Relentless Solution Focus: Train Your Mind to Conquer Stress, Pressure, and Underperformance

by Jason Selk, Ellen Reed (Primary Contributor)

From bestselling author and mental toughness expert Jason Selk comes a mind-training regimen for reframing every problem into an opportunity for productive action.

The most common cause of failing to reach our professional and personal goals is hardwired in Humans instinctively focus on problems. Over millennia, our very survival relied on our ability to be alert to any potential dangers that could threaten our existence. But today this negativity bias significantly limits our potential and increases stress, pressure, and underperformance.

The one characteristic all phenomenally successful people share is mental toughness. Mentally tough people are better at making decisions more quickly and with better results. They possess the uncanny ability to control what goes on between their ears. Instead of allowing their minds to focus on their problems when adversity strikes, the most successful people have learned to direct their thoughts in a systematic manner that produces positive emotions and productive they have a Relentless Solution Focus.

In this book, top performance coach Dr. Jason Selk―former Director of Mental Training for the World Series champions St. Louis Cardinals―and his colleague Dr. Ellen Reed provide the insight, tools, and proven step-by-step framework for you to do the same. When you have Relentless Solution Focus, you think better. Your decisions garner positive results. You take action and follow through―every time. And when you do get off track, you get back on with less effort and less drama. Weakness shrinks and strength grows, creating confidence and momentum, taking you and your team to higher levels of performance and achievement.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Business, Productivity

256 pages, Hardcover

Published January 7, 2021

Reviews

[Joanna Olson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relentless Solution Focus isn't just a "self help" book, but rather an action plan to help you live a better life. We're all conditioned to focus on the negatives and often allow negative thoughts to enter our brain more than usual. In this book, Jason Selk tells us that while this is normal, it's not necessarily a good thing. By learning to attack our problems and focus on small actions we can take not to make the situation perfect, but to improve the situation, we can become a happier more productive person. The whole premise of the book is to attack Problem-Centric Thought (PCT) in order to have a Relentless Solution Focus (RSF) mindset. Jason Selk walks us through actionable things we can do in 3 minutes or less each day in order to develop this mindset. This 200 page book is jammed packed with tools, instructions, stories and plans. I learned a lot by reading this book and I think my biggest takeaway was changing negative thoughts to solution-focused thinking within 60 seconds. It can make a world of difference! There are so many great tools in this book and it's organized more like a workbook which made me want to take my time and really absorb what I was learning. I will say, I found some of the stories a bit hard to relate to. Most of the narratives and stories about people using RSF in their daily life were of famous and/or extremely wealthy individuals. While I see the reasons the stories were put in the book, I think having some experiences from people of all backgrounds and levels of success would have been more beneficial. All in all, I recommend this book to anyone seeking to train their mind and become a more solution focused, driven person!

[Alexandre Gomes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being someone that has been practicing meditation for a long time, I have found the premise of this book - replacing problem centered thinking (PCT) by relentless solution focus (RSF) sharing a lot in common with the meditative approach of trying to not let yourself get lost in your own thoughts.

The book's approach goes one step further and proposes a mix of the meditative practice with a kaizen, continuous improvement mindset.

By adding to that the Mental Workout and the Success Log the author offers a convenient way to put in practice the RSF philosophy with daily mantras and journaling habits that make sure you are well on your way on the path.

Loved this book and recommend it to everyone looking to work on his or her mental hardiness mindset ever more needed in a ever more complex and non-forgiving world.

[Danielle Barak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a game changer. It served as a workbook for me. There's many opportunities to implement your learnings while reading. A highlighter and tabs never left my hand while reading this book. I'm really grateful for the learnings and takeaways from this book. I have seen it impact me just as much personally as professionally which was deffinitly not expected. I love the mentality the authors teach to help drive results and get us out of our normal human behavior. This will be a book I reference regularly, think about often and I will do the mental workout and success journal daily. Very excited to impelement these things and see what will come of it!

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5 stars; ok got it; after pondering your problem for a maximum of 60 seconds, procede by relentlessly focusing on the solution, and there is always a solution; maybe this just was one self development book too many

[Barry Engelhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

What you focus upon expands – Expectancy Theory

RSF teaches the reader to differentiate between problem & solution based mindset. While biologically our minds default to focusing on problems, we are no longer hiding from saber tooth tigers & focusing on problems triggers cortisol (i.e. stress, anxiety & an inability to lose weight). Conversely, recognizing the problem & immediately pivoting to a solution focus causes you to move forward & triggers a neurotransmitter cocktail (i.e. positivity, happiness & creativity). Selk expands uses expectancy theory to create a recipe for a growth mindset & constant progress.

The concept I found the most intriguing is how Selk defines solutions, which is anything that can improve the situation, rather than an end-all fix. He suggests to ‘develop an obsessive focus on improvement,’ which builds confidence, positive reinforcement & momentum.

RSF provides a distilled & approachable mythology to improving mindset & performance, teaching you how to identify, improve, access & hold yourself accountable.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

With nonfiction, I don’t usually, okay never, know that I’m going to fall in love with the contents as quickly as I did Relentless Solution Focus. As I finished reading the first few paragraphs of the Preface, I knew this was the book for me.

". . . Is there anything wrong with my health? What about my family’s health? Did I say anything the day before that I regret?

My focus was primarily on avoiding problems. That focus on avoiding problems kept my focus squarely on problems. I didn’t even consider this an issue. In fact, this is the way the human brain is designed to work. In this sense, this is normal and common.

Normal, in this case, is not a good thing."

Wow! Pretty much daily I had a silent battle going on with life. You see, like many people, I felt I needed to be in control and anticipate every situation. Why? Because feeling out of control and unprepared brought on bad feelings. Feelings I didn’t want to experience. So my goal has always been to anticipate and conquer. Hmmm, a frustrating battle to say the least. Since winning is impossible. At least not the way I was preparing for battle.

But I could tell this book was going to offer me answers. And that it did. Relentless Solution Focus offers a very simple formula for becoming a more relaxed, in control, happy person. And in only a few days I can testify to how much better I feel. You see I couldn’t control my surroundings, but I could attempt to control my thoughts.

How many times do we have negative opinions and thoughts enter our minds? Far too many times in my case. After all, if I’m to be prepared for all events I have to anticipate negative things so that I can make a plan to counter them. Though this book is far deeper than this, one statement will begin to change you forever. It has me.

"…within 60 seconds, replacing all negative thoughts with solution-focused thinking."

You might wonder if that wasn’t what I was doing. Dredging up everything negative so that I could make a plan. In my opinion, this means to replace ALL negative thoughts with a simple positive one. If I’m traveling and anticipating everything in the world that could go wrong, instead replace those thoughts with I have AAA and a cell phone, I can handle it. I’ve created a positive solution to many problems.

Now bear in mind, I’ve read this book one time and these are things that I’ve gleaned from it that are helping me. I don’t pretend to say that I completely understand it. What I do know is that I will be reading it again. This time with a highlighter.

Doctors Jason Selk and Ellen Reed provide exercises and many thought-provoking examples of putting Relentless Solution Focus (RSF) into practice. Imagine being a major league pitcher and having negative, self-doubting thoughts occupy your mind when you’re getting ready to throw the ball. Wouldn’t that be a good time to practice the 60-second rule? Stop the brain chatter and quickly replace it with a solution.

Many of our obsessive thoughts do little more than cause worry and take up part of the day that could be spent in a much more productive way. This book offers simple techniques (though they aren’t always easy to put into practice) that you’ll wish you’d known about years ago. I’ve only addressed a small part of what is covered in this wonderful book But I’ll leave you with a final quote.

"If you want to win in life, you must stop running from your problems and instead learn to attack and defeat them."

RSF is basically a simple technique that I promise will change your life. And after all, what do you have to lose? But you have a lot to gain.

My thanks to TLC Book Tours and the authors for a copy of this book and the ability to post a review without any limitations or expectations.

[Mervi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has so much repetition in it. Each chapter expands on the one preceding it. I began to feel like I was being brainwashed. I also felt that the first author, performance coach Dr. Jason Selk, the former director of mental training for the World Series champions St. Louis Cardinals, was bragging. The stories or experiences were of famous and wealthy people.

The terms presented are also not new, they’ve just be renamed, e.g. Fixed Mindset becomes Problem-focused and Growth Mindset, Solution-focused.

The book has several “One Thing to Do” activities for the reader/listener to carry out. A number of the exercise templates are available for download on relentlesssolutionfocus.com, see Books.

Selk dictates that you should become mentally tough through thought control: “It is the focus on solutions instead of problems that is the key to health and success,” and that training yourself to have more positive thoughts will choke out the negative, resulting in less drama and adversity. The key is to do this in 60 seconds or less. One needs to systematically reduce the degree of negative head trash, as about 70% of our daily thoughts are worry about things that will never happen.

PCT (Problem-Centric Thought) has made our society sick, and unfortunately it is a biologically ingrained tendency. We need to remember that we can only focus on one thing at a time, and if that’s on a problem, it won’t be a solution. In fact, the average number of times a person has PCT thoughts is 4.800 daily (5/minute x 60 for an hour, multiplied by 16 for the number of hours one is generally awake).

What we focus on expands, and talking about your problems does not lead to solutions. This is the Freudian vs Jungian school of thought in psychology. Trying to suppress a thought, as in the case of the pink elephant, will actually keep it a dominant thought in your mind. This is referred to as the Theory of Dominant Thought. We must use thought replacement to combat this.

William Shakespeare wrote “Nothing is, unless our thinking makes it so,” in other words, what you believe, you make happen. Therefore, never lie, never cheat, never steal. Don’t whine, don’t complain, don’t make excuses either. “Changing thoughts, changes behaviours. Changing behaviours, changes results.” Knowing something, does nothing to change things, doing does, and there is always a solution when problems are broken down into small enough pieces. The common definition for solution is complete resolution, i.e. perfection. This causes people to view problems and solutions through the entirety perspective, but there is always something we can do to improve. All improvements are answers, and “I don’t know” is not an answer. “Anything that promotes personal or professional health, even by an inch, counts as a done-well.” In order to combat learned helplessness, we must be relentless and stay in the fight.

Although this book was good and the authors, as motivational speakers, were enthusiastic about their topic, I would recommend reading/listening to one of the summaries available, e.g. by Empress Publish or Everest Media to prevent unnecessary repetition.

[The Bookish Elf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you feel that no matter how hard you work, you are not making any progress? There are certain periods in my life where I felt that way. It is one of the reasons that I was so interested in productivity books and podcasts. I want to learn how to hack the system. Relentless Solution Focus lives up to its subtitle: Train Your Mind to Conquer Stress, Pressure, and Underperformance. This book, if you read it and take time to understand, is truly transformational.

Relentless Solution Focus is one of the few business/productivity books that isn’t bloated and cuts straight to the chase with a simple, thoughtful system. I admire Dr. Jason Selk’s discipline and commitment to doing what he loves and is proficient at. It balances productivity insights and theory with plenty of practical application.

Dr. Jason Selk takes you through exercises that allow you to decide what you want out of life, determine what activities you should focus on, and use rest to help you improve results. The book emphasizes the importance of getting rid of activities that eat up time and energy. It includes strategies for saying no to new requests and for dealing with unwanted existing commitments.

Relentless Solution Focus is how one would hope productivity would be taught at work. It takes you from defensive to offense with your tasks and commitments at the office. Further, it makes a strong case why unplugging from work is important and should be intentional. The main take-aways from this book is that self-discipline and application of a few insightful principles will improve your personal and professional life immensely.

Relentless Solution Focus by Dr. Jason Selk can help anyone focus on priorities and be more productive- teachers, community volunteers, parents who home school, executives, business owners, students, etc. This book can certainly help you think about your work in a different way, focus on the work that matters most, and improve your output not by doing more, but by doing less.

Read book review here

[Gareth Otton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a blog article of content stretched out to fill a book. The idea is very simple, focus on the solution rather than the problem, and train yourself to make this your default state. I think a more focused book would have made this much more palatable, but obviously it wouldn't have been long enough to make it into a book.

The other issue I had with this book was the author's need to condense things down to anacronyms. This might be a me thing, but my brain has never been good at using those when there are too many of them happening at once. It starts to sound like someone throwing buzzwords at you and it becomes easy to become lost. That was the case when listening to this audiobook.

My final issue is one of overselling. This book spends way more time trying to convince you of the benefits of this system than it does in teaching you this system. This is reminiscent of old-school infomercials and lesser self-help books, and it is another thing that turns off my attention when reading a book.

So overall, this is a nice concept and genuinely useful information if you can actuate it, but the book itself leaves a fair bit to be desired.

[T. Laane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The CONCEPT of the book is fabulous - I have lived this way all my life and I do accord most of my success towards my thinking "what is the next thing I can do to improve this current situation" and also writing down my successes (i do it in the way of to do lists and i see visually my progress each day); AND to always seek small improvements, not big steps nor perfection. BUT. Man, the author and his ego. He REALLY was claiming that if only one super-athlete would have heard about his advice (the "RSF-solution") then he would have got super-successful again and bagged millions of dollars. COME ON! The super athlete always had a superb mindset, hearing your "fabulous idea" is not a game-changer, it goes so much deeper than that. Oh, and I already disliked the beginning of the book that "this will be the most important book You will ever listen". And "Only three minutes a day that will totally change Your life. Come on. And the sad thing about the author is that he even confesses he is not living up to this concept himself always. "Do as I say, not as I do".

[Sam Sette · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 — I really wanted to give this 4 stars but the number of times a “research study” was mentioned with no source hurt my empirically trained brain. Just leave the science out of it.

Overall though, 8 appreciated this more than I initially thought. Best for individuals in performance-based roles like athletes, consultants, financial professionals, etc. versus those discovering what it is they are working towards. The exercises were practical and not gimmicky. Tbh it read like a masculine version of “Everything Is Figureoutable” by Marie Forleo and I’m not mad about it.

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a solid book. It took me a couple of chapters to get into it. The acronyms although well intended, made it a little challenging to maintain flow when reading because I had to go back and remember a few. I really liked the last quarter of suggestions to be solution focused. The content leaves little room for blaming others for the choices you make.

[Arianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the only self help book that teaches you how to improve rather than just speaking at you. I will never stop recommending this book! The authors are so knowledgeable and their advice can be applicable to anyone.

[Abigail Chua · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's absolutely amazing. With a track record of working with the world's top athletes, his approach in aolutioning is both backed with statistics and simple to implement with little inertia. Mind you, as simple as is, one would still need to exercise those brain muscles and diligently work on it!

[SVEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great practical tips to enhance your life by moving from problem to solution focus

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Put this into practice!

Great book. Put it into practice. It will help you achieve your goals. Jason does a good job of outlining a daily practice for mental toughness.

[Jerry Kinzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read. Amazing book

This is a great book to help refocus your thoughts and ways to build sustain success. I will be reading a couple more times as a reminder

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is what I’ve wanted all self help books to be. This book has changed my life and the path that I’m on. Amazing.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

We should teach this in high schools 🙂👏

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved how applicable this was- clear action steps at end of each chapter. I hope I can continue to apply what I’ve learned by implementing the daily mental toughness habits etc.

[bijan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read; really love the solutions discussed and the positivity and effectiveness of them

[Eli · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate the message that you are in control of your own thoughts and the framework of: what is one thing I can do today to make a small improvement on this problem. However, his attitude about not feeling negative emotions goes against my belief that individuals need to learn how to feel all emotions. Overall this read as incredibly intense and rigid.

[Nola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Motivation to pick a few goals and make progress. Inspiring stories of folks who made changes in their lives