Robert J. Rotella, PH.D.

“Bad breaks, lack of talent, or a downturn in the economy are not the factors which inhibit success,” says Dr. Robert J. Rotella, chairman of sports psychology and physical education at the University of Virginia. Slim, wiry, and extremely peppy, Dr. Rotella is also the golf psychologist for several leading golf pros including Tom Kite, Denis Watson, and Muffin Spencer-Devlin; he is also a three handicapper when he’s on the fairway.

“The bad news,” says Rotella, “is that the enemy of success is within. But the good news is that the real winner is also within.” Success, according to this highly specialized master of the psychology of success, will be accomplished through self-awareness, self-understanding, and internal motivation. “Winners,” claims Rotella, “refuse to be psyched out. They realize that no one can make you feel inferior but you.”

Rotella also subscribes to the theory that winners, although occasionally discouraged and disappointed, allow setbacks to reconfirm their belief in themselves, their dreams, and their goals. In so doing, he believes they enhance their self-motivation and determination to succeed. Dr. Rotella even teaches workshops for winners. In these scientifically structured situations, he helps corporate executives eliminate negativism and self-imposed barriers that inhibit the achievement of their fullest potential.

“The hardest thing in the world to be is yourself,” Rotella tells professional athletes and business executives. He goes on to say that no one personality type is the success model. Anyone and any personality can be successful. By learning to “work within yourself” – a concept that he has defined for some of the top golfers on the pro circuit today – you can use your advantages to their fullest and watch your winning self blossom. (This cassette program, Golfing Out of Your Mind has hit the bestseller lists.)

We have all seen the model of the hard working salesperson who imagines that more success will come if he or she just works harder. Rotella, on the other hand, advises that harder work doesn’t always assure success – working better does. He teaches how to do that, without the guilt that often accompanies the driven performer.

Finally, Dr. Rotella says that real winners are safe, secure, and self-confident. They build those around them into winners. In this exclusive interview with PSP, Dr. Rotella tells us just how we all can become sales winners.

PSP: How do you go about building someone’s confidence?

Robert Rotella: The reality is that I can only help someone to build his own confidence. I’m an educator. People keep calling me a shrink – forget that – I see myself as educating athletes about how their minds and bodies work together.

PSP: So once they have confidence…

Robert Rotella: Once they have that, then they have to learn how to concentrate.

PSP: How do you teach concentration?

Robert Rotella: People come in to me all the time and say, “I want you to teach me how to concentrate.” I usually look at them and say, “Look, you already know how to concentrate. What we’ve got to do is look at what’s stopping you from concentrating.” Anyone can concentrate. First, they have to know what to concentrate on. A lot of people perform and they never get around to asking, “What am I supposed to be thinking about?”

PSP: What do they usually think about then?

Robert Rotella: They usually focus on the wrong thing. There are a whole lot of distracters that interfere with concentration because you end up concentrating on the distracter instead of on the appropriate task. People need to be more flexible in their thinking and not to be distracted by the environment stimuli that interfere.

PSP: Does that bring us back to confidence?

Robert Rotella: Yes, because once they know what to concentrate on, then I can help them build their confidence. Once you get someone confident, they automatically know what to concentrate on and how to do it and how to keep it there. Once they lose that confidence, we have to look at what caused it to happen.

PSP: What are some of the factors in losing confidence?

Robert Rotella: I think that both losing and hindering confidence have a lot of the same elements. I think we get so involved in positive thinking that we often fail to talk about the realities that exist out there.

PSP: Are you saying that positive thinking gets in the way of concentrating?

Robert Rotella: I think what we’ve done over the last fifteen years is to give inspirational talks on being positive and how wonderful everything’s going to be – if only you can imagine success – see it in your mind – imagine playing golf or tennis perfectly or flawlessly.

PSP: What’s wrong with that, from your point of view?

Robert Rotella: Well, the athletes that I work with – the good ones – say, “Hey, that’s great. Now when are we going to talk about the way it really is?” I say, “What do you mean?” And they say, “Well, I’m the second best player in the country and when everything is going great I have no problem. When I need help is when everything’s not going terrific.”

PSP: Do you think, then, that positive thinking is like the golfer who says the theoretical score is 18 and he’s not going to give up until he reaches that?

Robert Rotella: If you tell someone that everything’s perfect, and then they find out it isn’t – like playing eighteen holes and having a score of eighteen – then their first reaction is going to be, “This is garbage.” After that they’ll start feeling like losers because it didn’t work for them at all. Third, they’ll pick up on these perfect examples from sports when everything’s going great -or read a book that only talks about the great moments of an athlete’s career and never touches on all the down times. In that way, positive thinking can be very discouraging.

PSP: What’s the alternative?

Robert Rotella: I’d rather tell people what athletes are really like – not the malarkey that the press uses to sell papers. Heck, you could take any salesperson, and tell about his greatest sale, and make him look like a hero, too. But most salespeople know how many sales they don’t get before they get that big one. You see, I want to help on the days when they question how good they are. Discouragement and disappointment are the ways we grow.

PSP: So you think that positive thinking has its place but not to the exclusion of sometimes feeling down.

Robert Rotella: That’s right. Everyone is going to question their ability and talent and commitment. They’re going to wonder if they’re ever going to improve and if it’s worth it. Everybody who knows anything about success knows that it takes a lot of failure to make a success.

PSP: Mary Kay says that we fail forward to success.

Robert Rotella: That’s right. Successful people learn to how to grow and learn from failure. Failure doesn’t mean you are worthless as a person or that you can’t succeed. See, we live in a world that pats you on the back from the time you’re five and tells you you’re perfect – perfect attitude, perfect skills, perfect confidence, and all the rest. And you get awfully good because of that. But now, all the guys I work with are awfully good, and when you start making mistakes, then maybe months go by without any improvement. Where’s all the perfect positive thinking going to get you now? That’s when you have to go back to confidence and concentration.

PSP: What are some other growth factors, besides disappointment?

Robert Rotella: The minute you start making a change, you automatically change the way you think. If you’re listening to an expert who says, “Look, you’re got to change the way you’re doing this and do it this other way,” that’s bound to affect your confidence. Now, a lot of people feel the best way to get someone to listen to them, and thus to change them, is to destroy their confidence first, and then bring them back to where they were in the first place. You feel like you helped them. A lot of people buy into that. But actually you’ve done nothing. What you have really created is someone who is then dependent on you. Real growth happens inside of a person. And in the athletes I work with it’s a combination of mind and body growing at the same time.

PSP: What are the risks in changing the way someone performs?

Robert Rotella: If you’ve got high level performers, and you’re going to suggest they change something in their game, you’d better know what you’re doing. The biggest risk is in spending months working on a change and finding out after that they’re worse off than they were. In sports that happens all the time. With an average athlete, the biggest mistake you can make is to undercoach him. With a talented one, the biggest mistake is to overcoach.

PSP: Can you give us an example of a successful change?

Robert Rotella: Sure. Tom Kite has spent a year changing – and very slightly – his golf swing. His objective was to get 20 or so yards more out of his golf swing when he hits the ball. A lot of people told him he was nuts to change because he was already a top money winner. But he was committed to it and it has worked out well for him. Since he made the change he has won two tournaments in one year for the first time in his career. So it has already paid off for him.

PSP: Is there a place in our society for a mediocre success – for someone to just do an average job and not try to be the best there is?

Robert Rotella: You know, contrary to what we’re all told, it is not necessary to have a killer instinct to be a success. Nor is it important to measure your success by anyone else’s yardstick. You have to keep your focus on what you want to do – on your goals – which have nothing whatever to do with what anyone else wants to do. See, most of the people who talk about success focus on the end product. That’s because they don’t know what success is all about. These people focus on the prize – on the big win. Well, on the pro golf circuit, there are 40 tournaments a year. What the heck is a player going to do if he expects to win every one?

PSP: Where do you place rewards then, as incentives for success?

Robert Rotella: They have a place, sure, but let me tell you a story. An old man was in the habit of sitting and rocking in the quiet of the late afternoon on his porch at the end of a cul-de-sac. One day a gang of kids showed up and started playing in his yard and making an awful racket, disturbing his peace. So he call them over and said, “Kids, I’ll give you 75 cents to play in my yard. So the kids said, “All right! That’s great.” And they came back every day and made a terrific amount of noise. After about a week the old man called them in again and said, “Listen kids, this has been a tough week and I can only afford to give you 50 cents.” And they said, “Hey, that’s O.K.” And they went on playing. And a couple of days later he called them in again and said that he would have to cut it down to a quarter and then five days later he called them in again and said, “Well, I’m sorry to have to say this but all my money has run out and I won’t be able to pay you for making noise in my yard anymore.” And the kids started grumbling and then said, “Well, listen old man, we’re not coming all the way down here to make noise in your yard for nothing.” And they walked out and never came back. And the old man sat on his porch in the quiet of the afternoon and he smiled and rocked. You see, sometimes we undermine things that are intrinsically motivating by giving them extrinsic rewards. We give kids prizes for doing things that they love doing anyway. Then they get to depend on the prize. And it can be very demotivating for everyone if only one kid gets a prize.

PSP: What about, say, district managers who have to motivate their people. What should they do?

Robert Rotella: I know a salesman who did very well and was promoted to a DM position. He had a husband and wife on his new team who worked two days a week, made $25,000 a year, and that was all they wanted. He asked me what to do. I told him to leave them alone and to concentrate on the people who wanted to do better.

PSP: Is there anything else he could have done?

Robert Rotella: The only other thing would be to find out if they’re satisfied at that level because they have a confidence problem and they think that’s all they can do. There’s a distinction between worth as a person and worth because of what you produce. Athletes confuse the two all the time. Their identities are very tied to their earnings.

PSP: How do you help them to separate performance from self-worth?

Robert Rotella: It takes time and it takes separating the values of what you do from what you are. I think a balanced life between personal and professional helps to keep it in perspective. You also have to watch out for the seductiveness of money and ego gratification.

PSP: What was your biggest disappointment?

Robert Rotella: I’ve had all kinds of disappointments and I think they’re fundamental to getting good at anything, but I can’t think of one in particular. The best thing that happened to me was growing up in a family with a loving mother and six aunts who had a lot of influence on my life as a kid. Being involved in sports where you’re taught to be macho and having my aunts around to teach me about nurturing and sensitivity has been a healthy and valuable combination. And my father, who always insisted that I do the best I could at whatever I chose to do and not take short cuts, was very important to my life.

PSP: Where does your energy and drive come from?

Robert Rotella: Helping other people. My minds works best when an athlete comes to me with a problem.

PSP: What is your personal value system?

Robert Rotella: The three things that are important to me are health, happiness, and success. I came to that after seeing some of the seductiveness of wealth and the false “success” that it brings. You see, we’re emotional people. Emotions affect us more than thoughts. That’s why people who’ve been taught only how to think fall apart when they get in a crucial situation. Then they tell me, “My emotions overpowered me.” Success has to be lived on an emotional level as well as on a thought level, and the single minded pursuit of money can never supply you with the feeling of being successful.

PSP: Thank you.