British writer William Shakespeare
Source: Photo of painting by John Taylor, courtesy of Wiki Commons
“Expectation is the root of all heartache,” said William Shakespeare.
It is doubtful whether the British literary icon made this observation with sport in mind, but it certainly applies to athletics and other performance endeavors.
Buddhist philosophy also agrees with this. One of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism asserts that unmet expectations cause suffering.
Translated from a sports perspective, expectations cause distraction, frustration, poor performance, and ultimately heartache. Whether expectations are positive or negative, they get in the way and don’t work out.
Why? Let’s explore.
focus too much on results
Success in athletics or any other endeavor is achieved by executing the skills and behaviors necessary for optimal performance. This requires focusing on the process rather than the outcome (expectations). A series of quotes from Alabama head football coach Nick Saban illustrate the point.
Alabama Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban holds his 2018 press conference.
Source: Photo courtesy of Thomson200, public domain, courtesy of Wiki Commons
“Good processes produce good results, and we want to focus on the process of what it takes to be successful,” Saban said. Success does not come from a picture-perfect mindset (desired outcome, or expectation). It’s the result of consciously doing something every day that enhances your overall excellence. ”
This approach may explain Saban’s 201-28 record at Alabama and seven collegiate championships with the Crimson Tide. Keep an eye on Ohio State, Michigan State and other college football hopefuls.
Focusing strictly on the outcome, what you want to happen, is like wishing for a desired outcome. “Pie-in-the-sky thinking” that Saban referred to. Wouldn’t it be more productive to focus on the “process” – on performing the skills required for the task at hand?
bad penny
Expectations are like coins. Heads, the belief that they can easily defeat weaker competitors. Tails, a projection of despair against a high-quality opponent. Initial expectations lead to overconfidence and underperformance. The second outlook leads to pressure, fear, and suppressed effort.
Both of these approaches fail in execution and performance.
Many athletes look at their opponents’ win-loss records and jump to one side or the other of the coin in their pregame thoughts, conversations, and banter on social media.
If you lose heads, you lose tails.
Why not ditch that bad money and just focus on implementing the skills and behaviors, or processes, you need to compete?
perfectionistic unrealism
Swings and misses in baseball, missed shots in basketball, and dropped passes in football are inevitable events in the sports experience. If you watch a youth sporting event when something like this happens, you’ll witness kids acting as if the sky is falling. Obvious symptoms include hanging his head, throwing tantrums, lashing out on the bench, crying, throwing equipment, complaining, and blaming.
These reactions impair subsequent performance as thoughts and emotions carry over to the next play. The game continues, but the athlete experiencing such an emotional hangover does not.
Prior thoughts or fear of not achieving the desired result can also hinder performance. Perfectionistic self-expectations increase pressure and anxiety, and as a result, performance suffers due to the weight of self-imposed stress.
Expectations for team composition, playing time, coach-assigned positions, and other daily aspects of the sports experience can lead to similar frustrations and reactions when things don’t play out the way athletes want them to.
They don’t understand that just like any other endeavor in life, there are things in sports that are out of your control and that you won’t always get what you want and everything else in life. yeah.
Sports and competition essentials
Control what you can control and let go of the rest.
Unrealistic, perfectionistic expectations lead to long-term destructive pressure, misery, and ultimately burnout. Many young people quit their once-loved sport to escape the resulting stress and suffering. An example of what contextual behavioral science calls “experiential avoidance.” This is a psychological term that refers to the behavior of seeking relief from pain.
Many young athletes have unrealistic career expectations of earning a college athletic scholarship or a future in professional sports. There is no room here to fully address the devastating frustration and suffering we experience when that doesn’t happen.
Those aspirations are unrealistic, like a fairy tale. Only 6 percent of high school athletes go on to college. There are only a few chances to get into a professional career. It’s one thing for a 9-year-old or her 10-year-old to think that way, but what about teenagers and young adults? They’re like a 3-year-old who thinks they’re a princess.
Someone needs to give them a hint, especially mom and dad.
parents’ expectations
Parents of modern sports can fall into the same traps as children who play sports.
Frustration and anger when your child is left out of the starting lineup, doesn’t get the minutes you want, or makes a mistake in a game. This can lead to unnecessary distress and bad sideline behavior for parents. Such immature antics are bad role-playing and create undue pressure and embarrassment for children.
Parents invest large sums of money into their children’s sports careers, paying for expensive equipment, coaching, and youth sports programs. They have also spent countless hours driving to and from sporting activities, attending practices and competitions, and attending countless meetings.
That high investment can create unrealistic expectations for the end result, such as a college athletic scholarship or the possibility of a professional career, some of which can lead naive family members to pursue a career in sports. It is fueled by youth sports officials who fabricate such floating expectations as a marketing strategy to lure them into their organizations. A web of money-hungry deceit.
Parents can be just as surprised, disappointed, and devastated as their children when those expectations don’t come true. One would wish that adults knew better and coached young athletes to successfully cross the quagmire of expectations to the safe shores of reality.
Sadly, they often don’t and end up getting lost in the same polluted waters.
audience
Even sports fans can find themselves trapped in a melting pot of expectations and heartache. Take the unfortunate Cleveland and his Browns football fans as a prime example.
Every year, Cleveland’s poor sports fans get caught up in the team’s public relations and media hype, including predictions of the Browns’ first-ever Super Bowl appearance, only for their hopes to be dashed to despair.
Will this be the year the Browns go to the Super Bowl? of course. However, Cleveland has won one NFL championship (1964) in the past 68 years.
Sports Psychology Antidote
Consider the unlikely trio of William Shakespeare, Buddha, and Nick Saban. Expectations can lead us down a path of frustration, suffering, and failure.
What does it matter whether your expectations are extremely positive, moderately negative, or perfectionistic? All of this has nothing to do with playing the game. These are meaningless thoughts and emotions that are a major impediment to optimal performance.
Instead, focus on the process of developing and implementing the skills necessary for successful competitive performance.
Let go of your predictions, the desired outcome of your performance, your picture-perfect hopes, your perfectionism, and any other expectations outside of the realm of sports and focus on what you actually control: your actions, your ability to focus. , focus on your efforts.
Doing so will reduce pressure, frustration, and misery. It also improves your ability to perform the skills required for sports activities.
Why not forget about the hype, predictions and expectations?
Just sit back, enjoy, and enjoy the game and the season. If their team makes it to the Super Bowl, that would be great! Otherwise, it would be a manageable disappointment, minus the painful frustration and suffering that Cleveland fans have endured through endless fruitless years.