MENTAL PERFORMANCE TRAINING: What Are Your Signal Lights?
- Nick Carita
- Jun 25, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: Sep 13, 2024
This blog could fundamentally change your life.
No, seriously.
As the late great Ken Ravizza says:
“You have to control yourself before you control your performance.” - Ken Ravizza
In other words, if you use mindset performance training to help you be in a good mental state CONSISTENTLY, you will be able to overcome any barriers that come your way.
This “signal light” framework can help you do exactly that. Let me tell you how.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Signal lights are your way of monitoring where your mindset is at any moment.
Using the example of a stop light, a green light means you are in a good and productive mindset, a yellow light tells you that you’re starting to lose control of your performance, and a red light means you are no longer in control of your performance.
Figuring out what your green light, yellow light, and red light behaviors are is paramount to understanding where your mind is at any given moment.
There are four categories you want to pay attention to --- body language, focus, self-talk, and physical feelings. Knowing what your signal lights are in each of these areas helps you to know when you’re in a green, yellow, and red light mindset.
Your job is to make sure you’re in a green light as often as possible. The second you lapse into a yellow or red light, you must do what you can to get back into a green light state of mind.
We have a downlodable signal light worksheet which will help you identify your signal lights.
WHAT ARE SIGNAL LIGHTS?
One thing you’ve heard me say over and over on my “Today, We Dominate!” daily podcast, is that ANY endeavors to become more mentally tough or to raise your levels of performance starts with AWARENESS.
You have to be aware of your thoughts and your actions in order to know if a thought or action needs to start, stop, or continue. If you ever have a chance of controlling your performance, you must be aware of what’s going on in your mind at any given moment.
You have to ask yourself questions like:
Is what I’m saying to myself helping me be better?
Is what I’m thinking stopping me from making progress?
Are my thoughts harming me or helping me move forward?
Are these thoughts running through my head productive ones?
One of the ways you can learn to be aware of where your mindset is through the concept of your mindset SIGNAL LIGHTS.
Think of signal lights while you’re driving.
Green light means you can go through the intersection.
Yellow light means you need to slow down.
Red light means you must stop at the light.
Use these signal lights as a way of being aware of your thoughts.
Green light means you’re thinking well, you’re acting well, and you’re making progress.
Yellow light means that you’re no longer in green light, your thoughts and actions are going down a path towards destruction, even though you’re not there yet.
Red light means, as the British say, you’ve lost the plot. Now, you’re angry, you’re distracted, and there is NO progress happening at the moment.
In other words
Green light means you’re in control.
Yellow means you’re heading towards being out of control.
Red means you’re officially out of control.
HOW DO SIGNAL LIGHTS HELP ME?
Knowing what your signal lights are, the behaviors that are associated with each one, and how to get back to a green light mindset will help you stay at optimal performance levels, especially when it’s needed the most.
Have you ever had one of those days where you want to yell at your boss?
Did you have an argument with your spouse earlier, and you said something that you regret?
Are you an athlete, and in the heat of the moment, you did or said something you shouldn’t have?
If you were aware of what your signal lights were, you’d know when you’re approaching the point of doing or saying something that you regret.
Signal lights are YOUR way of making sure that you know your mindset is heading the WRONG direction. By realizing your mind and behavior isn’t going the right direction, you can stop them before you do something that you may have to pay for later.
How often will you be in a green, yellow, and red light mindset?
10% of the time, you’ll be in green light.
80% of the time, you’ll be in yellow light
10% of the time, you’ll be in red light
When you’re aware of where your thoughts are, you can then start to examine them to determine what your next best action is to get back to green light.
Your signal lights make you aware of where your mindset is at that moment so that you can perform at your best when it matters most. Being in a green light mindset gives you the best chance for optimal performance and success.
HOW DO I FIND MY SIGNAL LIGHTS?
When we talk about signal lights, we’re talking about four different categories that you need to pay attention to when it comes to your mindset.
1) Body language – your body language, your posture, etc, has an effect on your physiology. Is your head up and your chest out, or is your head down and your chest sunken? Are you breathing full breaths, or is your breathing shallow? These are all questions to ask yourself.
2) Focus – where is your focus? Are you focused more on the negative or the positive? Are you focused on what’s wrong or what’s right?
3) Self-talk – what are you saying to yourself? Are you telling yourself that you’re unstoppable or that you are terrible? Are you telling yourself that you’re just trying to get through the issue? Are you telling yourself to give up?
4) Physical feelings – are you excited? Lethargic? Tired?
All of these categories are what you want to focus on when it comes to being aware of your signal lights.
We’ve created a downloadable worksheet that will help you figure out what your signal lights are at any stage.
3 WAYS YOU CAN DISCOVER YOUR SIGNAL LIGHTS
PLAN AHEAD
Let’s say you’re about to walk into a stressful situation at work, and you know that there’s a potential for you to end up in a red light mindset. Figuring out ahead of time what your green light, yellow light, and red light states look like in that situation can help you know ahead of time what it looks like when you’re changing signal lights. You can use our signal-light worksheet to help.
FIGURE THEM OUT AS YOU GO
If you’re more curious about what your signal lights are in general, you can look for situations that were thrown at you during the day and figure out what went wrong or right.
For instance, if you were yelled at by your boss today, but you were able to stay calm and focused for the rest of the day, what did you do to stay calm? What were you feeling physically? Where was your focus? What were you saying to yourself?
Write down your answers in the worksheet we made for you, and your signal-light pieces will come together.
ANALYZE YOUR WEEK
If you don’t want to plan ahead for specific situations, and you don’t have the mental bandwidth to write down your signal lights as you go, you can examine your behavior as you go, take note of it, and use it later to plan ahead to know what you look like in each state.
Ask yourself the questions:
Did I encounter any yellow or red light situation this past week that created issues for me or my environment? You’re looking to find out what decisions didn’t align with your goals.
Then ask yourself: What caused the challenges? Did you break your routine? Not recover or sleep well? Stress? What cause the issues?
Then ask yourself: What could I have done to prevent those situations and to stay in green light? Should I have kept my mouth shut? Should I have shut the computer down earlier so that I could have slept well?
I do not think this is the most effective strategy, but it can work.
It’s best to write down what you’re feeling in real time, or at least the end of the day, while the emotions and actions are fresh in your mind. If you wait until the end of the week, you may have changed some of the details of what happened in your mind. We all do this after a negative situation happened to us. I want you to be anchored in reality and fresh off your situation so that you can have the most accurate information as possible.
HOW DO I GET BACK TO A GREEN LIGHT MINDSET?
YOUR TOP PRIORITY IS TO GET YOURSELF BACK TO YOUR GREEN LIGHT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
To get ourselves out of red and yellow lights, we need to follow the basic strategy of how you get yourself out of ANY bad mentality.
The framework:
Awareness
Strategy
Execution
First, you’re aware of the situation.
Second, you devise a strategy
Third, you execute on the strategy.
In order to be aware of your signal lights are, you need to know what your thoughts and behaviors are in a red, yellow, or green light mindset are. (You can download our “signal lights worksheet” to help you discover what they are.)
Secondly, based on your behaviors, you need to have a strategy ready to counter those negative behaviors.
After you’re aware and have a strategy, it’s time to execute your plan.
Here’s an example for you:
Let’s say you’re at work, and the day is not going well
When you’re in a red or yellow light mindset, your self-talk may sound like this:
"I hate this place."
"My boss is a moron."
"That sales guy is a jerk."
"They don’t care about me”
Once you’re aware that you’re in a yellow or red light mindset, you need to get back to a green light mindset ASAP!
To do so, you could say to yourself something like one of these examples below:
“I can only control what I can control. I can’t control my boss, the sales guy, or my company. I control my thoughts and my actions. Let’s get back to working hard and let the results prove themselves.”
Or, you may say to yourself, “usually, my company treats us very well. This is a one-off situation, and it will resolve itself. Let’s get back to it!”
Maybe you can say this to yourself, “I know my boss is experiencing pressure from the higher ups. He didn’t mean to talk down to me. He’s usually a very good guy, so I’ll let this one go and control what I can control. I love to help others be successful, so let me figure out what I need to do to help him.”
You see how that works?
Acknowledge what’s going on
Express the truth of the situation to yourself.
Reframe the truth so that you can get back to focusing on the task at hand.
Give yourself a verbal cue to move you towards the next best decision… getting back to work.
Let’s do another one --- this one is for a baseball player who is losing focus and body language.
I’m watching the college world series as I write this, and there was a play where the Texas A&M catcher dropped a strikeout wile pitch. They obviously had to throw out the runner at first, and they did, but the ump called the play a foul ball.
The Aggies didn’t challenge but, if they had, the play would have been overturned as there was no contact from the Tennessee batter.
Because there was no challenge on the play, the pitcher had two choices:
FIRST CHOICE:
He could have been angry at the bad call, and his YELLOW LIGHT or RED LIGHT FOCUS could have turned into obsessing about the bad call while preparing and throwing the next pitch.
He could have had yellow or red light body language as well.
He could have been walking around with his head down and chest sunken in, sulking about the bad call and how angry he is that the ump made the wrong call.
This could have made the inning unravel quickly for the Aggies because, if you can’t control yourself, you can’t control your performance. He can’t think about the last pitch while throwing the next one.
SECOND CHOICE: Use his GREEN LIGHT FOCUS AND BODY LANGUAGE behaviors to stay in a good frame of mind.
He could walk off the rubber, look at a spot in the outfield, and take a deep breath reminding him to stay in the moment.
He could walk with confidence with his chest out and head high as he walked back to the pitching rubber.
He could swipe the rubber with his foot to say, “I’m rubbing off the bad call, and I’m focused in the present”.
He could then take a deep breath and get focused with his catcher again.
He could use his three-steps to keep it simple to remind him of what he needs to do IN THAT MOMENT to execute the next pitch well.
By the way, this is a real life strategy used in professional baseball for a pitcher to refocus his attention.
Do you see the difference? The pitcher could have sulked and been mad at the bad call by the umpire, or he could use his green light body language and focus to get himself back to a focused mindset.
I know their mental performance coach, and I guarantee that he used the awareness/strategy/execution framework to help him get back into the right frame of mind. He’s taught them well!
When you’re in a yellow or green light mindset, you can use the framework I talked about above.
Acknowledge what’s going on
Express the truth of the situation to yourself.
Reframe the truth so that it works for you as opposed to against you.
Give yourself a verbal cue to move you towards the next best decision… getting back to work.
USE THIS FRAMEWORK EVERY TIME YOU FIND YOURSELF IN A YELLOW AND RED LIGHT MINDSET, and watch your progress and productivity get back to normal levels!
As I’ve mentioned throughout the article, if you want to figure out what your signal lights are, we have a downloadable signal lights worksheet that’s available for you! It gives you a couple examples of what signal lights look like, and we’ve included a blank one that you can fill out for yourself!
Now GO GET IT! TAKE YOUR PLACE!
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