degree weather and it’s 90 degrees on race day. Sure, you had this goal in mind, and sure, go for it. Just understand that you may need to adjust because the conditions won’t allow it to happen.
Sometimes we try to impose our will because we think that’s mental toughness, or whatever, but sometimes we have to take what the course gives us on that day and work within that framework.
So, we’ll have a conversation. Ok, you’re looking at success as one little point. Let’s take it as a spectrum. What is a minimum effort that you’re happy with, what’s your perfect, and then, let’s take a look at the range. Success is a little bit more complicated than just saying, I hit this time or I finished in that place. It’s a plethora of things.
PF: At the Vermont 50 where we met, I missed my time goals by over an hour, but the race felt like a huge success. How do we square those two outcomes?
SG: Success may be when you meet a pain threshold. How are you mentally going through self-talk strategies, or reenaging your imagery, and staying present with what you’re doing? If you’re doing those things, you’ve got a mental win. I really want people to better define what success is to them. What does that range look like?
The other thing is there are emotions involved. I’m a big proponent of Susan David’s work who authored Emotional Agility. Essentially, what she’s saying is there are no bad emotions. When you’re feeling sad, try to understand why, and don’t get stuck there.
Don’t say you’re sad, say you’re feeling sad, and try to separate yourself from the emotion. Now you can say, Ok, why am I feeling sad? What is it telling me? Embrace it, because it’s telling you something. When things are uncomfortable we immediately want to turn away from them, rather than try to understand them.
When it comes to motivation and goals, people get real emotional and they can get to a really low place when it’s not going well. Alright, what is that telling you about yourself right now? Lean into it a little bit and try to understand what it means, so you can push back from it and bounce back.
Those are the two strategies I employ to get people to foster their motivation. By defining what success looks like for them, but also understanding their emotional process and learning from it, rather than getting stuck and allowing that to prevent them from pursuing purposeful action.
PF: In terms of strategy, positive self-talk was a huge revelation for me. When I was a road runner I was the worst at just beating myself to pulp when things weren’t going well. I failed miserably -- not miserably, see, I just did it.
I failed twice to get a qualifying time for Boston by like 10 minutes each time. That’s a really tough place to be when you’re at Mile 22 and it’s not happening. Why am I out here, I suck, who am I kidding?
When I started doing trails, I developed a few different mantras. One of my favorites is from the movie Trading Places. At the end of the movie when Dan Aykroyd says to Eddie Murphy: ‘Looking good, Billy Ray!’ And then Eddie responds, “Feeling good, Louis!’
SG: (Laughs) I love it.
PF: That conversation takes me out of my head and puts me in the position of an outsider offering positive reinforcement. It also brings a smile to my face because it’s funny. That gets me through some low points.
SG: We get stuck in thinking patterns where we ruminate. We have scattershot thoughts about how we’re feeling or we catastrophize. Gosh, if that split was this, then there’s no way I’m going to qualify, and if I don’t qualify … then you just go down that spiral.
Getting to a point of humor, or any type of emotion that allows us to broaden and build. That was Barbara Fredrickson’s work, who said essentially, if we can cultivate a moment of laughter, we can switch gears.
The whole positive/negative thing, I find it a little simplistic. Some of that comes from my work with military personnel. Look, you’re getting shot at, you’re not having fun.
Is your self-talk effective or ineffective? Some people are sarcastic, but it works for them. It triggers positive action. Your mantra is triggering positive action. It’s getting you to chuckle a little bit. It broadens your mindset versus narrowing in so much on negativity, and it’s allowing you to see another path and continue.
The science is pretty clear. We want people to get to that point because it’s going to allow them to broaden and build, rather than getting stuck in an ineffective thought pattern.
When I work with clients, we’re looking at self-talk from a P3 or R3 perspective. R3 is our default mechanism. This is the work of Robin Vealey. She says, R3 is random, reactive, and restrictive. No one wakes up on the day of a race and looks in the mirror and says, ‘I can’t wait to tell myself I’m going to suck today.’
You may get to that point, and it’s random. Where do you go from, you suck? You're restricted. If we want to not be so reactive and execute some mental strength or fortitude, we need to have a response, not a reaction.
And so, P3 stands for: purposeful, productive, chance of possibility. Is what I’m saying to myself purposeful, is it actually helping me be productive, and is it giving me some hope or optimism that we can still do this? Notice how positive is not one of those three P’s.
It has to pass your gut test. It has to have meaning for you. It’s not some motivational poster in the doctor’s office. Let’s find what works. Part of what I do is trying to validate why something works for an athlete, rather than saying, this is what you have to do.
PF: Mental toughness is fascinating to me because we have this idea of mental toughness as imposing our will. Michael Jordan trained my generation that mental toughness meant you’re always going to make the last shot and you're always going to win. It’s a zero-sum game, so if you fail, then you’re just not tough enough.
This generation doesn’t necessarily feel that way. A guy like Damian Lillard, for example, feels like he worked hard to be in his position and whatever happens is going to happen. He’s not feeling pressure because he's not putting pressure on himself, even though pressure is clearly on him.
The outcome winds up being generally the same because both players are mentally tough in their own ways, but that strikes me as a really important distinction.
SG: I think so too. The old adage of mental toughness, look at the cost of that mindset. Jordan wasn’t really well liked. He had really bad relationships. I say that as someone who grew up in the 90s, loved watching the Bulls, and thought Michael Jordan was the greatest thing ever.
To Lillard’s example, we’re trying to get people to reinterpret what moments mean. Rather than approach them with fear and anxiety, we can approach them with a growth mindset. Have curiosity and a sense of excitement that you get the opportunity to do something big.
We have to really look at how we’re interpreting the way that we feel during those moments. If you look at the symptoms of excitement and fear, they’re very similar. Where do you draw the line when fear ends and excitement begins?
As a former college athlete lining up for a conference championship, I was about to do something pretty consequential that absolutely made me nervous. I wish back then I could have stopped, felt my nerves, and said to myself, ‘I’m nervous. This is kind of awesome. I’m about to do something important.’
When you train for something where there’s going to be consequences, rather than be afraid of that moment, look at little kids across the country. They’re in their driveways or parks, and they’re thinking about taking that penalty shot to win the World Cup.
Little kids see big moments on TV and think they’re amazing, and they’ll put themselves in those situations to act them out. For them, it’s about play, it’s about getting that chance to do something epic. Whereas, we might get to that epic moment that we’ve dreamed about all our lives, and now we don’t want it.
To me, that’s worse than failing because then we’re reluctant to even try.
PF: I love that analogy because I see it through my 8-year-old who’s so joyful about playing. I’d like to explore the idea of mental toughness as something you can develop, that we’re not fixed as clutch or chokers.
SG: I’m less about mental toughness now and more about resilience. You’re going to have moments when it’s not going well and you’re going to have to bounce back. Toughness just sounds like you never break or bend. I think the best athletes have moments of bending and they’re still able to salvage something and make it competitive.
Training the mind in competencies and focus areas is kind of like strength and conditioning. You need to train your lower body, you need to train your core, etc. What are we training in terms of the mind?
One, we need to make sure we’re fostering motivation. Two, we need to make sure that we’re developing emotional agility to not get stuck when things get hard and get back to purposeful action quickly.
It’s about having a healthy feed of information in your mind from a self-talk perspective. It’s about using imagery and visualization to picture what you want to do. Also, allow yourself to see the obstacles -- how you’re going to overcome them -- so you’re mentally prepared when it gets hard. It’s about being present and having a sense of mindfulness.
People think resilience is when you experience stress or adversity, and your stress level stays low and you stay positive. From research — this was my dissertation — we know that stress level, according to cortisol, increases for both resilient and non-resilient people after failure. And negative emotions increase for both resilient and non-resilient people.
Here’s the difference. Resilient individuals tolerate negative emotions better than non resilient people. It's not about eliminating those things. It’s about experiencing them, not getting caught in them, and being able to continue.
PF: I wanted to shift gears and close this conversation by talking about recovering mentally from a big event. How do you help athletes come to terms with their performance after a long training cycle?
SG: I’m always encouraging athletes to think about getting out of their mind and putting pen to paper. Not fingers to keys, pen to paper. Let’s write out the things that we’re proud of and the areas that we need to improve. Let’s keep the list to three points.
Now that we have it out of our mind, we don’t have to ruminate. We can look at those areas to improve and see where your intention is the next time you get into a training cycle. Is it nutrition and hydration, is it pacing? It gives you a breadcrumb trail to start following mentally.
At the same time, some people just need a break. If you’re not hungry or wanting it right now, that’s Ok.
Des Linden won the Boston Marathon (in 2018). She’s a badass. She takes a day for every mile she runs in races. So, that’s 26 days off for a marathon. That would drive most people nuts, but she recognizes that she worked really hard and needs to recover.
Writing things down and having a simple reflection in a non complex way enables you to get things out of your mind, and park your thoughts and feelings to be able to revisit later.
We’ll be revisiting many of these thoughts in the weeks and months to come. Thanks to Dr. Gonzalez for being so generous with his time and insights. Feel free to continue this conversation in the comments.