Taking Responsibility to Turn Your Game Around
Do you feel you never get any breaks in competition, as if you were cursed by bad luck?
Do you feel you get unlucky bounces, unfair officiating, bad seeding, unlucky draws, inopportune equipment failure, horrible competition conditions, injuries, and opponents who are firing on all cylinders just at the right time?
You probably question, “Why do these unlucky things always happen to me?”
Why do these things happen to you?
Why does bad luck seem to follow you constantly?
When you think you’re unlucky, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Every bad break will become evidence to support your belief that you are unlucky.
The reality is all athletes get bad breaks…
It’s just that some athletes perpetuate the bad luck cycle by calling themselves unlucky while other athletes rely on effort to move past those bad breaks.
How can you turn your supposed luck around?
Take responsibility for your performance!
Don’t blame your performance on bad luck. Look to those performances for insight to improve future performances.
Taking responsibility requires that you focus on your strengths rather than misfortune.
Focusing on misfortune hurts your effort and leads to under-performance.
Focusing on your strengths will keep you motivated to try to turn the tide, to make your own breaks rather than passively waiting for some opportunity to come your way.
Focusing on your strengths will help you see what you can do, right now, to turn things around instead of getting stuck on what has already happened.
Taking responsibility also requires that you prepare for all contingencies.
Preparation is a Proactive Step
If you take responsibility for your level of performance, then you have the power to improve future performances.
Taking responsibility puts the ball in your court.
Taking responsibility is what the Ottawa Senators know they need in order to break out of their mini slump.
The Senators had a stretch of six losses in seven games.
One particular loss really hit hard when they allowed the Tampa Bay Lightning to tie the game with 27 seconds left in regulation and then lost the game 14 seconds into overtime.
Ottawa defenseman Mark Borowiecki talked about the team’s need to take responsibility for their level of play in order to be better prepared for future games.
BOROWIECKI: “As a group, collectively, we’ve got to take some ownership for our play and our results. It’s been a few too many years here for us where the players haven’t taken ownership. We’re going through a rough patch here and this is where it’s a true test of our personalities and a true test of the group we have in here.”
Ultimately, the athlete that recovers from bad breaks is the athlete that asks themselves, “What now?” Instead of, “Why me?”
That is the essence of personal responsibility.
Turning Your Game Around:
Taking responsibility is a matter of focus and effort, not excuses.
Monitor your self-talk…
When you notice that you start blaming performance on outside sources, redirect your focus by asking, “What positive step can I do right now?”
Changing your luck is a matter of making your luck.
Related Sports Psychology Articles
- How to Keep Calm after a Poor Officiating Call
- Overcoming Mental Blocks in Competition
- How “Trying to do Too Much” Can Hurt Performance
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The Focused Athlete
It’s probably no secret that you have many opportunities to become distracted in sports. Athletes are bombarded with both internal and external distractions everyday in practice and competition. Focused athletes are able to get the most from their skills because they are more efficient with practice and more concentrated in competition. Athletes who lack focus let distractions run wild through their mind and don’t know how to adjust or refocus.
The Focused Athlete was developed for any level coach, parent, or junior to professional athlete who wants to improve performance and gain a competitive edge. It does not matter if you are a fledgling junior athlete; or a seasoned professional, plagued with distractions; or you just wanting to learn how to improve concentration…
“The Focused Athlete” is a complete system to teach you how to focus like a champion and harness the power of a zone focus every time you step on the playing field, court, track, or course in practice and games!