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If you ask me, a coach must be sincerely thankful for having the opportunity to coach his or her athletes. When a coach believes that an athlete is lucky to have him or her a coach, things are not going to go well. Training and improvement are NOT about the coach or even the program. The coach’s role is to create an environment of excellence in which athletes maximizes their learning experiences: physical, mental, tactical, and psychological.

The foundational Coach Mindset is a deep feeling of gratitude for all the athletes in the program. The “good” ones and the “bad” ones. The “teacher’s pets” and the “difficult athletes.” All of them, equally. And a Mindful Coach approaches all of his duties with this mindset.

You, as a Mindful Coach, know that you learn more from your athletes than they learn from you. Sometimes you’ll learn what to do. More often, you’ll learn what not to do – which is even better. And you’ll use these new learnings to help better develop your athletes next time.

You, as a Mindful Coach, have an insatiable drive to deliver more to your athletes: more knowledge, more learning opportunities, more engaging training. You do so by creating an environment of excellence and set a high-bar in all training aspects like effort, camaraderie, sportsmanship. And you hold your athletes to these high standards. You’re tough, but not mean. You’re too grateful to be mean.

You, as a Mindful Coach, know that coaching is fundamentally about helping an athlete learn more about herself. By striving to be at her best – even if it leads to occasional failure – your athlete will gain far more than by setting a low standard. If she continuously fails, you know that you are at fault. You alter your approach with that athlete.

You, as a Mindful Coach, always qualify before quantifying. Measure the level of excellence in the execution of the task. Quality is critical regardless of whether the training is high or low intensity, long or short duration. An athlete “hacking” through a workout by cutting corners or using cheap tricks to “hit the numbers” is the fast track to mediocrity.

You, as a Mindful Coach, do not disconnect an athlete from his internal sensations or mental dialogue. Instead, you take a magnifying glass to the mind’s eye of the athlete – help him see and understand his thoughts more clearly. You don’t coddle the athlete, far from it. Together, you and him, realistically confront the facts. Then, with an unshakeable optimism, push for improvement.

Optimism is often confused with being unrealistic. But these terms are on different axes. One axis spans from unrealistic – not confronting or denying the facts – to it’s opposite, realistic. The other axis goes from pessimism – viewing reality in a negative light – to optimism at the opposite end.

“I’m not pessimistic, I’m realistic” you’ll often hear an athlete say about some issue or obstacle. But you know the athlete is indeed being pessimistic. If a realistic assessment of the facts isn’t pretty, that’s ok. But tackle the current situation with optimism that improvement is possible and start advancing right away.

You, as a Mindful Coach, promote independence and self-direction in your athletes. You use the athlete’s intuition as a great ally. However, athletes start with different levels of training intuition: from disconnected to over-sensitive. You quickly learn where each athlete is on the spectrum. Then direct the path for each athlete to a more thorough and honest internalization of effort, performance and sportsmanship.

You, as a Mindful Coach, don’t motivate or inspire. An athlete that requires your continued motivation is on an unsustainable path. Instead, your environment of excellence promotes the athlete’s innate drive for self-improvement. This is not easy to do. And some take longer to come around than others. But be grateful for even the most indifferent of groups. They are the one that will force you to be at your very best.

You, as a Mindful Coach, spawn more questions than answers during training. Create discomfort through physical exertion and mental concentration. Relieve the tension at just the right moment with the feedback the athlete requires. And always leave the athlete with some unanswered questions to ponder and experiment with next time. In competition, however, you know to provide only clear and actionable answers. You want your athletes to execute what they practiced more than to think what to do. Save the thinking for the post-race debrief.

You, as a Mindful Coach, know to read your athletes. You also listen intently to the words they say. But, you see the athlete’s real message is conveyed “between the lines” non-verbally from the athlete’s body language. Steer the athlete toward a smaller discrepancy between what you hear and what you see.

All this, because you are always profoundly grateful to have athletes place their trust in you and your program. Earnestly embrace this responsibility without being too serious, and your coaching duties – while always challenging – will be deeply fulfilling.