How Expectations In Sports Leads To Failure
Channel: Mental Toughness Trainer
Date: 2013-05-06

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Expectations In Sports Leads To Failure Part 2

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Jen Croneberger is a Mental Game Coach for the Women's Professional Softball Team, a well as other the top travel softball teams in the eastern US and  works with many community groups helping girls with leadership and confidence.

Have you ever expected so much just to be met with disappointment later on? In this video Coach Jen shares with us how Expectations In Sports Lead To Failure.

From all the research that we have done, I have found that the biggest killer of confidence is the word, "expectation." Here is why.  It is black or white. The problem is with an expectation is you either succeed or you fail. As human beings, we are going to fail. What happens is we end up setting ourselves up to fail, because of a specific expectation that doesn't get met.

I actually just had a conversation with somebody today about this. She was struggling with feeling disappointed.  Disappointment comes from expectation. We have expectations, we don't meet them, we are disappointed, and now we see ourselves as failures.

It is funny when I talk to young athletes. I ask them if failure is good or bad.  I always get some say good and some say bad. Then they will get to a point they will say it is both. I always say, "How about it is neither?"  How about it is neither?  How about failure is just a thing?

We as human beings attach the emotion to it. So if we can take failure and look at it as just a thing, then the expectations change.I have had many coaches say, "Yeah but you have to have high expectations."  The problem is I am not saying lower the bar.  In fact, I am saying to get rid of the bar.  The bar only makes us complacent than when we hit it.

So how about there is no bar and we just go play in the moment? Instead of having these expectations that set ourselves up to fail, now there are none. Now we look at things like process goals. We look at being in the present moment, because as an athlete that is the most important thing you can do. 

That is being in the present moment. That takes away from the expectation, which then kills confidence.  

Kids understand this with practice. It is not easy. It is not easy for any of us to really understand what it feels like to be in that present moment. But as they can practice it, they can understand. I used to use three words that are very simple:  "Be here now."  It is a mantra they can repeat to themselves. Be here now.  

They can say it to their teammates in the middle of a play when they see their teammate just made an error and is struggling, or made a mistake, or missed a shot, or whatever it is.

All of a sudden with those three simple words, be here now, it brings them back into the present moment for them to say, "What just happened doesn't matter.  It is over.  I can't change it.  I can't worry about what is going to happen.  The only thing that I can affect is this next play, this next second, this next pitch, this next shot, whatever it is. 

That is the only thing that I can affect, so I need to be here now in order not to let everything else affect me."

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If you missed the first part of this series click on this link: http://youtu.be/kt3B8VgIbbU

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To watch the next part of this series click on this link: http://youtu.be/N06v_ozyFmA