Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Sixty-Four – The Perils of Diving for the Line – Taking your eye off the ball
Hi, everyone. I just wanted to give you a brief podcast on a phenomenon called diving for the line. Now, I'm here in Tokyo walking through the streets of Tokyo in Japan, and it's a bit noisy with all the hustle and bustle, so bear with me. But I really wanted to put this podcast together for you as it was also fresh in my mind. I've just come from the super GT finals at Montego Racetrack here in Japan. And there's a phenomenon that I saw there that really highlighted to me that it's not only a racing phenomenon, I see it in all the sports that we do. However, it was really highlighted to me because it was the finals weekend and there's a lot of athletes who are trying to make their last ditch attempt to get a result for the season. So a lot of the things that they were doing, the things that they would not have normally done throughout the season to get them to the position where they were either sitting first or second or third on the ladder, come the finals, a lot of mistakes were made that weren't made all throughout the season.
Now there's a phenomenon in the military that's called demob happiness. What demob happiness is demobilisation happiness, and it's one of the most dangerous times in the military for military personnel because their focus comes off of what they do, the systems they've built, the reliable patterns and programs they go through in order to stay safe and do their job the best way they can. And their focus becomes on going home. And that focus on going home changes in their minds and in their perspective their actions that they take. So often they make mistakes that they wouldn't normally make and then either get injured or even worse. So this demob happiness is a phenomenon that we see in all walks of life and in all areas of life. So as an athlete, how do we have the same kind of consequences, be it a performance based mistake, and again we can still have injuries or sometimes even worse because we lose focus on what we're doing.
When we think about this demob happiness in the military or what we call diving for the line. So what is it? Why do we do that? What are the consequences? What are the benefits? Why do we have those kind of benefits in our brain that we think, You know what? Now would be a great time to change what I've been doing throughout the whole of my season. Standing here logically or walking through the streets of Tokyo, it doesn't sound logical at all, does it? It doesn't sound that the smartest thing to do is change what's been working. But we do. We see that final line. We see it so close, we see it as something that's so obviously in front of us that we think, Right. I can reach it, I can touch it, I can almost smell it. And we dive for that. We change what we would normally do, and all our focus becomes 100% about getting over that line. Of course, there's motivation in that. There's intrinsic motivation in that to achieve something, to get something from it, but we don't look past it. And therein lies the issue. When we don't look past that line, that finish point for now, may it be a competition or be the end of a season, and we start seeing things a little bit further in front of us, then maybe we can start changing our perspective on that line.
What I mean by that is when I'm working with any kind of athlete, whether it be racing car drivers, whether it be cricket players, whether it be rugby players or ice skaters, we never focus just on this competition. Of course, we set objectives for it, but the objectives always have a bigger, grander purpose. Those bigger, grander purposes drive that past this point in time. So if they're going for an end of season race, what does that race give us going forward? When I achieve my objective in this race, what will allow me to do next? So there's a purpose and a focus beyond the now.
I often hear a lot of coaches particularly, and some athletes, say you've got to be in the now, you've got to focus on the now. Everything is about the now.
I disagree.
That changes our perspective. That puts way too much pressure on the next step. And when we get way too much pressure, we then start to change our approach because it's 'cause and effect' and also fear of consequence. That 'cause and effect' or that fear of consequence no longer allows us to follow our subconscious behaviour, our sub C performance. The things that we've trained, the systems that we know work for us, the processes that we've built to give us the best outcome, all of those things then get pushed to one side, and the whole focus, everything focusses on getting over that line or just doing the next thing.
So where it's important to know where you are right now, what the consequences of your actions are going to be, what it's going to give you, we also want to make sure that it's for a grander purpose. There's a huge benefit. There's a long term process in place, and these long term processes and the buy-in helps us to calibrate and keep context in what we do. This context is what allows us to not have to dive for the line. This bigger picture, this process that we've designed will give us the opportunity, if things don't go right, to still stay on our path. And if things do go right, they're going to give us an opportunity for a bigger, better, more bolder next step.
So a little bit of an unorthodox podcast for you today. It's very noisy here and very busy, as you would imagine Tokyo streets to be, even this time of night. But I wanted you to keep in context and perspective this whole diving for the line, especially at this time of year where many series are wrapping up for Christmas. It doesn't benefit you as an athlete, it doesn't benefit the coaches, and it certainly doesn't benefit the systems that you've created over the years that have worked for you. So just change everything you do at the last minute just to get over that line. Hope that's been of some use to you guys. And what we can do moving forward with that is we can start to refocus on how we build those effective strategies for long term processing. So what we need to do to create something that's not just about a competition or a season, it's more about a career and how each step fits within that career.
Many of you guys have heard me talk about the ant path. And the ant path is we know where we are, we know where we want to go. We know the most efficient and effective way to get there, like an ant does from their home, all the way to their food and back again. That's why we see ants follow those beautiful straight lines when they're out in nature. What happens when something comes along and it changes that, it gets in the way, things don't work or there's a blockage in their way? Some of those ants will go home and say, "Right, that doesn't work. Let's find a whole new route. Let's go a different way, a new food source. Let's create a whole new path." Well, that works, but it's not very efficient and effective because we've got a really good path there. We just got something in the way. Some of those ants will run around and in an absolute stupor, in a panic and have no idea where they are going, what they are doing. And all they're worried about is just getting away from that blockage. And again, we see that in humans a lot, don't we? We see people when things don't go right, running around like a chicken with a head cut off, not knowing what to do next, because it's not their path, it's not what they've been doing. And then there's a select few ants that turn and go, "Okay, there's a blockage. Let me go round that. Let me create a whole new pheromone path just around that. Whatever steps it takes: one, two or three to get back onto my path." And this is the kind of ants we want to be. We want to be those logical thought processing ants that say I know this path works for me. I know this system is the best way to get from here to where I want to get to. It's just a blockage, a bad competition, an injury, a coach issue. Whatever it be it's moving around there and getting back on path, on task.
What are the one or two things you have to do to get back on track? If we know what they are we can keep it in perspective. This is where the whole longevity and long term processing of a plan comes into place. We want to make sure that our plan is designed very specifically to go much further past the next competition or this season. It wants to go all the way to the end of your career, whatever that be. You might not know what the end step is but we've got to have a driving objective.
So there's my impromptu podcast as I walk through the streets of Tokyo. I just wanted to give you a perspective on choosing not to dive for the line, not to have that demob happiness and lose focus on doing what you know works for you. And remember you know what you need to know. You've just got to trust you know what you need to know.
So until the next time I'll do another maybe a little bit more structured podcast where I'll be in London next so I jump on a flight and I'm off to London and I'll speak to you then.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
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