Article by Steven Hendrixson
Last week, a group of select students with leadership qualities were invited to participate in the annual ILead Workshop. Organized by the Marshall Leadership Team, ILead provides a rare opportunity for our brightest students to collaborate with one another and learn what it takes to not just become a better leader; but better themselves and others around them.
Guest speaker Matt Thomann introduced the mindset of being 100% Mettle, “The ability to recognize your strengths and limitations in the face of adversity while also repeating positive, intentional actions that demonstrate growth and change.” Adversity is a common thing that is hard to overcome. Matt Thomann spent more than a decade in education, where he served as the assistant principal and athletic director of Deer Creek-Mackinaw Junior High School in Illinois. 2020 hit and Covid happened. Faced with the stress of having to run a school and manage sporting events during quarantining and virtual learning, Thomann faced an ischemic stroke, which attacked the left hemisphere of his cerebrum.
With this part of the brain being the primary speech control center, Thomann had to relearn how to speak and read aloud. After rigorous amounts of speech and language rehabilitation therapy, Matt Thomann was able to make a near full recovery after just five months! Despite a stroke recovery usually being a lifelong process, Thomann had quickly recovered enough to normally talk and read aloud again. A factor for his quick recovery was the embracing of “positive psychology.” Or in other words, embracing a positive mindset and practicing mental toughness intentionally. It was positive psychology that allowed him to recover so quickly.
This experience led Thomann to pursue a career in life coaching, founding the Mental Mettle Coaching program. A platform that helps students, athletes, and coaches alike develop ways to deal with life’s inevitable setbacks and failures.
Based on his experiences, Thomann stressed to students the value of a positive mindset, a trait that all good leaders have. A good example is with athletes, Thomann argued that whatever sport you're in there are always three different pathways of improvement. Game, physical, and mental. Game improvement focuses on the technical aspect. Whether that be watching film of past games to study your mistakes, or doing dribbling and shooting drills during basketball practice after school, those are the game aspects of improvement. Physical improvement focuses on building your body up. Whether that be doing speedwork on the track to become faster in the mile, or lifting weights to become bigger and stronger in football, physical improvement focuses quite literally on you. The third type of improvement is mental improvement, developing your mind to push through difficult things even when you don’t want to. To learn to put your head down and keep working even when things don’t turn out the way you want them to. This is the most important form of improvement. You should always spend the most amount of time on improving yourself mentally. Because you’ll never be able to improve yourself in other aspects without developing a strong mind first.
Your potential is limitless, but you’ll only ever go as far as your mind is willing to take you.
During the workshop, Matt Thomann told students to analyze two strengths and weaknesses. To everyone’s surprise, he said that it was more important to focus on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. Focusing on what you are good at will not only help improve your confidence but also better yourself more than if you were to focus on your weaknesses. You will thrive more by focusing on what you are already good at because you can get even better than you already were at that particular thing. While it is good to improve on your weaknesses, focusing too much on the qualities you lack will only lead to more sadness and overall waste your time in the long run.
My two strengths are that I am creative and empathetic, although I often struggle with organization and time management. I should do everything in my power to focus on improving on those things. They will only make my life better overall, but I shouldn’t worry about those issues to the point where they start to neglect the things I am already good at.
Thomann also talked about the negative spiral, where one bad situation or outcome triggers a domino effect that only leads to more bad outcomes. Negative spirals only lead to more pain and suffering.
He then raised the question, “What triggers your negative spiral?”
It could be anything. For me it would mainly be words, mistakes, or bad situations and circumstances. He then told students to explain the spiral. “What leads to what?” “What is the effect on your body?” “Where did it happen?” “How did it happen?” By going through this simple step process, you can have a better reflection of yourself and stop such spirals from occurring again.
Breathwork and meditation are great for your mental health. Studies have shown that they can provide better sleep, balanced blood pressure, reduced effects on trauma, and can even aid in healing injuries. Providing you the option of a reset button when life starts to get out of hand. Thomann explained to students that there are four steps to developing this type of reset button. 1. choose a combination of breathwork, mindfulness, and stretching exercises to do. 2. Choose a time of day habit to connect the breathing and stretching to. 3. Commit to the exercise at least a few times each month. 4. Choose somebody that you trust and know can help you for your accountability partner. A proper reset button and positive words should lead to a clearer, stress free mind and improved mental health.
The final thing Thomann talked about were controllables vs uncontrolables. Factors that you could control versus things that you would have no control over at all. Uncontrollables could include teachers, refs, coaches, opponents, schedules, tournaments, weather, illness, cultures, and environments. Things you could control are the amount of effort you put into what you’re doing, your drive for success, and personal improvement. There are always going to be more things that you won’t be able to control versus not control. Focusing on such things will only lead to more stress. They are out of your hands, focusing on the things that you can control will only lead to a better outcome.
Just talking about change means nothing. You need to go out and actually do it if you really want it. Actions speak louder than words, just do it.