How much time do you spend focusing on your mistakes versus focusing on your successes as an athlete?
This is a question I pose to all of the athletes I work with in one-on-one mental performance coaching.
The reason is tied to how important our focus is. How vital where we direct our attention is to our game.
In this article, we’re going to explore that very question and identify why athletes focus on mistakes so much, and how to find a balance between the two.
Why Mistakes Are So Attractive
It may seem strange to think of mistakes as attractive. What could possibly be attractive about messing up and failing?
Well, what I mean by mistakes being attractive is that mistakes draw our attention like magnets.
Imagine that you just finished a game, what will you likely think about first: your mistakes or what you did well?
For most athletes, the answer is their mistakes. They think about what went wrong and go over how they could have played better.
Mistakes are very attractive to us and it’s natural to spend most of our time post practice and post game thinking about them.
There are two main reasons for this:
- You want to get better
- Success is what you’re supposed to do.
You Want to Get Better
A common explanation athletes give me for why they spend the majority of their attention on mistakes is that they want to get better. They don’t want to make mistakes and so thinking about their mistakes is a way to remind themselves they should do better.
That idea makes a lot of sense. Again, no athlete wants to make mistakes. So it would be logical to think back over what you did wrong as a way to improve.
Unfortunately, the improvement part often gets left out.
When we think about mistakes after practices and games, for the most part, it will be done in a self-critical way. Where we beat ourselves up over the mistakes.
Yes, you are wanting to improve and get better and remind yourself that you do not accept making mistakes…but what is this doing to your confidence?
Success is Supposed to Happen
Another factor that plays into us giving more attention to mistakes instead of successes is that we tend to think successes are supposed to happen.
Take a basketball player as an example. She knows that as a basketball player, she is supposed to get points, get rebounds, and play good defense.
After a game, if she does those things, it’s nothing special. It’s what she’s supposed to do.
And that’s true.
However, just because she is supposed to score points, for example, doesn’t mean she can’t feel good about the points she scored and think about what else she did well post-game.
That kind of thinking is where we see confidence grow.
The Downside of Focusing Too Much on Mistakes
While thinking about your mistakes is a necessity, as you’ll learn in the next section, it is an action that needs to be done with intent. Otherwise, the negativity it creates will consume you.
Back when I was playing baseball I had a terrible habit of fixating on what went wrong. After every practice and game I analyzed my mistakes.
And this was rarely done in a productive way. More often than not it was done in a harmful way where I criticized myself.
Little by little I was eating away at my confidence.
What’s worse, I was never allowing my successes to compound and build confidence like they’re supposed to.
This is something I see many athletes do as well.
That’s the biggest downside of focusing too much of our attention on mistakes. By doing so we tear down our confidence.
In addition to diminishing confidence, focusing too much on mistakes and criticizing yourself over them can also lead to anxiety and fear.
Beating yourself up over the mistakes you made strengthens the negative association you have to mistakes. Meaning you are making it more and more likely that you’ll fear making further mistakes in the future.
When you play with anxiety and fear surrounding mistakes, you’ll find yourself playing tight and timidly.
Even though you may be focusing on your mistakes in hopes that it will help you improve, in reality you may be causing yourself to underperform in the future.
Benefits of Seeing Your Successes as an Athlete
Confidence is king.
On game day, no matter how good you are physically, if you cannot compete with confidence you will perform below your potential.
This is why so many coaches harp on having confidence. You must believe in yourself.
But where does such belief come from? And how can you create more of it?
The number one way to build confidence is to play well. The more you play well, the more you will trust yourself to play well in the future.
But the truth is, many athletes play well without having their good play lead to increased confidence.
How can this be? If playing well is the number one way to build confidence, how can an athlete play well and yet still not see their confidence grow?
Because it’s not good enough to simply play well. You must reflect on your successes.
If you brush over what you did well and only focus on the negatives of your performance, you are not allowing yourself to build the memory of success needed to strengthen confidence.
However, when you do reflect on and remember the good things you did, you will see your confidence grow. That is why seeing your successes is so important to you as an athlete.
How to Balance Seeing Success With Looking at Mistakes
I am not an advocate for overlooking our mistakes. You will never become the player you know you can be if you pretend like you’re perfect and never mess up.
However, as discussed above, it’s no good beating yourself up over your mistakes, either.
Plus, we must spend time reflecting on successes as a way to build confidence.
Therefore, we need to strike a balance between seeing the mistakes we make and feeling good about our successes.
The balance comes through the use of a post-performance evaluation system. A system you can use after every practice and every game.
It is a process I have all the athletes I work with in one-on-one mental coaching go through and I have seen tremendous success with.
Post-Performance Evaluation
The goal of the post-performance evaluation system is to help you spend time reflecting on your successes, while also allowing you to learn from your mistakes. If you use it right and do so consistently, it will help minimize your tendency to criticize yourself after practices and games.
Step One: Outline the Good
The first step in the evaluation system is to outline the good things you did during the practice or game. Your goal should be to identify at least three to five positives from your performance.
These can include physical aspects of your play along with mental elements.
Once you write them out, spend another minute or so feeling good about them.
I know this can seem strange, but remember, time spent reflecting on your successes is time spent building confidence. And confidence is key to increased performance moving forward.
Step Two: What Can I Learn?
The second step is to ask yourself the question, What can I learn?
This is where you will analyze any mistakes you made.
You’ll notice, though, that the question isn’t, what mistakes did I make or what did I do wrong?
Those kinds of questions open the door to self-criticism which is what we’re trying to avoid.
Instead, look for lessons. What can you learn from the practice or the game that will help you get better?
Step Three: Implement Your Lessons
Once you have your lessons outlined, put them into practice.
Identify how you will work on them during your next practice or how you will work to improve for your next game.
This is a key part to the evaluation system because you aren’t simply thinking about the mistakes you made. You are taking those mistakes and turning them into actionable ways to improve.
Final Thoughts
Mistakes are magnetic.
They draw our attention to them and if we’re not careful, we will completely overlook any success we had.
But seeing our success is how we build confidence.
But we also need mistakes to learn and improve.
Which is why you need to be sure you are using a solid post-performance evaluation system that helps you see your successes as a way to build confidence and look at mistakes, not as a way to beat yourself up, but as a way to learn and improve as a player.
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
