The Root of Racing Driver Mental Toughness

And why you need to get to the core of what it means to be a driver

A subscriber has asked me about mental toughness and the champion’s mindset and how to get it.

Thing is you can go on Youtube or whatever and feed yourself with really quite helpful champion mindset stuff. Whatever lands with you, I approve!

BUT

There’s a military saying "No plan survives first contact with the enemy," or as Mike Tyson puts it:

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,"

In the context of mental strength, it feels really good to get all David Goggins’ed up at home, but does that power stay with you when you actually confront the enemy in the race.

Or, when it comes to the crunch, does all that go out of the window?

For me when I was karting myself, the first smell of two stroke when I arrived in the morning would immediately start to erode any intentions of domination and strength I started with.

Some drivers get to the end of the rolling laps feeling like a Viking Berserker, but when the race starts in anger, their blood gets washed through with a sudden dose of reality, and they lift out.

Better to retreat and fight another day.

Mental strength dissipates just like that, and is replaced with basic human instinct to survive.

And really when you get down to it, the mental strength kind of self-talk isn’t true!

What is true is that you’d like to get through the immediate danger, usually the insanity of a race start, and leave the warrior mindset aside for a few seconds until everything settles down - then we can get back to it.

So far we have:

1. Good emboldening intentions I’ll call ‘feel good warrior mindset’

2. Followed by the truth, ‘self preservation in the face of real danger’.

So much like getting punched in the mouth by Mike Tyson, the truth takes over when you start a race and shit kicks off all over the place. It makes way more sense just to take a few seconds out and sack off the warrior mindset, and survive.

Instead of diving into a gap, intimidating other drivers out of their bold plans and making decisive moves, you wait.

Game over. With this kind of approach you are not a warrior at all, you revert to type under real pressure which is ok, you aren’t any kind of wimp, just checking out for a few seconds. But those were the crucial seconds.

Is there a Deeper Truth that Destroys Over Protective Instincts?