I once worked with a footballer who’d been struggling with
his performances for several years. A few years previously he had been feted as
the next big thing. At the age of 18, those in the know were expecting him to
take the Premiership by storm and inevitably take a leading role in the England
set up but now, aged 23, things hadn’t panned out quite how he had hoped and he
was even struggling to keep a place in the starting XI of the mid-table League
One team that he was now playing for.
A reluctant client (he was only seeing me because his agent
insisted) the main problem appeared to be that he didn’t seem to accept that he
had any control over his world or how we acted or felt. An explosive temper had
led to a number of incidents which usually end up in a yellow card, and very
often a red. His progress had flatlined and, he even admitted he had been a
better player 5 years previously. As a result, he had moved from club to club;
each one buying him largely based on his old reputation rather than his present
form. And yet, he didn’t believe that any of the responsibility was his. He was
very quick to blame everyone and everything apart from himself.
In the sessions we had together at various times he blamed
his coaches, his team mates, the tactics, the referee, his fitness coach, his
diet, his girlfriend, his boots, the fans and even the pitch. Hand in hand with
this was that he also didn’t feel that he had any influence on his performance.
He referred to himself as being a ‘confidence’ player. A term you hear quite a
lot in football and essentially means he is the type of player who will only
play well if he wakes up feeling confident. Unfortunately, those days were
becoming few and far between. At no point did he consider anything to have been
his fault.
You may be aware of the concept of Cause and Effect (C>E),
where one action causes another to happen. The problem is that a lot of people
seem to live their lives on the Effect side of the equation where their mindset
has them believe that what they do and how they feel is a consequence of
external factors, i.e. everyone and everything else. If the world decrees that
they are going to be confident that day then so be it, they can go out and
perform. However, if the world decides otherwise, then it’s going to be a bad
day. Successful people live their lives on the Cause side of the equation,
where they feel that they are responsible for what they do and how they feel.
Confidence, then, becomes a choice not an aspiration. One way to put yourself
on the Cause side of the equation is to take responsibility for what you do and
how you feel. Unfortunately, my client saw responsibility as being a bad thing
and, unsurprisingly, after a few sessions decided that it wasn’t working for
him. The last I heard was that he was playing semi-professionally for a
non-League team.
It seems to me that there is very little benefit to
surrendering your responsibility to the world, apart from the fact you can have
an excuse when things don’t go to plan. Taking responsibility allows you to
shape the world in the way that you want to and feel confident, happy,
motivated, energised and fulfilled when you want to and not because someone (or
something) else decides for you.
As Eleanor Roosevelt so deftly put it:
"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your
consent."
Andy Barton
Performance coach
