"Now I would say we spend probably 25-30 percent of the athlete's time on mental. Just anything that starts with team building." — Mark Few

Every Monday, Gonzaga runs Personal Growth Mondays - PGMs. The players meet with Travis Knight, their strength coach and mental development coordinator. And here's the part that surprises most coaches: the coaching staff isn't allowed in the room.

"It's just the players and Travis Knight. Staff, myself, coaches aren't allowed in there." — Mark Few

The sessions aren't just about basketball. They cover anything affecting the players - pressure, expectations, lack of confidence, hitting adversity, handling success. Some sessions are personal. Some are fun. Some are spiritual.

Knight built a catalog of videos that resonate with today's players. One example: Steph Curry missing 11 threes in a game…more than anyone ever had. They show the video, pause it, and ask each player: "What would you do?" The players formulate responses. Then they show what Curry did next.

The next video is Curry's following game. He literally set an NBA record for how many threes he made. In the postgame interview, Curry's answer was simple: "That's what I do. I shoot threes. I just came back the next day and did my normal routine. I knew the next one was going in."

The players hear it from someone they admire not a coach telling them what to think. That's the power.

The last part of every PGM: Travis gives them exercises and thought processes they can actually apply. The goal is to lead them down a path where they can deal with adversity when it hits.

Mark Few commits 25-30% of his athletes' development time to this. Most programs commit close to zero. That's not a small difference, it's a completely different philosophy of what it means to develop a player.

Source: Mark Few, Walker Webcast

Dr. Michael Gervais works with some of the highest performers on the planet - Super Bowl champions, Olympians, Fortune 100 executives. And here's one of the simplest things he teaches:

You only get one emotion at a time. That's how the brain works.

Here's where it gets interesting. Gervais says the brain has a default setting and untrained, it always picks fear. "What are they thinking? What are they thinking? Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe?" That loop runs on repeat unless you've trained something else to take its place.

"Our job is to love others and not give a damn what they think of us... because we only get one emotion at a time. Our job is to really find the right state that we want to be in, the right emotional place, and use that rather than let the brain win."

Here's what most people miss: You and your team already have a starting emotion before the game begins. If you haven't trained yourself to choose it, your brain chooses for you. And the brain - untrained and unconditioned - will choose fear every time.

Coaches spend thousands of hours on skill development, but zero hours on this.

The athletes who perform under pressure aren't braver. They've just trained their brain to start somewhere other than fear.

I was talking with a coach this week about how to make courage a habit. We both agreed that it was a completely underrated skill that should be taught and learned at a young age.

It's easy to talk about courage in theory. Stand up for what you believe. Have the hard conversation. Be willing to be disliked. But how do you train it? How do you make it automatic instead of aspirational?

This is especially hard with high school kids. The social stakes feel life-or-death at that age. Peer pressure is relentless. The pull to conform, stay quiet, and blend in is overwhelming. Asking a 16-year-old to have "the courage to be disliked" is asking them to fight biology and environment at the same time.

So how do you build it?

I think it starts small. Courage isn't one big moment - it's a series of tiny decisions that compound. A sophomore telling a senior she's not boxing out. A kid admitting to the group that he's struggling. Choosing honesty when silence is easier. It has to be grounded in how you can accumulate some small wins.

The coach I was talking to said something that stuck with me: "We practice everything else. Why wouldn't we practice this?" He's right. We drill footwork until it's automatic. We rep plays until they're instinct. But we leave courage to chance and hope kids figure it out on their own.

I'll be honest - I'm still working on this myself. There are conversations I avoid. Feedback I soften. Moments I stay quiet when I should speak. So I'm not preaching from the mountaintop. I'm in the arena too, and I think most of us are.

But I know this much: courage is a habit, not a trait. And if we're not creating reps for it, we're hoping for something we never practiced.

For coaches and leaders:

For athletes and performers:

All of these posts and more are in the Coaching Vault.

What I am reading and listening to:

📚 Book: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi

🎧Podcast: All Time Winningest NCAA Basketball Coach, Tara VanDerveer Breaks Down How Championships are WON | Way of Champions Podcast

🎥 Video: How to pull yourself out of a cheap dopamine spiral | Mark Manson

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