Field Trials US
Vol. XIV, Week 19 May 12, 2025
The Importance of Resetting
So you are at a trial or a test and something crazy happens that rattles you. How do you deal with it? Here are some ideas.
By Steven Goldstein, a respected Executive Coach:
“McIlroy needs to reset.” Those words were spoken by a TV commentator after Rory McIlroy's disastrous first hole and shaky start to the next during the final round of The Masters yesterday.
The ‘Reset’ is a crucial activity that I explore in ‘Mastering the Mental Game of Trading’ and which is common to all of us, in whatever we do in life, in business, in leadership, in sport, in relationships. - We are all fallable, we are all human, we all at times fall below the standards we set for ourselves.
The need for a Reset, though mental, is visible in your body language, your behaviour, and the manifestations of your Self-Talk. Hence the value of acute, in the moment, self-awareness.
Resets are needed, because often our 'heads are gone', caused by some sort of preceding outcome that didn’t pan out the way you had hoped, or by a fear (usually exaggerated), or some other manifestation of unhelpful internal dialogue or self-talk.
An effective reset should momentarily take you into a space that us Performance Coaches call the "Fertile Void." This is a headspace where your thoughts dissipate, allowing you to transition from a state of anger and frustration to one of calm. It’s a "fertile" place because it helps you restore balance and rebuild your mental capacity, enabling you to become present to the task you are facing again.
Easy as it sounds, this ability is incredibly challenging to do in real time, in the moment, and to the degree needed to excel. It’s moments like these which separate the good from the great, and the great from the truly exceptional.
There is a quote from the iconic Netflix documentary, "The Last Dance," in which sportswriter Mark Vancil reveals what he believes truly separated Michael Jordan from all the other players around him: “His gift was not that he could jump high, run fast, shoot a basketball. His gift was that he was completely present, and that was the separator. He didn’t allow what he couldn’t control to get inside his head. He would say, ‘why would I think about missing a shot I haven’t taken yet?’”
Jordan, like McIlroy, was someone who could Reset, in realtime, in seconds, and made it fundamental to everything he did. - Like Jordan, McIlroy has now earned his place alongside the icons of his craft.
Rory McIlroy's genius and victory yesterday was as much about his ability to Reset, which he had to do multiple times yesterday, as it was about his amazing strokeplay and shot selection.
