It often starts with a tweet…
This tweet turned into me open-sourcing my thoughts that went into the making of this piece. Some of the tweets didn’t make the cut but click on the above tweet to read the entire thread.
The Cocoon as a Mental Model
After our hockey trip to Florida concluded with the summer academy team, we hopped on the plane and headed back to Texas to resume our practices and preparation for the next tournament at the end of July.
As we returned home, there was a mess of caterpillars and cocoons on our front porch with a few extra butterflies flying around the yard.
As I struggled internally with how camp is going and how to get players to give slightly more a fuck, I thought about those butterflies and the cocoons that littered our front porch.
A cocoon limits movement and limits the caterpillar to a small confined area and yet during that time of confinement, it transforms from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
Limit options when their impulses will run
If you take your junior team to a post-game meal, you can split-test this mental model. Many take their team after the game over to Golden Corral for example. This fine establishment has an unlimited all-you-can-eat buffet of disgustingly horrendous food that would promote more inflammation than recovery.
Your players can go gorge themselves on fried chicken, pizza, pasta with sauces comprised of cheap seed oils, and an entire dessert bar.
To steer them towards a more disciplined lifestyle decision which over time they will hopefully make without your intervention, you can kickstart them down this path by working with the local restaurant in town.
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