Mindset
Find the Joy in It
“You’re playing a game, whether it’s Little League or Game 7 of the World Series. It’s impossible to do well unless you’re having a good time. People talk about pressure. Yeah, there’s pressure. But I just look at it as fun.”
– Derek Jeter
Attention parents, coaches, or aspiring athletes. I wrote this as a post the other day and it was super well received, so I thought I would elaborate a little more and make it a blog post.
First sports are a lifetime legacy and lifestyle. An active life is a healthier life, and sports and activity are an essential part of being human.
But some aspire to be more competitive in sports, they want to explore what’s possible with their body.
Here’s some advice culled from 35+ years of training and reconditioning athletes.
Make sure it’s their dream, not your dream. Too many parents live vicariously through their children and push too much.
Sometimes you need to push, and sometimes you need to step back. But in the end, success will come from their ownership of the process.
If they don’t want it, you can’t make them want it. I think the greatest challenge as a parent sometimes is watching our kids fail, sputter, get frustrated, and even walk away. They have to live their lives, not the ones we want them to live.
I am all for having them finish something they signed up for or registered in, but if there isn’t a spark as some point, the spark isn’t yours to inject.
Be a facilitator, not a dictator. To play off of the above point, it has to come from them, you can set the table, but they need to learn to eat so to speak.
Too many of us as parents make it too easy, we give them everything they need and they don’t have to overcome. Overcoming IS sport! You can’t succeed in sport if you can’t overcome, so if we’ve done all the overcoming, they aren’t learning.
Teach your kids how to respect and thank those who help them and support them.
If they want to become future champions, there will be a lot of people who have to help them get there, the better they treat them, the more they will want to help.
Most of the athletes I’ve had the pleasure of working with understand this rule, but there are the odd one, or two who don’t, and those end up on the wrong side of the success equation simply because people don’t care to help them when they need it.
Help your kids realize they need a plan B. Education is essential, or some kind of vocation beyond being an athlete. One day, all athletes must retire.
It’s especially important to teach them how to manage money, and how to put money away for the future. An athlete’s career can be very short, and spending all the upfront money can be very appealing, but it can also leave you in a very bad place if things don’t workout
Teach them to be gracious winners and losers. Beat your opponents, don’t treat them poorly. When you lose, learn and move on. It can be especially fun to rub it in when you win, but just think about how they will feel on the other side of that equation. In the end, how does that behavior serve their future success?
Help them realize they should dream, and dream big, but winning at the highest levels is rarefied air.
Even when the best of intentions, and the hardest of work, winning the medal or the championship might not happen. Help them see that success is in the work and process of moving towards the destination, not the destination itself.
Why this is so important is that life after sport has very few concrete destinations, and if we are too overly focused on the wins, then life afterward will be very challenging as winning isn’t really what life is all about.
You and they should know that injuries will be a part of the experience. When navigated well, they can contribute to future success!
What I have experienced in my career with athletes is that the navigation of the injury process teaches them a lot about long-term rewards and breaks them from the need for instant gratification. There is no choice but to accept that it will take time, and work the process through to its eventual completion.
Let them know that the effort will be monumental, but the view at the top is indeed extraordinary. Even if they don’t win the medal or the championship, the fact that they reached gives them a bird’s eye view of what it takes to explore what so many others never try.
Most of all, make sure they find JOY in what they are doing.
As the legendary Yankee Derek Jeter says in the quote at the beginning of this blog, that’s ultimately what it’s all about!
