Dealing with Defeat

We have all been there, that moment when you lose a big game or didn't get what you hoped for. You may feel a knot in your stomach, maybe you want to cry, maybe you are pissed, or maybe you just shut down. All these responses are quite typical and actually normal. As an athlete we have a need to feel competent and always at our best. When something happens to lessen either or both happen we can experience a variety of emotions and feelings ranging from anger to sadness to depressed. Over time depending on the degree of defeat you experienced, the following hours or days can feel like a roller coaster. One minute you think you are fine and the next the feelings and thoughts can overwhelm you. So, how do you deal with this?

For many athletes this is the million dollar question. How do I quickly but effectively get over my defeat. Quite simply there are two paths, helpful or non-helpful. You have the power to choose how you deal with the defeat. Many times athletes often experience a sense of powerlessness and if they can get that back they will have a much easier time taking control of their response. Going back to the choices, first let's discuss the non-helpful path. This path includes the doubts, critics, questioning. Examples I have heard include, I will never get over this, I won't ever be good enough and the always presents "what if's". The simple way to know whether what you are thinking is helping or hurting you is to ask yourself what you feel like after. Do you feel worse? Then it is not helping you move forward. The other path is the helping path. The key here is being able analyze and learn from what happened. Critique only what you know you control and will be able to work on. Keeping a journal of what you learned and will work on in the future will help you be able to move past the defeat as well. By choosing this path it will help you feel more positive and productive about your future performances or life situations. Instead of getting stuck in a negative circle, you can break free when you take control and decide that I am going to view my defeats differently.

Interesting insights from athlete meetings

Many times all an athlete needs is someone to listen and help them work through whatever the issue is at the moment. Numerous times I have found that athletes will either answer their own questions or come up with a solution that is all their own. The great thing about this is that they came up with it themselves and it's theirs, no one can take that away. It is always great to see the look on my athlete's face when they come up with an idea and realize the impact it will have. It's a beautiful thing!

For example this week during one of my athlete sessions, we compared her thoughts/feelings of tumbling to downhill skiing. In tumbling she felt constricted and pressured, in skiing she felt free to make her own decisions. Pressure was the difference and that difference was making a huge impact on her ability to perform. The key is taking what she learned from the discussion and then figuring out how she can deal with the pressure surrounding tumbling.

Another example is the importance of focusing on the positive. From my own personal experiences I have seen first-hand the impact of changing your self talk from negative to positive. For me it was climbing on my road bike. I use to look at hills (and sometimes still do!) with great disdain and fear. Then one day I decided to look at them like a challenge and that it was only going to make me stronger and better. On that day, climbs were not as bad. I shifted my focus to my pedal stoke, my breathing, what I could control. I still do not particularly love them, but I don't hate them as much! But it is an on-going battle of will and mental fortitude to remind myself of the correct cues to focus on.

Takeaways from this post:
- Always be learning and apply what you learned.
- Focusing on the positive is key!