Brain in the Game | Sport Mind Coaching Podcast
Dave Diggle
Episode Fourteen – Getting Results - The patterns and triggers of a successful performance
Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game, the podcast specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents, who are looking to do their sport a little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is like a detox for the thinking of traditional coaching, and I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
So why aren't you getting results? When I hear that, it can be for a number of reasons in any different sphere – the performance of an athlete, the performance of a coach, or even in business or life. Not getting results is a common area of concern for everyone. But, what is a result?
The first question I need to ask is “What was the specific result you were looking for?” If you don't know, then how do you know when you get there? Was that objective realistic? We all want to have great things in our lives, but the reality of certain things we can achieve limits what we can do. I want to own the world, but in reality, I'd probably settle for owning my own island. We have to make sure the objective we're going after is a realistic one and something we can achieve so we're not just setting ourselves up for failure. Once we set ourselves up to fail, we frequently fail again and again because it becomes our pattern.
So first ask yourself “was it an achievable outcome I was setting out to get? Or did I not achieve it because it was physically or practically unrealistic?” This can be a hard question to ask yourself off the bat, but it's the most key question. Even if you put all the structure and training in the world into your objective, yet it's unachievable, it doesn't matter – you won't get there. Also, is it just a patience thing? Do you want to achieve an outcome that just needs more time to develop? This impatience is something we see more and more frequently in the “now”world. Much of our behaviour is cultivated over our whole life spans, 30, 40, or 50 years in the making. We can't expect it to change instantly. We can only take that first step towards making a change, but sometimes it takes time.
We live in a world where our results are expected instantly. Faster internet, next day delivery, no lines, no waiting. Because of this, we expect our results to have the same urgency; but maybe the growth is happening, just not fast enough for you. If this is the case, a measurable set of rewards and benchmarks need to be installed, so you can gauge and see the growth, and appreciate and put in context what you're achieving. It needs to be sustainable recognition. If it is an achievable objective, and you've built enough lead time in, but you still haven't been achieving what you wanted to, then we need to look at other influences in your performance, your life, and your preparation.
What else can influence your results? Do you have the right team around you? Are your strength conditioning guys doing the right job? Is your manager representing you in the best way? Is your coach the best one for you right now? Just because they've always been your coach doesn't mean they're the right coach for you at this time in your development. I've seen coaches who have taken young athletes through the start of their career, right up to the precipice of their professional career, and then hand them over to someone whose expertise lies in the professional world.
I've also seen coaches who think they can take an athlete from day one to the end of their career. It's possible, but this question needs to be asked. It's not a call to throw the baby out with the bath water, but if there's an area that needs to be improved or added, you need to do that. You're in control, and you need to manage the stages of your growth with kid gloves.
This is why we've created entourage circles, because it enables you to make sure the right people are in the right place at the right time. Sometimes you only need someone for six months, sometimes someone from your entire career needs to be moved out of your sphere of influence. You need the right people around you to support and complement what you have. The entourage exercise will give you the opportunity to build that team, re-evaluate, and build again. As you grow, your team needs to grow – not necessarily in numbers, but expertise. [See Episode #12: Moving Athletes from Amateur to Professional Thinking & How to Build the Team to Do It]
If you've grown all your areas of expertise around you, and you’ve set reasonable goals, and you're still not achieving, then it's time to look at you. Do you know specifically the goal you're after? Not in broad terms of “I want to hold a world record one day” – how specific have you been? “I want to be an Olympian in the 2014 Olympics”. Once you get specific, then you can start to hold yourself accountable. What are the specifics? Would you actually know if and when you reached it? Or are you floating around waiting for that “aha” moment? If you're specific enough, you'll know the minute before you cross that line into reaching your objective, and you’ll know the exact moment you do reach it. Know what it will look like, feel like, and what it will give you access to. Most people who set an objective aren't this clear on their goal. Understanding the entire objective gives you control. The finest details give us the opportunity for precision and to hold ourselves accountable.
If you're not achieving, did you build a specific enough path? We have our decision matrix, which is our opportunity to build every single step between an objective and where we are now. It gives us an opportunity to hold ourselves accountable and to reward ourselves, and gives us a template to grow with. If that template isn't working, build another one. It's not set in stone, but it is our driver. Does each step have an accountability phase built into it, so if you don't achieve it you can't move on? You need to make sure you achieve it and make sure this next step is the right one. [See Episode #1: Setting and Achieving Goals]
Did you take action? Action is key – knowing helps, but action delivers. Did you actually do what was required of you to achieve your outcome, or did you cut corners? Were you smart about it, or lazy about it? Are you a self-sabotager? Do you sabotage your results? This is where people outwardly state what they want to do and achieve, but don't believe deep down that they could, would, or should have it, or deserve to have it. They sabotage, either consciously or subconsciously, their results, to 'prove' to themselves that they were right and they shouldn't have it. This is common when people rise to the top of their sport very quickly, where they have the talent but not the behavioural understanding of what they have in their hands. It moves faster than their realisation of what they're doing to achieve. They start to self-doubt, and self-sabotage. Achieving can be a really scary place when you don't have that support structure around you, and you're standing out there alone not knowing if you're capable of continuing what you're doing. That's why building a foundation and team around you is key.
If someone has low self-esteem, and doesn't believe they really deserve to reach their objective, they'll focus on what they can't do and don't have, rather than what they can do and can have. Finding reasons why they shouldn't achieve. Whatever your reason, if something isn't working, you have to fix it. Doing the same thing will give you the same results. Take action and get detailed. Hold yourself accountable and build a program, a foundation, a structure that is specifically for you, so that you can achieve all the stepping stones and trials along the way. Understand what you're going out to each competition to achieve. What is your objective, what will it give you, what will it enable you to do next? Understand the emotional buy-in. Getting specific about that will let you not only hold yourself accountable, but also make sure you're rewarded when you get there.
Make sure you process what you're doing so you work out what's working and what doesn't. Be specific about “that enables me to do this” and “this is working great”. What's not working? “I can't get up at 4 AM to run, it's just impossible”, or “I can't run in the afternoon because I have to pick my kids up from school.” What do you need to do differently, how do you structure your days so that it enables you to do the optimum every day? How do you structure your training so that you're physically, mentally, and emotionally stimulated? Having a sustainability to what you're doing, where you can last 4 years between Olympics, or 12 months until the next competition. What do you need to do practically to put in place so that you can support yourself? Understanding what you need to do will enable you to get to those end objectives. It's the void in-between where most people fall down the chasm. We need to make sure the bridge between 'now' and 'then' is very well-constructed, and that will enable you to focus as an athlete on your objective.
If you're thinking about this in business or life, the same philosophy applies. Having that strong structure around you that holds you to account and enables you to reward yourself will enable you to achieve. It's not set and forget, it's a path of doing, adjusting, and re-doing. Look for that commonality of things that are working for you. Look for what isn't working and what you can do differently. Understand the specifics of what you're going out to get. Understand what it will get you, what you can't afford to miss out on, what that final step is. Get so precise about it – “as I cross that line, I'll have achieved ____.” See yourself crossing that line, get that emotional buy-in. Understanding the specificity around that is the secret to achieving. Being vague allows you to get lost in the ambiguity, the “Oh, I was almost there, but I wasn't quite sure how close so I didn't push harder”. If you're specific enough, you'll know down to the millimetre how close you are, and that will push you forward.
I've mentioned a couple of the templates we use at the Smart Mind Institute within this episode, one of them being The Entourage Circles which enables you to build your team around you, and one of them being The Decision Matrix which enables you to build the specific path and holds you account, gives you rewards, and tells you what the next step is. Both of these are available on our website, www.BrainInTheGame.com.au . On the right hand side is an Episode Alert Box, and if you put your name and email in there, there's a link where you can download all these templates I'm talking about.
There's another I'll add to that, called Athlete Layers. The whole concept this exercise is it teaches you what it is you need to become successful, to enable you to achieve core values and core internal needs. The practicalities of what you need in your environment, things that are tangible around you, the social aspect and what you need around you in your team or in one or two people. It also asks about your “branded you”, how you want the sporting world to see you. Athlete Layers enables you to pad what it is internally that drives you, and what needs to be part of your Decision Matrix building process. When we talk about rewards, what will reward you? If you don't know on the inside what matters to you, how do you know what rewarding yourself will give you, or what the right rewards will be? Athlete Layers is a key exercise with anyone looking to get in touch with what works specifically for a specific person.
Let's do a quick recap – we looked at why you aren't getting the results you're looking for. We asked if it's achievable; if it's something that will take a long time when you expect an instant result; if you have the right staff and support around you; then we looked at you, your drivers, and what you're specifically looking for; would you know your objective when you hit it, or is it just “a feeling”? We looked at a couple of exercises, the Entourage Circles, Decision Matrix, and Athlete Layers. It really is about you as an individual taking control. Understanding specifically what it is you're trying to achieve. Understanding a structure that will feed you and support you, and having the flexibility to know when a bit isn't working and to rework it. The underlying bit is, take action, do something. Don't expect things to come to you. You have to build the process yourself.
Copyright 2012-2022 Dave Diggle
https://www.smartmind.com/
