Do you stress about making mistakes during games?
Are you worried that if you make a mistake, coach will yell at you, your stats will drop, or you’ll be benched?
These are all natural worries to have as an athlete. And the truth is, making mistakes can cause any one of them (along with many other negative consequences) to happen.
However, stressing about making mistakes won’t do anything but increase your chances of making more mistakes and cause you to underperform during games.
In fact, stressing about mistakes is one of the main reasons you may find yourself playing well in practice but not games.
What I’m going to do is outline why stressing about mistakes holds you back, along with three tips you can use to stop stressing about making mistakes. Freeing yourself to let go and play up to your true potential.
How Stressing About Mistakes Holds You Back
Nobody wants to make mistakes. They’re not fun and they can lead to many negative consequences. Consequences you definitely don’t want to have happen.
For example, I worked with a quarterback who made some mistakes early on in the season and quickly found himself in the backup role. He was more talented than the other quarterback, but the other quarterback made less mistakes during games.
Mistakes have consequences. Especially the higher you climb in levels.
However, just because mistakes have consequences does not mean you need to stress about making mistakes.
The quarterback found himself stressing about making mistakes at the start of the season. He’d won the starting role in the offseason, but both he and the other quarterback were freshmen. They were a young team and neither quarterback had any varsity experience.
Since they were both the same age and since they both didn’t have any varsity experience, this led the quarterback I worked with to feel insecure about his starting role. This insecurity led to stress. Stress about making mistakes.
During practices and especially during games, he thought a lot about not making mistakes and what would happen if he did make them. Instead of allowing mistakes to happen (as they naturally do) he tried to control them.
When you try to control mistakes and control not making them, this creates rigid and tense play. And that’s exactly what the quarterback experienced.
He began playing stiff. His throws were off target. He wasn’t making decisions as quickly. He didn’t move as smoothly in the pocket.
His tension due to stress about making mistakes led him to underperform.
In other words, not wanting to make mistakes was the very reason he made more mistakes. This is something I see in most athletes who experience stress about making mistakes.
The more you stress about not wanting to make mistakes, the less confident you play. The less confident you play, the less freely you play.
This is where you find yourself playing scared.
Playing With Stress Causes You to Play Scared
When you stress about making mistakes, your goal has shifted. Instead of playing to succeed you are playing not to make any mistakes.
Playing not to make any mistakes leads to playing scared.
When you play scared, you hold yourself back. You may hide from the ball or go very hesitantly into a play.
You are not playing with full confidence and allowing yourself to flow.
Going back to the quarterback example, his stress caused him to play scared. He was scared of making the wrong read, calling the wrong play, and throwing an interception.
All of this fear created slow, unnatural movements. He got in his own way and created more mistakes as a result of his stress.
Think about the games when you’ve played your best. Would you say there was an element of flow and trust to your game?
When you play your best, you can’t help but let go, play aggressively, and trust your skills.
Those elements are at the core of all great performances.
You cannot play your best while simultaneously trying to not make any mistakes. As soon as you start trying not to make any mistakes, you play scared. You undermine your own skills and now you are trying to force a good game instead of simply playing and letting it happen.
Since we know that stressing about mistakes only increases your chances of making mistakes, you need to shift your mindset. A shift that is made easier by following the three tips outlined below.
Three Tips to Stop Stressing About Making Mistakes
There is little hope in you all of a sudden not caring about mistakes. Not worrying about consequences. Or not minding if you play poorly.
However, we have to get your mind to stop focusing so much on these things and many other negatives and stressful thoughts that are only holding you back.
Remember, when you stress about mistakes, this only increases your chances of making mistakes.
So we’re going to use your motivation to not make mistakes and not play poorly as a way to redirect your focus. Getting you to think and place attention on things that will actually help you play your best.
Which is why the first tip you want to apply is changing your thinking.
Tip #1: Change Your Thinking
What are you thinking about when you are stressed about making mistakes?
Are you thinking about how much you don’t want to mess up?
What about the consequences of failing? Are those on your mind a lot?
Whenever I am working with an athlete who is stressed about making mistakes, their thinking is focused on the mistake or the consequences of the mistake.
This makes sense, as the more we don’t want something to happen, the more likely it is for us to think about it. What we are wanting to avoid becomes the focal point of our attention.
However, thinking about not wanting to make mistakes and not wanting to fail is what drives timid and scared play. It’s what leads to anxious play.
Thinking about not wanting to make mistakes is what causes you to underperform.
So what should you think about instead?
For one, you want to think in a way that counteracts the stressful thoughts you are having. This is known as reframing: changing one thought into another.
Here’s an example of what reframing would look like if you have a stressful thought during a game:
- Stressful thought: I can’t screw up today. This is my last chance.
- Reframing thought: I know I can play well today. Just be present and trust my training.
See how different that second thought is? That’s what you want to get into the habit of doing. As soon as you notice yourself having stressful thoughts about mistakes, reframe the thought into a more positive and productive one.
Another way you can change your thinking is by working to have more positive and optimistic thoughts from the beginning of the game. This is where a self-talk routine becomes helpful.
A self-talk routine is a list of confident and positive statements you read to yourself before you play. It is a great way to feed your mind the thoughts you want to have, instead of succumbing to the stressful thoughts that have become normal.
Tip #2: Reset Your goals
Goals can be incredibly valuable to you as an athlete, or a detriment to your success. Depending upon what type of goals you set and how you think about your goals.
If your goals for a game are to play well, on the surface, this may seem helpful. Who doesn’t want to play well?
But what happens when this goal to play well turns into stress and pressure? Now you feel like you have to play well. And when you have to play well, it’s easy to begin thinking about what can keep you from playing well…mistakes!
Now all of a sudden, the initial goal to play well that seemed so positive has turned into a driver for stress and worry about making mistakes.
So we have to be very careful with the types of goals we set for games.
When you find yourself stressing about making mistakes, this is a good sign your goals are hurting you. They are leading to pressure and increasing stress.
What you can do to help is reset your goals. But this time, instead of your goals being focused on the result of the game (i.e. playing well), set your goals in terms of controllable, process elements of your game.
Here are some great examples of controllable goals you could set:
- Give full effort throughout the game.
- Have a good attitude.
- Be vocal and pick up my teammates if they make mistakes.
- Focus on using my routines.
- Respond well to mistakes and bounce back quickly.
You see how accomplishing each of those goals is in your control?
Now, you may be feeling like setting goals like the ones listed above isn’t competitive. If you’re not thinking about wanting to win, you don’t care about winning.
I get that 100%…however, take a good hard look at your recent games. Is stressing about mistakes really helping you play your best?
Yeah, it may feel competitive to think about winning and stress about winning. But true competitiveness comes from being effective on the field or court. Controllable goals help you be effective, increasing the chances of you playing your best.
When you go out there and play your best each and every day, that’s what’s truly competitive!
Tip #3: Use Mistakes to Learn
The last tip works to reframe how you see mistakes in general.
When you stress about making mistakes, it’s safe to say mistakes are seen as a negative. Otherwise, there would be no reason to stress and worry about them.
And while mistakes aren’t exactly the greatest thing in the world, we can work to change our perspective of them. Turning them from a purely negative aspect of our game into a more helpful aspect. All by adopting the mindset of using mistakes to learn and improve.
I was talking with a softball player yesterday who has been struggling a lot with stress and fear about making mistakes. This week, however, she hasn’t had a ton of stress.
When I asked her what changed, she explained to me that she’s at a camp this week and so it’s okay to make mistakes. “We’re just there to learn and get better,” she told me.
The coolest part is, she has been playing great this week! Better than in her games and team practices recently. And she is enjoying herself more. All because she let go of stress and fear by shifting her mindset.
She and I talked about holding on to the mindset of just being there to learn and get better even during games and team practices. And it’s a mindset shift I encourage you to adopt as well.
When you see mistakes as a way to learn, you are much more accepting of mistakes. This doesn’t mean you try to make mistakes. It’s just that mistakes aren’t seen as negative, and therefore you don’t have to be so scared of them.
By accepting mistakes and reducing fear, you free yourself up to just play. Instead of playing timid and scared, you will find yourself playing confidently and aggressively. Just like the softball player.
An actionable way you can make this mindset shift and use mistakes to learn is by reminding yourself before practices and games that you are there to improve and that mistakes are okay. This brings us back to the second tip where you reframe your goal.
Maybe make the goal of the day be to improve.
In addition to reminding yourself before practices and games, you also want to reflect on any mistakes you made afterwards. When you do this reflection, don’t ask yourself, “What mistakes did I make?” Instead, ask yourself, “What can I learn from today?”
Remember, you are after lessons you can use to improve. Not reasons you have to feel down on yourself.
Final Thoughts
Stressing about mistakes during games is a major cause of underperforming. This can be what leads you to play well in practice but not games.
During games, mistakes are seen as purely negative and need to be avoided. This need to avoid mistakes increases stress and causes you to play tight and timidly.
To reduce this stress and let go of your fear, there are three tips you can use: change your thinking, reset your goals (make them controllable), and use mistakes to learn!
By applying these tips consistently and continuing to work at them, you can free yourself from stress about mistakes and allow the talents you’ve worked hard for to shine through.
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
