Athletes, if you've ever made one mistake or had a bad practice, and then you're just thinking to yourself, "I'm terrible," and it sort of ruins the rest of your day or maybe even a couple of days to follow, this is for you. I know you're probably gonna tell me, "Well, I'm only like that because I have high standards for myself," which honestly I love that about you because you should have high standards for yourself. But I also have a lot of athletes that I work with who confuse having high standards with being mean to themselves, or they feel like they have to be hard on themselves and really mean to themselves, or they're letting their guard down or just kind of being lazy and accepting that, "Well, I guess I'm just not gonna be that good." Okay. So let's talk about it and talk about how there's actually another way to have high standards without totally tearing yourself down and making life miserable for yourself in the days after a bad practice. Now, first of all, as I said, this is actually a good thing. We can work with this because I want you to keep having goals for yourself. I want you to have your standards high. But I need your standards to be about the effort that you're putting in, not always the result. I am also willing to bet that maybe those of you listening to this have a touch of perfectionism. Okay? So I did, too, and that perfectionism kind of can come up in this, "Well, nothing's ever good enough, and if I don't get this, you know, perfect score or this outcome, then it was a failure." We tend to think that way as perfectionists. But here's what I want you to think differently about. I want you to be a perfectionist about the process, not the outcome I want you to be a perfectionist. Okay? I know that might sound weird because maybe people are saying you shouldn't be a perfectionist. No, I want you to be a perfectionist, but I want you to be a perfectionist about things that are in your control. The outcome of the game is not in your control. There's other things that happen, right? There's judges, there's the other team, there's your own teammates, there's the coach, there's so many things. The outcome's ultimately out of your control. What is in your control is your effort, your attitude, the specific things that you're working on in your sport. So things like getting available, getting open, any little cue that you have that you're working on in your sport, you can be a perfectionist about those things. And then when you're done with that practice, you're done with that game, you can ask yourself, "Okay, w- did I hold a high standard for myself in the effort that I put in, in getting over mistakes fast?" In whatever, physical cue that you're working on for that game or that practice, "Did I get available for every single set? Did I get open for passes? Did I hold my shapes?" So those things are what I want you to be a perfectionist about. And if you're like, "Well, I didn't. I actually didn't give 100% effort," then that's just feedback, and that's information for you to improve on. But being a perfectionist about like, "Well, I didn't score 50 points," or, "Well, my team didn't win," now we've got to look at what led to that. What are the things that were in your control that you can actually change in the next practice, instead of just beating yourself up over, "Well, we didn't win," or, "I didn't get the score that I wanted," because then that doesn't actually make you better, okay? So I want you also to imagine that there's kind of two separate athletes that can respond to the situation that I'm going to give you. Now, the first athlete... Well, actually both of them. They both do the same wrong thing, right? They miss a serve or a free throw or a pass or whatever it is in relation to your sport, so whatever common mistake might happen. Athlete one, after they do that thing, can say to themselves, "Okay, well, the reason I did that was the toss was too short," or, "I didn't follow through." They can actually identify what went wrong there. So that's how athlete one talks to themselves after that mistake. Athlete two says something like, "Ugh, I always do this. I'm so bad. Everyone saw that. I ruined it for everybody." Both want the same outcome. They both didn't wanna make that mistake. They wanted to get the serve in. They wanted to get the ball, whatever it is. Both have high standards for themselves. The difference is athlete one actually was focusing on something in their control, whereas athlete two was beating themselves up and creating an identity about themselves. They were saying, "I'm so bad. I always do this." And identities and beliefs about yourself are super, super powerful because those carry into the next rep in a negative way. And here's why, okay? There's something called a thought wheel that's going on in your brain all of the time. I want you to stick with me for this. There's five parts to this thought wheel, and I want you to imagine that there's five arrows kinda leading into one another. The situation is the situation I just talked about. You messed up. You made some sort of error, whatever it is, in your sport. The thought comes next. So remember athlete one was like, "Okay, I need to toss higher next play. That's what I'm gonna do next time." Athlete two says, "I'm the worst one. Why did I do that? I suck." Here's why this is important. Thoughts lead to feelings. Now, if you're thinking to yourself, "I suck. I'm the worst one. Why did I do that?" You're probably gonna be feeling disappointed, discouraged, unmotivated. If you're thinking, "Okay, you know what? I just need to toss higher next play," you're probably not gonna be feeling bad about yourself. You're gonna be like, "Okay, bummed, but, hey, I'm encouraged because now I know what to do and I'm gonna focus on that." You're more optimistic. Okay. Feelings lead to actions or inactions. Now, if you're feeling discouraged, bummed, bad about yourself, the next play, because you're gonna take an action in the next play, is probably not gonna be very good. You do not play well when you are discouraged, when you're mad at yourself, when you're sad about what just happened. You don't play well. And so your actions are you're not gonna play well. But if you have a feeling of, you know what? You're a little more determined, you're optimistic, you're focused because you're saying to yourself, "You know what? I just need to toss higher next play," you're not gonna have those things happen to you. You're gonna be playing fine. You're gonna be playing your game. Those are the actions that you're gonna do. Now, actions lead to results If you are not playing well, you're making more mistakes, what result is that? It's not a great result, and you're probably going to make more mistakes. And you're probably going to be saying to yourself again, "See? I always mess up. See? This is worse." And then it just spirals. When you say, you can't get out of your own head and you're spiraling, this is literally what happens, and it starts with what you say to yourself, what you're thinking. So if you're beating yourself up, you will play worse because you're feeling worse, and then you're going to make more mistakes and more errors. But if you say to yourself... You don't have to be super positive, okay? But if you say to yourself, "Hey, I just need to toss higher next play," you're going to be feeling better, you're going to be playing better, and you're not going to be making multiple and multiple errors over and over. Okay? So you kind of see how this works and how powerful just your thoughts about the situation matter, so you have power over your thoughts. Your thoughts hold so much power in how you play and what results you get. And so I want you to think next time that you're tempted to be really hard on yourself, it's okay to have high standards. It's okay to think, "Oh, I could have done better in this situation." It's not okay to tear yourself down. And I want you to think, what would you say to a teammate in, who is in a situation that you are in, right? If they messed up, if they missed a serve, whatever, you'd probably tell them like, "Hey, you got this." All right? So you can still have high standards. You can still look at what you need to improve on in the next game. But you also need to handle yourself with care, like you would a friend, knowing that ultimately, if you want to make less errors and you want to do well, it starts with what you're thinking about what you are doing. So a couple things that you can try this week. Number one, what you say to yourself after one of those errors. Doesn't have to be super positive. You don't have to say, "I'm the best hitter in the whole world." You just say like, "Hey, next time, I'm going to get my feet to the ball faster." Okay? Whatever it is. Um, and number two, I actually have a quiz for you. So this is called your What's Your Competitor Style quiz. So if you're listening to this, you probably are a competitive athlete. And I have three competitor styles that most athletes fall into, and they have three distinct strengths that you can play to, but they also have a couple of things that you can be working on if that is your strength. For example, I have one of the, the results is the self-motivated grinder. And those of you that are listening because you're like, "I always beat myself up," you probably are a self-motivated grinder, which means you can work hard because you want good results, but then there's kind of a downside of that. You're super hard on yourself, right? So I give you some tips on, if that is you, here is how you can close that gap. The link to take that quiz is actually below in the show notes. So you could head there just to learn a little bit about yourself and a couple of things that you can do in practice to help you in that way. All right, athletes, I will see you in the next Athlete Tip episode.