I play soccer in an adult league in my city in South Florida. My friend and I are on two separate teams to keep it competitive. I play on the field and he plays goalkeeper, so one day he makes a friendly bet that I won't score on him on an upcoming tournament. With my competitive nature of course I accept the bet and the trash talking begins. In out first two games against his team, I am focusing so hard on trying to score on him. I hit the post twice in one game and he blocks all of my other shots. My other teammates are able to score but of course, I'm not. After two games and not being able to score a goal, I begin to get anxious and upset. I was playing the forwards position which should be the one who scores most of the goals and still unable. For the third an final game, I move back into the defender position and I tell myself it's alright. In my mind I think, don't let this little friendly bet get to you and I really stop stressing it and just have fun. By the end of the first half I still have no goal but I notice I'm not as focused on trying to score and more about just having fun and playing good in defense. My goalkeeper friend of course comes up and continues to trash talk in a friendly way, rubbing it in my face that I still need a goal to win. As the game continues into the second half, my team earns a free kick and I decide to try my chance. At this point, I want to score but I've accepted that even if I don't it's OK and don't let myself get anxious again as in previous games. I kick the ball perfectly and it lands in the back of the net just how I visioned it in my mind. I scored the goal and won the bet and also have the game winning goal.
Once I decided not to focus on something so much it became evident that I was more relaxed and felt better. Sometimes you can get so caught up in doing something that you just need to take a step back to move forward. I accept failure as a good thing, and try more to learn from my mistakes or try to see what I'm doing wrong, even if it is all mental. Failure can be a good thing so long as one realizes why they are failing and correct those issues. I will definitely take a risk because like the saying goes, "we learn from our mistakes."
Daniel,
ReplyDeletePlacing too much pressure on one's self can disrupt our ability to perform certain tasks to our normal ability. I think we all fall victim to this kind of thinking at times, but it's important to remain calm and trust in our training and natural ability. Of course, until we experience this kind of situation, it's hard for us to learn from it, so failure is not always a bad thing. Learning from our failures can take us further in life than some of our successes.
Hey Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI deeply related to your post in particular because I am constantly putting pressure on myself to be and do the absolute best under any circumstances. I tend to hold myself to an extremely high and standard which, as you know, can be both a good and bad thing because you strive for greatness but when you feel as though it was not entirely achieved, you beat yourself up for it.