Grit is the perseverance and passion for long-term goals. ¹⁵  It is an individual’s perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state.  This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization. ¹⁶ 

This is where the rubber meets the road.  You have spent time tracking your alter ego progress by creating detailed film.  You have performed film analysis and identified areas for improvement.  Now it is time to make the necessary changes to improve.  Change is never easy, let alone permanent change, and takes real grit.

The change process includes two types of change.  The first, is the change required to modify your emotions and behaviors to match those you created for your alter ego and those to conquer your villain tactics.  This change occurs by committing to the daily brain train on a long-term and consistent basis.  It is about staying the course until the change is permanent.  The second, is implementing the changes that were determined during the analysis process.  This may involve changing specific aspects of your alter ego, villain, or conquer process to produce more ideal results.  It is important to understand that this process may take multiple attempts and fine tuning to make the proper adjustments and require time to make them stick.  In both cases, perseverance and passion will be vital as you work towards emotions and behaviors that perfectly align with your desired results. 

While the change process is busy transforming your mindset for the better, it is also generating a phenomenal byproduct called self-efficacy.  Self-efficacy is an individual’s belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. ¹⁷  Self-efficacy is crucial to your mindset because it is the belief in yourself that makes you feel like you can rise up and succeed in the face of any challenge, in order to achieve your desired results.  Levels of self-efficacy are directly correlated to performance, making it extremely important to increase belief in yourself.  Every time you put in the work and effort to make a positive change, your belief will strengthen.  As you spend the time to make a lasting and permanent change, your belief will grow.  When you are forced to learn from your mistakes and successfully make the necessary adjustments, your belief will rise.  As you experience each step in the improvement of your mindset, your belief will expand.  Upon every successful completion of the optimization loop, your belief will climb.  As you start to stack all of these areas of belief, you develop a deeply rooted and true belief in yourself, resulting in an extremely high level of self-efficacy.  With strong self-efficacy, you will be able to tackle the challenges of your sport and see a huge improvement in your performance.

Tips

1. Take the change process very seriously. The changes you make are literally improving your mindset.  Which means you are winning the mental game.
2. Permanent change can be a very difficult and lengthy process at times, but remember, you have your alter ego inspirations in your corner cheering you on every step of the way.
3. Accept with open arms, the self-efficacy that comes from the change process because it alone can improve your performance.

All the work you have put into creating your alter ego, conquering your villain tactics, practice, and the optimization loop, come down to one question.  Are you willing to change?  If so, start polishing your mindset with the change process along with some grit and watch what happens.  Your emotions and behaviors will start to align with your desired results.  You will begin to perform at peak levels on a more consistent basis.  You will find yourself in the midst of mastering the mental game.  And, your potential will start unleashing itself.