By Liza Horan
New York—If you work with competitive juniors and think praising them on great results will make them work harder or smarter—think again! It's not their brains and talent that breed success, but their ability to focus and invest effort toward a goal.
If a player believes talent will carry him to the finals, chances are he'll let destiny take over and not work as hard as he could. Eventually that win streak will flame out.
That was the message from Dr. Jim Loehr to teaching pros and coaches at the
PTR International Tennis Symposium in Hilton Head, S.C., in February. It was based on groundbreaking research by Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University that showed that a person's mindset—a view of his or her own capabilities—influences motivation and the attainment of goals.
"You can have anything you want fundamentally if you are willing to invest an extraordinary amount of energy and effort," said Loehr, who worked with players such as Jim Courier and Monica Seles before turning his sport psychology expertise to all life matters by co-founding the
Human Performance Institute. And, to convey this point, he applied findings from Dr. Dweck's book, "
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" to tennis.
In addition to urging teaching pros and coaches to read "
Mindset," Loehr offered this advice to those guiding young players:
