Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Twenty-Five – Recognising and Dealing with Athletes Bouts of Self Doubt
Hello, and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents who are looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is the honest friend we all need, and I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
Some of you who listen to our podcast very regularly would have noticed there's been a bit of a gap between our last podcast, 24, and this, 25. The reason this has been is I've been in the US, travelling through parts of the US, coaching and lecturing. I didn't get the opportunity to get into a studio and record the podcasts. Thank you for being patient, and we'll get back into a more regular routine with our Brain in the Game podcast for you.
In this, episode 25, we're going to look at the phenomenon which is where athletes keep one eye and one hand on the exit handle, just in case they need to get out. It's a phenomenon that we see very frequently from juniors right the way through to the elite athlete. Let's get into this.
One of the things that I get asked is: Why do some athletes give it their all, and other athletes you can see they're just hanging back just that little bit? They don't give that 100%. They almost look a little bit distracted. It's a common phenomenon that I see very frequently, and it isn't necessarily something that's just unique to the athlete who doesn't have that 100% commitment to their sport.
I think it's something that every single athlete, at some stage in their career, experiences. It may be as frequently as weekly. It may be as infrequently as once or twice during their whole career. But it's that whole self-doubt process.
Now, as human beings, we're very aware that our environment influences our decisions, so we gauge how we're doing judging on the response and reaction we get from people around us. That's just human nature. So, for the elite athlete, this is only heightened when they're in a competitive environment.
Sometimes, you'll get athletes who are going along really, really well, they're achieving a lot of their goals and their objectives, and everything just seems to be hunky dory and ticking along, and all of a sudden, they'll stall. They'll lose confidence in what they're doing. They'll stop the natural momentum that they've built up.
This could be as easy as they've not been able to achieve something or they need to consolidate, but more often than not, there's a psychological aspect to this. If you're a coach and you work with a group of athletes, you will see this quite frequently. Often, if one athlete loses their ability to keep momentum, they'll have an effect on everybody within the team dynamic. So it's very important for a coach to understand to first recognise when this goes on and then also how to correct that.
When I was in the US, I got the opportunity to work with some of the top athletes, some of those athletes who are preparing for the 2014 Olympic Games. It's a great environment to work in. Not only is it the height of the sports that you're working with, you've got the most switched on, dedicated, and passionate athletes. It's a great environment.
As a mind coach, it's a place that I love to step into. When I was in the US and I was working with some of these top athletes, I noticed something that was very prevalent within one of the groups I was working with. You could see that they had this self-doubt going on.
I wasn't quite sure where it initiated from, so I sat down and I started talking to one of the coaches. I asked them what's been going on, how the training preparation had been going, what the momentum process has been, and has it been successful. The first thing the coach turned around and said to me, "Well, it was going along really, really well until about two or three weeks ago, and we've kind of hit a road block."
The more I dug into this, the more I realised that their key athlete at the top of their group, the one that the other athletes look to as being the figurehead for their team, had hit this barrier of self-doubt. I asked the coach if it was okay if I sat down and I spoke to them. When I sat with them, it was very evident to me that, because they were at the front of this team, they were the spearhead of this group. There had come a point where all the expectation had grown to the point where they'd started to doubt their own ability.
This can obviously work in one of two ways. When everybody around you is looking towards you and to you for support and guidance and direction, that can actually spur you on. That can prove to yourself in social proof that, "Hey, I'm good at this. I'm great. Everyone's looking at me. I must be good." The flip side to that is, when everybody's got their expectation of you, and just in the back of your mind, that small grain of self-doubt slips in, that can grow to the point where it becomes a road block, this massive boulder that's stopping you believing that you are as good as you are.
Clearly, from the outside looking in, these are the top athletes in this country, so clearly, they're good at what they do. They're great athletes. They've been doing this for a very, very long time, so there's instantly a recognition point there. However, as an athlete who's living in the now, who's processing every single step as they go along, trying to hone and perfect what they're doing, they can often lose sight of the journey they've taken or any real perspective to the outside world.
I am fairly fortunate I get the opportunity to work with regional and state champions through to national champions through to world Olympic champions, so there's a huge base of athletes that I get the opportunity to work with, so I get to see the progression, the path.
When you're immersed in he world of elite, often you do not get the opportunity to get a real perspective, so step out of that and go back to working with the regional teams or the Saturday morning sports and to see, "You know what? I'm pretty good at this." There lies some of the issue. There lies some of the catalyst for why we don't have an adequate perspective on how we're travelling.
What is self-doubt? I've seen self-doubt from footballers to snooker players, from hockey players to high-board divers, from motorsport right the way through to ice skating. All of these elite athletes experience a frequency of self-doubt. They're good at what they do. They're top of their field.
Us on the outside looking in would go, "What is wrong with you? Why on earth would you doubt yourself? You hurl around a track at 250 kilometres an hour, or you can putt [? 07:45] a ball a ball with a most minuscule view of that ball, or you can kick a ball to the other end of the field and charge it down to score a try [? 07:54]. What is wrong with you?" But to an elite athlete, when their whole focus, their whole life, is geared to increasing their ability, to getting better at what they do, towards perfection, they don't often take the time to stop and appreciate.
What are the consequences of self-doubt? If it's something that we all experience, isn't it something then that we just need to work our way through? Well, no. If it's your day at work, as a mechanic or as an accountant – then absolutely. If you don't believe today you can put that Ferrari back together, tell you what, come in tomorrow and do it then. Or you're doing someone's tax, and you think, "Wow, this is a huge tax," take a day off and come back tomorrow. There's not a great deal of consequence to that.
But when you're an elite athlete, when you're at the peak of your sport, and you're coming around to a competition that comes every four years, then you don't that latitude to be able to go, "I don't feel good today. I'll come in tomorrow and do it." You need to be able to manage those consequences more efficiently.
Those kind of consequences end up being never reaching your potential. If you have self-doubt, and you're not 100% what you know you can, because you're playing a lesser game, you're holding back, then you're going to end up with never reaching that goal, that one pinnacle point that you probably know you can get to. You start second guessing your decision, your technique, your approach to your sport, your training schedule, your coaches, your diet. Everything around your sport, you'll start to second guess.
You'll also end up settling for less. Instead of aiming for the Olympics, you might go, "Okay, I'll go for the World Games. That's kind of the same." Or instead of going for international, "I'll be happy with national champion." Whereas, deep down inside, you know you wouldn't be happy settling for second best. That self-doubt could be the trigger for you to go, "Oh, I'll pull this back. I'll reign this in. I won't achieve everything I know I can achieve, because I'm not quite sure if I can."
All this will end up being a huge regret when you come out the other end of your sporting career, when you stop and you do decide to look back over your career, and you go, "Wow, I made it to national champion," but deep down inside, you knew you couldn't be in the Worlds. Self-doubt is one of those things that we all have, but as an athlete, we need to contain that. We need to manage it far more efficiently than just, "We'll work our way through it."
How does self-doubt show itself? We get this loss of momentum. When we are starting to second guess and question how we're training, how we're competing, the techniques we're using, the coaches we're using, the mechanics that we're using, the machines that we're using – when we start to second guess all of those things, it puts a huge handbrake on our momentum, so we start slowing down. We lose that drive to go forward.
There's also an inconsistency because, when we know we're hitting our benchmarks time after time after time, and then we're rewarding them, hitting their benchmark, rewarding it, so we've got these goals along the way. When we start to slow down and we start to second guess ourselves, then we also lose that consistency. We second guess the structure we've built.
We no longer have that replicability of performance. We start finding we're giving 90% because we don't know where 100% is. "I feel comfortable with 90%. I can assure myself of 90%." So we're doing ourselves out. We're short-changing ourselves by that 10% plus. As an elite athlete, that 10% is the difference between first and not even being recognised.
We notice that we start taking too long between achievements. Things become elongated. They become slower. The processes become more painful, more sludgy. We no longer have that efficiency, that purity of technique. Things become harder. We start asking too many questions. Now, I'm a huge believer in asking questions, but we need to ask the right questions for the answers that we want. When we start asking generic questions, we get generic answers. We need to ask specific questions. "I need to know this. Who do I need to ask that of? I want to know this," or, "Why specifically is that happening?"
We start coming up with excuses. "Yeah, I could have done, but I've only got 10 toes," or, "I could have done, but I had this coaching stuff," or, "I could have achieved, but I decided that I was going settle for second best." All of this is what I describe as an athlete keeping one hand on the exit handle. Half of their attention, their focus, is on "Where's my exit?" Then you start to consciously evaluate and calibrate, "Is this worth it? Am I going to get the outcome that I want from this? If I am, great, I'll keep going. But if I'm not, I've got my hand on the exit. Bang, I'm out of here."
That's not an efficient place to be. It's not a productive place to be. If you're an elite athlete and you're driving for the peak of your sport, the number one spot, you do not have the luxury to be able to split your focus. You do not have the ability to keep one hand on the exit handle and still achieve those great outcomes.
If you want to reach the number one spot, then you have to have 100% focus when you're the athlete, of course, on that objective. Having a hand on the exit handle is an emotional trigger. At what point does that emotion get too much? If we've got a focus on that, if we've got half our attention on this emotion that's making me feel uncomfortable, at what point do we then, "This is enough. I'm out of here"?
Self-doubt can be the undoing of some of the most phenomenal athletes on this planet. I've seen it happen to some of the greatest. It's just natural. We just need to manage it smarter. How do we manage this? How do we manage self-doubt?
Number one is we need to recognise our successes. We need to have a better calibration of the processes that we've been through, our journey. We need to make sure that we are rewarding and recognising each of those goals we've hit along the way. We need to ensure that we're making ourselves – "I'm good at this. Every single day, I'm hitting my objective. Every single week, I'm hitting my week objective. Every single season, I'm improving." This is our proof, our internal proof, that we're doing the right thing, that we're progressing, that we are good at what we do.
We need to be better at taking our emotions out, not looking through that tinted glass of emotion. We want to be able to look at the mechanics of it, and we've done this in the past. We've disassociated visualisation. So we look at the mechanics. We look at it clinically. "I did this, this, this, and this, and that worked," or, "I did that, that, that, and that, and that didn't work, so I'm going to do this differently next time."
Having that objectivity enables us not to go, "Well, I don't know if I feel good about this." We don't have a place for that. That is too ambiguous. We need replicability. This is our job. This is what we do for a living. We want to go out there and perform each and every time. The only way we can do that is by following a system, and we know that our emotions are too fluffy to have any clarity, so we have to have a system that we can rely on, a system that we understand. We need to set short, sharp objectives and goals along the way, and then reward those. Recognise each time we do hit something that works. We need to build these in such a way that momentum is created, that we have no option but to keep pushing forward because it feels so good.
The last one is we need to understand what we need to add to this. Of course, if our objective is the Olympics, you are unlikely to be at the optimum performance right now, so there are going to be things that you need to add to your training, to add to your skill set, to add to your history of success. Once you understand that there's things I need to add to this and there are things and actions I can do, it makes us feel more in control. "Yep, I'm going to reach it, and I've got to do this, this, this, and this to get there."
Think of it this way. If I asked you are you ready today for a competition in six months' time, if you turn around and say yes, how are you going to sustain that? You won't be able to. You won't be able to sustain that level of performance, so you've got to have an objective. You've got to have a drive, going in a direction.
You obviously want to peak just before the competition. In order to do that, there are things that you need to add to do. There are things that you have to be in control of. Being able to do something makes us feel useful. It gives us an emotional reward. It gives us a mechanical action.
Self-doubt is something, and I keep saying to you, is a natural thing that we all, as humans, have. If you're an elite athlete and you're heading to an objective, that is set in stone, that you can't move. You can't turn around and say, "Hey, guys, I'm not quite ready yet. Can we just push the games back another couple of months?" Those games are in the right place at the right time. You just need to create your structure to be ready for that. In order to do that, self-doubt doesn't have a place in our team.
What are you doing to manage your self-doubt? How are you managing your emotions? Are you getting the best out of you that you know you can do? If the answer is no, then you need to do something different. You can't do the same thing and expect different outcomes. You need to take control and do something.
As always, I'll put the transcript from this episode onto our website, which is www.braininthegame.com.au. Until our next training session, train smart and enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle, and I'm the mind coach.
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