The Power of Responsibility and Choice
One of the most important skills I have learned as a college athlete is the power of responsibility and choice. What I mean by that is how are you taking responsibility for your performance? What are you choosing to do right now to help you? Every single day and moment we have the ability as athletes to control 3 things. Our focus, our attitude, and our emotions.
The thing is, there are going to be many days where we just aren’t feeling great and our confidence might be low. So, what. The most important thing is where we are focusing our energy and action into. Are you giving into the low confidence feeling, or giving everything you have for that day to grind?
CHOOSE to pour your focus into thoughts that will help you and your team. Your thoughts will lead you to your actions.
In your mind, you may feel like you have two different voices in your head that are battling for you attention. One may be telling you negative thoughts and one might be supportive and positive thoughts. You have the choice to respond to which wolf you feed. Are you going to feed the bad wolf that constantly tells you that you aren’t good enough, or are you going to feed your good wolf that tells you positive things? Being aware of both is a good thing, but we ultimately have to choose which wolf to feed and take action. There are going to be negative thoughts every day, but with practice, we can choose to take responsibility for what we do with those negative thoughts.
Our emotions can sometimes feel like they are riding a rollercoaster based off of our results. We feel like we’re at the top when things are going great, and then we crash at the bottom when we aren’t doing well. Our goal is to minimize the rollercoaster of emotions as much as possible. When you have no control over your emotions, the game will speed up on you and it will go downhill from there because you can’t think straight. I have learned that in order to make a physical adjustment, you have to check in with yourself mentally and make an emotional adjustment first.
Controlling your attitude is important for not only the game, but for your life in general. Your attitude will change your perspective on everything. If you choose to have a negative attitude, then you will only focus on things that go wrong and bad things that have happened in the past, which will cause your body language to be bad and cause more wrong things to happen. Choosing to have a positive attitude will channel your focus and energy into good things and will make you feel good. Personally, I will play better when I have an attitude on focusing on success. I will have a much better day when I wake up with a positive attitude rather than a negative one.
Controlling your attitude also means choosing how you respond to your reactions. For example, you might swing and miss and strike out, it happens. Your first reaction is that you’re probably going to be angry at yourself and that’s completely normal. If you weren’t a little mad then I would be concerned! The part that we can take responsibility for is how we choose to RESPOND to that reaction. Are you going to keep thinking about it or will you have a “turn the page” mentality and focus on the next actions you can take to help your teammates win the next pitch, despite your anger? That is a choice that’s completely up to you.
Action Plan:
Take responsibility for yourself. Are you reacting to your results and feelings, or are you choosing what you want to focus on? Taking responsibility for yourself will allow you to understand your commitment and take consistent action upon it. Check yourself if you’re riding the emotional rollercoaster and being inconsistent. In order to take responsibility, you have to understand the power you hold when it comes to choice. From the moment you wake up you have the power to choose how your mindset will be. You shouldn’t be blaming others for your focus, emotions, and attitude. This is you.
Control the controllables. Focus on what you can control. You cannot control the results or other circumstances, so don’t give yourself up to those things. Instead, focus on the process and actions you are going to take to get you to the results. The perfect result might not always happen, but you did what you could control. If you are taking the game “one pitch at a time”, and focusing on the actions you can take at that exact moment, you are in control. Be in the present moment!
Control yourself before you control the bat or ball. In order to do this, it takes practice. Find what works best for you because everyone is different. What’s your routine after you step out of the box waiting for the next pitch? Maybe finding an external cue will help you reset and gain control of yourself. An external cue means looking at something on the outfield fence, something you wrote on your glove or hat, picking up dirt, or readjusting your batting gloves. Does breathing help you? Taking deep breaths always helps me reset and calm my emotions down. Find what works best for you and use it at any time! You can have a great warm up, but if you lose control of yourself when you step in the game, you’ll beat yourself.
Respond vs React. To keep it simple, our brain will process information through our emotional center before going to our rational thinking center. This means that we all have a natural tendency to have an emotional reaction before we have thought about it. The best part is that we have the ability to decide how we are going to respond to that initial reaction. Responding means pausing and taking the time to figure out what caused your reaction, gathering your thoughts, and choosing how you can move on. Choosing to respond to your anger by yelling at the umpire is probably not the best idea. Instead, choose to respond in a way that will focus your energy on what will help you and your team in that moment.
FEED THE GOOD WOLF! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzKryaN44ss
