Recently, one of the greatest athletes in the history of sports had a meltdown during an important stretch of one of the most important events of the year. Purposely, I am not naming names, because it doesn’t matter. This player is a champion who does the work, puts in the time and effort, and has a superior mental attitude. If there is such a thing as checking all the boxes, this athlete does it in every way possible.
Still, pressure caused an eruption, an emotional volcano, and a temporary lapse of direction.
I offer this piece for one reason.
The work is never done.
If you think fear is outgrown, or that demons can be locked away in the attic, or negativity is for the weak-minded—think again.
Everything exists in the tension of opposites.
You can’t set a goal without some sense of what failure is. You can’t perform well without knowing what poor performance is. You can’t be positive without the counterforce of negativity. You can’t make a good choice without knowing what the wrong one is. And conscience is all about informing us of darkness and light.
The heroic only occurs with a dragon to face up to. Pretending there aren’t any dragons is a fatal flaw. There will always be obstacles. The greater the task or adventure the more obstacles there will be. And the greatest challenge will be the one inside you. Best to be prepared rather than hope the obstacles don’t appear. Or worse, making believe they don’t exist.
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 atDrJohnPanepinto.com.
Photo credits: Ben Turnbull; Caroline Pimenta; Gabriella Clare Marino– Unsplash.com
I have stated (and others as well) in other works that self-talk is important for your internal environment, and helpful when it is positive and productive. In other words, we don’t need to keep our focus on the problem and what isn’t working because it’s very easy to get caught there. Positive and productive defines a “solutions focus,” which places valuable attention on adjusting and moving forward. It keeps us in a state of openness and a willingness to adapt.
Sometimes self-talk reveals deeper patterns, so simply turning a negative into a positive has a good chance of failing. This falls in line with developments in the last few decades that focus on strategies, tools, and techniques rather than depth, intuition, development, and insight. The latter leads to understanding and alignment, meaning every part of us is in one place, with one intention, and heading in one direction.
Importantly, anything we apply without understanding (tools, strategies, and techniques) to a complex situation rarely works long-term. These applications are always secondary because actions follow beliefs. In other words, actions and choices follow the prevailing mindset.
Self-talk without understanding becomes empty words. Worse, you may feel more like a fraud. You can say, “I am a winner” in the mirror a thousand times, but that action won’t have much effect. Sure, it’s positive and affirming, but beneath the surface and under pressure the first two words twist into a question: “Am I…a winner?”
Self-talk can be hindering, but it’s not just about the words. The mindset working beneath the surface needs to be tuned and updated, and maybe even some significant knots to be untied. Spending time examining history, and the beliefs and assumptions about actions and consequences is a reflective process vital to a growth mindset. A mindset that continues to develop and supports healthy and effective actions. Reflection is a solitary activity. A ritual well worth having. It’s like having a good talk with yourself.
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 atDrJohnPanepinto.com.
Hopefully in the very near future, we will step back and look at the fundamental reasons why so many of our youths are struggling. Often, we don’t look far enough downstream or deep enough below the surface. In my mind, two major trends have been building momentum for years (decades!). So much so we’ve come to the dangerous point of acceptance: “That’s how we do it here. That’s how we’ve always done it.”
The first trend is the professionalization of youth sports. The concept instills a sense of urgency to abandon the developmental tasks of childhood and adolescence for the implicit or explicit possibility of making a living playing sports. This is dangerous on so many levels, but I’ll just offer a few.
Rigid schedules and training rob children of the diversity of experiences required to master emotions, executive functioning, and problem-solving. These experiences are processes and require lots of practice in unstructured settings (not micro-managed by adult directives)—not in the least playing, creating, and exploring with other kids.
Adults tend to view through the lens of products. Adults are goal-oriented in a different way than kids and force this thinking on minds not ready to accommodate the structure. The result (no pun intended) is youths who only see the trophy, the scholarship, the fame, or the paycheck (or consumer products in myriad forms). This is the perfect playbook for a rise in anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. A perfect playbook for an empty core where what is most precious should reside. Instead…I am nothing without the result. It’s not a loss, I am a loser.
The second trend is the abuse of power. Favoritism, nepotism, and random doses of reward and punishment are signals of supposed leaders who have not figured out or do not care what happens as a result of their actions. The ego is a trickster and can rationalize just about anything. Whether it’s making empty promises to kids or outright lies to powerless parents. Or parents playing the same misinformed game with their kids. Or adults living their unfulfilled dreams in borrowed flesh.
The data continuously reveals that a small percentage of young athletes reach the pinnacle. The numbers also reveal that youths quit organized sports in adolescence—most of the time very early in this stage. What the numbers don’t reveal is the sense of self (taking form at this stage) for either group. How has the experience changed them? What do they think about themselves? Others? Life?
Once, a father told me that a tennis coach barked at a group of seven and eight-year-olds, “I’m here to train college tennis players.” This dad found another place to play. Most likely, no one in the group will fulfill that coach’s dream. And, at that age, college is just a word on a hoodie.
Fun has gotten a bad rap in a results-driven world. But fun is a secondary feeling elicited by the primary emotional systems of seeking and play. We were born to explore and play reciprocally and creatively, and both lead us to become more fully human in all developmental domains. Fun is not trivial. Its absence for kids is no small thing. Fun is the root of freedom, the first scent of interests and abilities—something we value as adults.
It’s an honor to coach. Once you’ve been a parent, you sense that you are always coaching someone’s son or someone’s daughter. As a coach you’ve been given power and the freedom to choose. The choice is not trivial. The first principle is always, “Do no harm.” But you have to know what kids need to obey the principle.
One of the many questions I ask clients may sound borrowed from a job interview: “What do you see in five years…?” But really, it’s a question of an internal–view. The answers range from rich to vague and confused. And that question helps frame the next one: “When you look back on your life over the past five years…?
The day-to-day and the year-to-year can have the flavor of familiarity. Patterns abound. But there’s a process below the surface that speaks to the complexity of life. As you move forward with an aim, you are steeped in complexity beyond imagination. The further out or bigger the goal, the more complexity factors in.
What that translates to is people, things, obstacles, and events that are not in your present experience. If you look back five years, chances are high (regardless of whether you set an ambitious goal or not) that there are people that are in or out of your life, and events and problems that occurred that you didn’t foresee.
This is one of the understated reasons why individuals don’t set goals or don’t set them too far out. The complexity can be overwhelming. And the courage and imagination to set the vision high can be daunting. Security, safety, and the known will always whisper in your ear to stay put. But this process of imagining a future self is the way that we develop the inner qualities to rise to the goal or vision.
Setting long-term major goals and creating a vision of your future self is the essence of evolution. If you consider who you would be if you became this future self, you have tapped into a deeper process of self-realization. Then the key is to hold this vision both loosely and in the present. Loosely because complexity will emerge with your first step forward. Think of your vision as a point on the horizon. You see the point in the distance within the enormity of the whole perspective, but details are vague.
And holding this vision “in the present” provides an internal compass regardless of the complexity of the situation. Responding and adapting to complexity (demanding, growing), and holding your vision (devotion) in the present will inform your smallest goals, decisions, and the way you problem-solve through obstacles.
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.
