Over the last few decades, I have worked with many athletes, from juniors to Olympians and professionals. The most powerful work I do with athletes isn\u2019t your typical mental training where I teach them about positive thinking, mental imagery, routines, and how to stay intense and focused (though these mental tools are important).<\/p>\n
Instead, the most valuable work I do involves the attitudes that athletes have toward their sport. No matter how strong your mental muscles are and no matter how filled your mental toolbox is, if you don\u2019t have the right attitudes, you aren\u2019t going to perform your best and get the results you want.<\/p>\n
This article is going to focus on a key attitude you should develop about your sport to not only perform your best, but, just as importantly, to enjoy your participation and gain the most benefits from your competitive experiences.<\/p>\n
I see athletes express many different emotions after competitions. After a good result, I see joy, excitement, pride, and inspiration. But, after less successful competitions, I see frustration, anger, and sadness. Yet, the one emotion that I consider to be perhaps the worst of all emotions for athletes to experience after a competition is regret.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s two kinds of pain in sports: the pain of discipline and the pain of regret.\u201d <\/em>Jeff Blatnick, Olympic wrestling gold medalist.<\/p>\n What is regret? That you wish you had done something differently. The sad reality is that there are no dress rehearsals in sports or life, there is no \u201cWay Back\u201d machine (can anyone give me that cultural reference?) for do-overs. You get one shot in a competition, so you might as well take it, otherwise there will be a whole lot of \u201cwoulda, coulda, shoulda\u201d when you look in the rearview mirror of your competition day.<\/p>\n When have you felt regret in your sport? If you\u2019re like most athletes, it\u2019s when you didn\u2019t go for it in a competition, when you held back and performed tentatively. When you\u2019re finished and you see how you did, you want to kick yourself because you wished you had gone for it. When I speak to athletes, I always ask whether they would rather perform safely and not perform up their ability or go all out and perhaps do poorly because of a mistake. With almost complete unanimity, the answer is \u201cI would rather attack and see what happens.\u201d But when I ask them what they typically do, many athletes say rather sheepishly, \u201cI usually perform cautiously.\u201d<\/p>\n The irony is that when you play it safe, you have little to no chance of having a good competition because sports require that you perform on the edge to be successful. And therein lies the regret. Before you begin, you may feel compelled to play it safe. But when you perform poorly because you were cautious, you wish you had laid it down, even if the risks didn\u2019t pay off. For you to perform your best, you must make the commitment to go for it before you walk onto the field of play.<\/p>\n