Tag: growth

Performance psychology

Progressing

Dr. John Panepinto

There are two main types of progressions in building any sort of capacity—physical or mental. These progressions follow developmental stages and it’s good to know the pattern beforehand. It can save a lot of headaches and needless repetition—even keep you from giving up when you are just a step away from an important goal.  

The first progression is incremental growth. Skills, knowledge, and habits are gradually improving and it’s an additive process. This represents little steps headed in the direction of an important change. More information or efficiency has been added to your present level of performance in a skill or strategy.  

The second progression is transformative growth. This happens far less often and represents a significant change in mindset or ability. Something “clicks,” or you have a realization—an “ah-ha” moment that rearranges you on a significant level, a way of being, or a way of doing changes in quality. You see what you didn’t see before. You can do things autonomously and have created even more space for growth.  

Both progressions are important. But you can’t experience transformative growth without the small steps of incremental growth. This is the most important reason that every moment matters. Every bit of attention we pay to a process matters. Every practice matters. And then, every reflection on a practice or performance, or experience matters.  

When this makes sense, there are no good or bad days. We may say we had a “good day” or a “bad day” as a social convention but internally we know better. Every day has the seeds of growth. It all depends on what you give your attention to, and the price you pay in time, energy, and purpose.

Take your mental approach to the next level with my sports psychology workbook: Above the Field of Play. Or to learn about other sports psychology services (including an assessment of your present mental approach), visit my website at DrJohnPanepinto.com.

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Performance psychology, Sports Psychology

Coping and Developing

Dr. John Panepinto

There are two important processes happening when you move towards a goal. The goal may not even be explicit as you make choices based on value all day long. And the goal could be to not have a goal. But these processes are even more noticeable when you do have an idea where you are heading.

Coping represents management in the short term. Developing represents leadership in the long term. Coping without developing can be a lifestyle. Same problems come round and round managed in some fashion in the moment. Same frustrations. The unspoken goal here is for things not to change, to get a different result for the same choices and behaviors. Tools and strategies have become buzzwords in this vein. “I need some tools to handle this.” “I use this strategy when…”

Problem is when you stay in this type of loop, it becomes a closed system. “I know my triggers” but neglect the possibilities of becoming something more. States become traits and you get stuck avoiding or coping with the same situations. Development, in this case, presents as the edge of discomfort and something to avoid.

Intention at the leading edge of growth is doing, being, or having something new and better. It has to be of higher value, or you wouldn’t call it a goal, wouldn’t be motivated to pursue the outcome or quality in the future. This is the essence of development and represents an open system. One that embraces the complexity of the flow between the internal and external qualities and experiences of life.

In an open system of development, frustration or dissonance is not a signal to stop or avoid. These emotions are just messages to tell you where you are in the development of a skill or mental capacity. You can only handle so much change and stress at one time, so coping in this case is regulating the process. You regulate the thoughts, feelings, and sensations without losing sight of the path ahead. You cope with frustration, confusion, or loss and know that if you continue to adjust, learn, and practice, you will develop. Every stage is like this. Every plateau is just a message that a rise (or fall) is ahead. It is up to you to interpret the experience from a future self.

With both processes working towards a future goal, obstacles are seen in a different light. In an open system they are assumed. You will meet challenges. You can handle them and use them to become smarter and stronger. That is the purpose of the problems faced on the path of development. Growth requires resilience and learned, embodied experience with the pull of the future guiding.

Finally, control feels quite different when you are open to the challenges of developing. In a closed system you avoid, discount, or dismiss experiences beyond the edge of control. While developing in an open system, a sense of control comes from trust in your ability to learn and adapt (smarter) and regulate the dissonance (stronger). It’s comfort with the discomfort at the edges of chaos.

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Performance psychology, Sports Psychology

Reflective Coaching Practices III

Dr. John Panepinto

In the first two posts, the reflective practices have moved from emotions to motivation, and now we connect the third practice with movement towards goals. Emotions reveal values, and motivation links to vision and goals. Reflecting on learning reveals how we accommodate our mental and physical structures and capacities on our way towards our goals.

Learning is an active process and requires a target, a plan, and a means of monitoring. Moving from level to level requires a change of mind and body. Sometimes it’s additive and we grow in breadth. Sometimes it’s transformative and we rise vertically to a new way of seeing things.

Movement, action, and following a lesson plan does not guarantee learning. There must be intention and attention to our process. And this process is facilitated and managed by a constant practice of reflection.

Reflect on the Learning Process. What improved today? Learning is not just for players, students, or teams. It is a process of continuous improvement for everyone involved. The learning process increases capacity and complexity at the growth edge. If practice relies on just routines and a static structure, it is easy to fall into habits and a stale process. Here, activity is confused with intentional actions. Learning at higher levels is difficult as it requires both player and coach to continuously refine and adapt to new challenges. Learning is a delicate process of physical and mental transformation. It requires a specific focus for what, how, and why we are putting energy into improving a particular aspect of performance. 

If you would like more structure to take your mental approach to the next level, consider picking up a copy of my sports psychology workbook: Above the Field of Play. Or to learn about other sports psychology services (including an assessment of your present mental approach), visit my website at DrJohnPanepinto.com.

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Photo credit: Meghan Holmes (unsplash.com)

Performance psychology, Sports Psychology

Reflective Coaching Practices

Dr. John Panepinto

The expression, “Nothing fails like success” offers a good mental space to reflect on what is working, not working, and why. And the connection to the future. The mind loves and thrives on patterns. It does its best to regulate and create equilibrium. But once a pattern becomes so engrained on the level of unconscious competence, we can easily confuse the sense of automaticity with balance. In other words, there is a significant difference between static and dynamic balance along the growth curve. 

Reflective coaching practices go beyond the data that describe aspects of practices and performances. It’s an exercise in quality that unlocks potential for the coach—and the athlete. Data and outcomes often miss the relationship between the context and the content. Data has to be abstracted from the whole. Reflective practices look at the whole. Data is often isolated and limited in scope. Reflected practices are inside-out and broad in scope. Both are useful, yet the latter is less used. Over the next few posts, we will look at these reflective coaching practices that have the potential to increase the quality of what is given and received in the player-coach relationship. 

Each reflective practice starts with a question that opens the internal dialogue critical to the powers of reflection. Leading off, and perhaps the most important:  

Reflect on the Emotional Level. What was the emotional tone of today’s coaching experience? Broadly, every practice or teaching session has an emotional valence. While we may experience the ups and downs during a session, there tends to be an overall tone of negativity or positivity.

Emotions move us and send meaningful messages in the moment and emotional intelligence is fundamental to our awareness of self and others. At a very basic level, our emotions are either managed or they manage us. Reflecting on the emotional information and tone of the practice increases our understanding of the learning conditions we create, as well as the ability to tolerate the roller-coaster of a very challenging task: improving. This implies we can both grow—player and coach—within the practice space.

Lastly, emotions also tell us if we are immersed in meaning. If the practice or performance was flat, chances are the opportunity the event presented wasn’t fully engaged. Looking backward from future self emphasizes that the path is short. Hockey legend and all-time leading scorer, Wayne Gretsky, emphasized this when he talked about skating each shift like it were your last. As a competitive athlete there is always the chance it could be. Injury highlights this point. And as Gretzky states, each shift is one shift closer to the last one.

Opportunities are not infinite. Such is meaning and such is the importance of emotion. Everything we do is connected to something we value. Reflecting on this and connecting to the emotional background of our efforts vitalizes the challenges and victories and, importantly, connects the short and long-term vision.

If you would like more structure to take your mental approach to the next level, consider picking up a copy of my new sports psychology workbook: Above the Field of Play. Or to learn about other sports psychology services pricing (including an assessment of your present mental approach), visit my website at DrJohnPanepinto.com.

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Images credits (Unsplash.com): Mario Azzi, Roger Bradshaw, Donald Giannatti, JC Dela Cuesta

Performance psychology, Sports Psychology

The Evolution of Coaching (Part 2)

Dr. John Panepinto

As mentioned in the previous post, the evolution of a Coach’s way of knowing and making sense of experience passes through specific stages. Truthfully, development is dynamic, and these stages simply help us to understand how we experience our sense of self, other and the environment.

Before we describe these “types” of coaches, here are these simplified four stages of adult development from least to most complex:

  1. Self-Centered
  2. Culture-Centered
  3. Value-Centered
  4. Principle-Centered

Regardless of the role (coach, friend, parent, etc.) how we construct meaning and interact with the environment comes from who we are—our present way of constructing and knowing. Let’s take a brief look at each of these stages:

The Self-Centered Coach: Coaches in this stage of development are centered on their own needs. They understand that others have needs but can only think from one point of view. While these coaches can be knowledgeable and effective, others are seen as either helping or hindering their progress towards their personal goals. An actual quote from a coach in this stage at a team meeting which included players’ parents: “I don’t lose.” These coaches focus on externals and internally lack a sense of shared reality.

The Culture-Centered Coach: In this stage, coaches identify with whatever the organization values, and what they have learned about coaching from mentors and other authoritative sources. These coaches are loyal to players and programs, and conform to the rules (both implicit and explicit) that define the organizational culture. These coaches identify with the role and cannot separate their sense of self from the relationships to and within the organization. These coaches are their relationships.

The Value-Centered Coach: For the first time, coaches developed to this stage are self-aware and self-defining. They are able to hold the needs of the players, the programs, and their own needs in mind at the same time in order to make sense of experience. In other words, these coaches have relationships because they can separate their identity from players, programs, and culture. While, at times, their actions may look similar to the previous stages, the difference is that they are consciously choosing from the values underlying the choice. These coaches can think in terms of systems. They can act counter to the culture if it makes sense to them.

Principle-Centered Coaches: At this point in development, coaches function from universal principles. They can think in a system of systems, and one of these systems is their sense of self. This level of awareness matters because these coaches can transform and adapt their self to the role based on the underlying principle. In a way they are “self-less” because the self transforms to serve a larger cause.

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These stages are on the arc of human development, but at some point for adults growth is optional. Interestingly, nearly 60% of the adult population has not developed cognitively and social-emotionally to the stage described here as Value-Centered. While approximately 6-7% are in transition to the stage outlined as Principle-Centered, less than 1% fully reach this level of consciousness (and these adults are typically aged 40 or older). From this, we can suppose that many coaches are in the first two developmental stages of Self-Centered or Culture-Centered.

 While this is extremely important, rarely is the vertical aspect of development talked about or considered in coaching. Why and why is it important?

We take a closer look in the next post.

If you would like more structure to take your mental approach to the next level, consider picking up a copy of my new sports psychology workbook: Above the Field of Play. Or to learn about other sports psychology services pricing (including an assessment of your present mental approach), visit my website at DrJohnPanepinto.com.

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