Readiness to Change: A Mental Performance Coach’s Lesson
“I should really stop gambling.”
I never actually thought that sentence.
Not until a panic attack scared the you-know-what out of me and forced my hand.
That’s how readiness to change works. It rarely shows up on schedule.
I always think about the process of change — mostly because of my experience resisting and ultimately making a life-changing decision.
But also because understanding the process of change drives success as a mental performance coach.
Helping young athletes generate results is my job.
But there’s only so much I can control.
I can’t control a client’s desire to take the actions that actually create change. That part is on them.
Why Readiness to Change Matters in Mental Performance Coaching
When I ask myself what I could be doing better with my athletes, one answer keeps surfacing: I need to assess readiness to change earlier — before we ever start the real work.
Is this athlete ready because they want to change?
Or because somebody else — a parent, a coach — wants it for them?
That distinction changes everything about how I work with a young athlete.
My Own Readiness to Change
On July 29, 2012, I walked into my first Gamblers Anonymous meeting in Brooklyn, New York. It was a Sunday morning.
No one forced me to go.
I chose to stop gambling after about six weeks of intense contemplation.
I didn’t wake up one day and decide to fix myself.
My contemplation was triggered by a panic attack — a real, physical, gasping-for-air panic attack.
Without it, I’m not sure I would have made the change when I did.
Maybe it would’ve taken longer.
Maybe that moment never comes.
I was literally willing to do anything to stop gambling and stay stopped.
My motivation was mostly autonomous — meaning it came from inside me, not from external pressure.
Yes, I wanted to stop because it was hurting my family and fueling my anxiety.
But underneath that, I knew I couldn’t reach my potential if I kept gambling compulsively.
That was my rock bottom.
That question — what actually creates readiness to change — is the one I keep bringing back into my coaching work.
So What Does This Have to Do With Mental Performance Coaching? A Lot.
I think a lot about why my clients and their families come to me in the first place.
Is it the parents, who usually reach out first?
Or the athletes, who are often unsure what they’ve signed up for?
Is mental performance coaching a fix — like physical therapy for an injury?
Or is it proactive — like working with an athletic trainer before anything breaks?
How many people show up to this work actually at rock bottom?
In my experience, most don’t.
Families usually get curious about mental performance coaching when athletic performance doesn’t match all the time, money, and effort poured into physical training.
I’ve worked with one athlete whose case of the yips was close to a true rock bottom — that was one of the hardest challenges I’ve had.
But most young athletes are dealing with mental and emotional patterns that are real roadblocks, just not debilitating enough to create urgent motivation to do the work.
As sport psychology consultant Dr. Bob Rotella has said, the field doesn’t need more techniques — it needs better ways to get athletes to actually use the techniques we already have (Leffingwell et al., 2001, p. 169).
I couldn’t agree more.
One of my core values as a practitioner is intent over content — meaning the sophistication of an intervention matters less than the intention behind offering it.
Sometimes the most effective move is the simplest one: listening.
Instead of trying to fix something before a client is ready to fix it. Leffingwell and colleagues make a similar point — match the intervention to the client’s stage of change (p. 171).
Understanding a client’s readiness to change isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s how I know whether my interventions are landing, and whether the client is actually doing the work between sessions.
The Stages of Change, Explained
The Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM) is used across psychology to map how people move through personal change. It’s been applied to gambling recovery and to mental skills training alike (Kushnir et al., 2016; Leffingwell et al., 2001).
TTM breaks change into five stages:
1. Precontemplation — not yet considering change.
2. Contemplation — aware something needs to shift, not yet acting.
3. Preparation — getting ready to take action.
4. Action — actively doing the work.
5. Maintenance — sustaining the change over time.
With gambling, I moved from precontemplation to action in under two months. Fast.
I’ve been in maintenance for almost 14 years now, largely because I put in the effort to stay there — therapy, 12-step meetings, sponsorship, self-reflection.
I was motivated.
I was committed.
I did the work.
Coaching young athletes looks different.
Often, a parent’s readiness for their athlete to change outpaces the athlete’s own readiness.
That’s why I always consult with the athlete separately before we formally begin — to understand their motivation and help them understand what mental performance coaching actually is.
If we get that far, we’re already in the contemplation stage of change.
Managing Expectations Is the Real Job
The biggest challenge in this work isn’t finding the right technique. It’s managing expectations — because the pace of change depends heavily on the athlete’s own motivation to engage.
Clients who just show up to sessions don’t change as fast as clients who practice between sessions. But change tends to come, eventually, for anyone who shows up ready to engage regularly.
The real question is: will it come fast enough for the parents?
I’m constantly reevaluating my approach — based on feedback from athletes and parents, and my own reflection.
As I tell every family I work with: there’s no magic formula here. It takes critical thinking, creativity, and mental flexibility to keep getting better at this.
Three Things I’m Changing About How I Assess Readiness to Change
Normally I hand readers three takeaways. This time, I’m giving myself three:
1. Assess readiness to change upfront. I usually understand why a client is seeking mental performance coaching. What I need to get better at is assessing whether they’re actually ready to act on it. Wanting to improve your mental game and being willing to do the work are two different things.
2. Get clearer with parents and athletes, separately. I already prioritize communication between myself, the athlete, and the parents — we call this triangulation in sport psychology. But I need to do a better job distinguishing the athlete’s motivation from the parent’s motivation, right from the start.
3. Be patient. I want to introduce actionable mental skills work immediately. But some athletes aren’t far enough along the readiness to change spectrum to do that work yet. Sometimes the job isn’t the intervention — it’s building rapport first, and trusting that readiness will follow.
If your athlete is ready to make a big change, let’s talk.
👉 Schedule a free 30-minute consultation
References
Kushnir, V., Godinho, A., Hodgins, D.C., Hendershot, C.S., & Cunningham, J.A. (2016). Motivation to quit or reduce gambling: Associations between self-determination theory and the transtheoretical model. Journal of Addictive Diseases, 35(1), 58-65.
Leffingwell, T.R., Rider, S.P., & Williams, J.M. (2001). Application of the transtheoretical model to psychological skills training. The Sport Psychologist, 15, 168-187.