So when we took the data at the the end of the session, having not touched it right to the end, we ran a number of statistical methods on it to find out the answers to the questions that we had asked. And the hypothesis, I guess, the answers we wanted to find around did mental toughness have any correlation with performance in this area, so specifically, did grit correlate with performance? Did optimism correlate with performance? And then, secondly, could we change those measures? Could we actually improve them just by this short intervention? And, thirdly, if we did change them, could we change the consistency levels and the performance levels of the athletes in question? And when we dug into the data and ran the statistical methods that we needed to find those answers, the data gave us great insights. And it turns out that the hypothesis, I guess, the gut intuition that I followed, and which took me to the United States, and now working in pro sports over here, was actually, well, at least, in this case, it turned out to be true. There was a correlation, a very strong correlation, between grit and the level of consistency in performance of the athletes in question. And the same goes for optimism, but specifically one element of that scale and we'll talk about that in a second. We also found that the training was effective in improving optimism. It was a little bit of a mixed result though on the grit scale. And that was quite an interesting finding because I guess it was one of the first questions I asked Angela, could you train this? We're still working on this now and Angela and her team are still doing some great work in this area. What this experiment showed, at least, in this individual instance I'm talking about, was that those who already had high grit, there wasn't a lot of movement to be had. You could teach them and they were a little bit like, yeah I get it, I already do that. But for those who are low in grit, we did show a shift. So across the entire group, the results were mixed. But if we split it, we did find that the lower end of the scale were able to improve somewhat. The coolest part from my point of view, as a practitioner, as someone who gets paid to improve athletes' performance, was that we found that by delivering this program, and when we controlled it by comparing it to athletes who didn't receive it in the same team, same age group, same level of performance, those who received the intervention were more consistent in the following year and did improve slightly. The biggest change was consistency though, and particularly for young, developing athletes. I'm sure a lot of coaches, if anyone out there is a coach or a teacher, often in a performance instance, that's really the key to getting long-term improvement. If we can get consistency, the next thing is huge levels of improvement. So in one year we're able to show that, in one season, from one season to the next. And that was the most exciting part of, I guess for me, the findings that we had. One of the ways that the hypothesis shifted a little bit was, as I said, the grit work, the grit measures, sorry, showed that the lower end of the scale can improve, but the upper end maybe not so much. So that shifted the way we approached it. And we're also a little bit more specific going forward. So I've done this work now with an NFL team, a college football team, discussed program design with an NBA squad. And, as I said, I'm now employed with a major league baseball team doing it with more than 180 professional baseballers across all sorts of minor league and major league levels. Is that we're now a little more specific about some of the work around goal setting, and particularly using some of Angela's research, and moreover some of Gabriele Oettingen's research, I hope I pronounced that right, on what they call the WOOP method. So being up and actually being more specific, but also more realistic with the way we set goals at the start of the program, and then basically just holding the athletes to that. That became a much bigger component in the program. Still delivering a lot of the resilience and optimism stuff. But by doing this analysis, by testing the hypothesis, we're able to be really specific about that, and find out that, okay, if we tweak this here and tweak this here, the programs can be even more effective going forward. So as a practitioner, there's nothing better than, obviously, getting results at first, but even more being able to say, okay, we can get even better results if we add this, and if we take that out and if we just tweak this. So it was one of the most beneficial, it was quite some hard work. A lot of numbers and a lot of deep statistics. But with great help from people like Angela and people like Claire and also the entire team, reaching out to other researchers, it made it easy, and I guess in a way fun, to actually get through that process and find some practical results. And make me better at my job, but more importantly, help the groups that I'm working with improve their resilience, their mental toughness and the results they can achieve with that.
