Ask any water polo athlete how difficult their sport is, and they most likely will say it's very challenging—in fact, one of the toughest on the planet. Every training session and game requires a large output of energy. Every game situation demands an intense level of attention and a high degree of precision. As athletes increase the level of their mental and physical fitness, fundamental mistakes happen as demands on attention shift between internal and external needs. This leads to moments of failure.
But failure is essential for any athlete to grow. Imagine if every practice and every game were easy. Imagine how your enjoyment of the sport might change if you didn't feel challenged by the threat of defeat. How much and how rapidly do you think you would improve? Would you be motivated enough to push yourself beyond what comes naturally to you in the water?
No matter how you view or identify your moments of failure, you always have an opportunity to choose a positive response in a given situation.
'Failing forward fast but never the same way twice' needs to be a motto adopted by every aspiring athlete.
"Failing forward" implies you aren't holding on to the actual result of your moment of failure. Instead you're using the failure as feedback that teaches you something new about the game. By developing the resilience and perseverance skills needed to grow through that moment, you give your inner self-critic a break and see the failure as a learning opportunity.
Your inner self-critic is self-talk but with a bias toward negativity. The negativity bias protects you from perceived danger in a fight, flight, or freeze reaction. The more you become accustomed to reacting a certain way, the more challenging it becomes to change. The habits form without your full awareness.
It's challenging to control negativity because either (a) you think you need to fix everything that's wrong or (b) you don't want to give yourself too many compliments due to fear of complacency. However, great athletes become great because of the way they see themselves in terms of their strengths and areas for improvement. Every athlete can identify some parts of the game they're good at—and other parts that could use some improvement. The greatest— and often the most-improved—athletes tackle the challenging areas in which they need to improve with a direct, high work-rate approach. They also bring with them an air of confidence because they have an optimistic belief in their potential. They are optimistic that they can achieve their long-term goals, and they're willing to struggle through the short-term to get there.
Self-talk and thoughts are developed by your beliefs, experiences, and assumptions. Is your inner-dialogue protecting you from danger or limiting your growth? How can you perceive a threat (i.e., mistakes, misses, opposing crowds, intimidating coaches, etc.) as facilitative to your own growth? You determine your choice by the way you see the result. Connect it to your knowledge about the sport-specific situation and rewrite your own internal story with yourself as the hero in that story.
Brian Alexander is a certified mental performance consultant with the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and the official athlete mental skills coach of USA Water Polo ODP. In his practice, athletes receive one-on-one and team mental training in the form of consultation and workshops. Contact Brian directly through his website www.athletementalskillscoach.com to have him work with your team and athletes.
