The Four Personality Elements Of Every Athlete

It’s Jonathan and this week I want to talk about the elements of every athlete. Every athlete has four main personality types and today I’m going to explain why your sport needs you to adjust and come with each one at certain times.

The Four Elements Are Fire, Water, Earth and Air

[00:00:15] But what I’m trying to get across to the athletes was this concept that, as people, we have personalities, and now for the adults watching this, you know there’s a lot of different personality profiles. You may have done them for work, you may have done them for your career or upon graduation. But one of the ones I like to use the best with athletes is this idea of the elements. So we have fire and we have water and then we have earth and we have air. So if you looked on a grid and maybe I’ll put a graphic up here but we’ve got fire, water, earth, and air. And so what you’re doing with these with these these elements is you’re thinking like OK well what’s a fiery personality like. And you can come up with your own examples. I go into depth in this into our high performance course for athletes or Success Principles course for athletes.

Fire and Water

[00:01:14] You want to check those out but so fire is like a fiery fiery personality. Right. And then water is more of a passive personality. My sports psychologist Dr. Jerry Lynch,e he taught me this idea of like, I am a leaf on a river. And I think when I first learned that I didn’t really quite get it, but as I’m older now I do understand. When things come at you you want to take this, you know kind of water approach and not let it affect you and work around it move around it. And so that’s water.

Earth

[00:01:46] Now Earth is you know it’s like the ground. The ground is it’s dirt it’s solid. It’s stable. It’s not easily moved. You could think of people who have a stable personality you know and then or they’re not easily kind of blown off course sort of thing.

Air

[00:02:03] But then on the other side of that you have air and you know you think of someone who’s an airhead you know someone who’s kind of airy fairly high. I know a lot of athletes in my career who who are kind of like that. So you have these four different elements. Now what happens is if you think about yourself you’ll think that you’re going to identify with some more than others. You know you mean you may think of yourself as like you know you’re you’re pretty fiery.

What You Are Makes Little Difference

[00:02:29] You know you get kind of upset and angry you know or maybe you’re kind of water and it’s just kind of you just like whatever comes comes and you’ll deal with it. Earth you know, same thing, as kind of stable. Or maybe you’re a bit of an airhead right and you kind of like what? Is it practice today? Is that rain? You know what I mean. So but the thing is this this is where a lot of athletes say Well I’m one and I’m not the other I’m fiery but i’m not water. I’m air but I’m not Earth. The thing is this, is that your sport comes at you needing a certain personality at certain times. So if you come up against a fiery athlete you can either meet fire with fire. Or you can meet fire with water. Right? Or if you are water but you come in a situation where you need to be fire you have to find that that part of you that is fire. And some athletes have trouble with that. Some athletes they go,”I’m not you know I’m not that if I’m not a fire guy I’m on fire I’m pretty stable that’s OK.” But that would be doing yourself a disservice because it’s not about you it’s about what you need to succeed in that event. And sometimes you need fire. Like years ago I had the privilege of knowing a world champion in the in the world of freestyle skiing. So when they do the aerials and they go off though it’s called the triple kicker and now it’s like the quad kicker. They’re doing like all sorts of crazy flips and they jump and they land. And this athlete you know was a really mellow, mellow dude. And you know what happened was when they needed more rotation more explosiveness they needed to find fire in them. And that’s for a good coach can help you. That’s where they can they can help you find like him. You know that’s when you fire. And so this athlete then looked inside themselves and were like OK how can I develop fire in me OK.

You Need To Change Your Personality To Be Successful

[00:04:36] And so what I’m going to tell, what I’m telling you today is that there’s days when there might be days weeks months where you need to become more intense you need more fire. Or maybe you’re too much fire and you need a little water you know or maybe you’re you know you’re pretty you know stable in any one everything organized and you want to know what the schedule is going to be and you need to kind of chill out and be a little bit more airy, right? The point is that you need to look at your event, you know you look at how your perform within your vent within your sport within your competition and find out which personality is going to give you the best chance to succeed. So take a minute today if you want to leave me a comment or send me an email either way but think a little bit about what is your personality? Are you fire or water? Are you earth or air? And then in your sport. What do you need more of. Or do you need a combination of both or does it morph? You know for a lot of athletes more if you can’t be fire all the time. You know even an Olympic weightlifter would tell you they can’t be fire all the time. You know something is they need to be water. They need to be air. So take some time to think today. And I have a chapter of this in my book a young Athlete’s Guide to Success to Winning in Sports and life. Check that out.

[00:05:58] And if you don’t have a copy get one but let me know your thoughts. I love to hear how you’re working this in your life in your sports and watching more of what you maybe need less of but again hope you enjoy this one. Kind of fun one. It was fun explaining it to the athletes this weekend and I hope this video helps them because I promised them I would do a little extra so that they can look at it again and again and again. All right. So listen I’m Jonathan Edwards. Enjoy. Thanks so much send an email and leave me a comment below that be great. And if this helps you I sure would love to hear it and I’ll see you next week. Cheers.

Thanks for reading.  Be sure to check out our product page for more resources.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Edwards – Olympian