Being afraid to make mistakes is one of the main reasons athletes underperform in games. This fear causes them to hesitate and play timidly.
But aren’t mistakes bad? Shouldn’t you work your hardest to make as little mistakes as possible?
Yes, making less mistakes will result in better performances. However, making fewer mistakes doesn’t necessarily happen because you are trying to avoid mistakes.
In fact, playing to avoid mistakes is a form of playing with fear.
To play at your highest level, you must learn how to play with the freedom to make mistakes.
What Does it Mean to Gain the Freedom to Make Mistakes?
When you are scared of making mistakes, you see mistakes as purely negative. They are reasons why you fail and things to avoid at all costs.
Which makes sense, due to the fact that when you make a ton of mistakes, this is considered a bad game. And making mistakes can lead to you being benched or even cut from the team.
But our goal is not to make more mistakes, it’s to be okay with the possibility of making mistakes.
You accept the potential that mistake may happen, and play aggressively anyway. You don’t tiptoe through your performance, scared that at any moment you may mess up.
When you tiptoe through a game, scared to mess up, you will find it difficult to play at your peak.
In fact, you will find it difficult to play well at all.
As a mental performance coach, I work with athletes who are struggling to translate practice play into games. They have the skills necessary to succeed, but they don’t show those skills during games.
One of the main reasons for this disconnect is fear. Especially the fear of making mistakes.
When athletes are able to gain the freedom to make mistakes, which is all about the attitude they take toward the possibility of making mistakes, their performance drastically improves.
Being Okay With Mistakes
A great example that highlights the idea of playing with the freedom to make mistakes comes from a baseball player I’m currently working with.
He plays much better during the summer ball season than he does during the school season. The cause of this difference has to do with the way he views mistakes.
School ball is much more intense. The coach puts more pressure on him and the team, the player feels like there is more at stake, and as a result, mistakes are needed to be avoided.
Summer ball is much more fun. The coaches are laid back, they play in many different tournaments, and there is a lot less pressure. As a result, the player sees mistakes as more okay to make.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to make mistakes during summer ball or that he tries to make mistakes. In fact, he makes less errors in the field and has a better batting average during the summer.
Since he isn’t as afraid to make mistakes during the summer season, he plays more freely.
The environment grants him the freedom to make mistakes, leading to him playing more relaxed and playing better.
Since he’s okay with making mistakes, he doesn’t stress while he plays. That is the essence of giving yourself the freedom to make mistakes.
Why Some Athletes Don’t Have the Freedom to Make Mistakes
The idea I’m talking about in terms of having the freedom to make mistakes is all about the attitude you take to games.
This attitude, however, is difficult to have for multiple reasons.
One such reason can be your coach.
I’m not saying you can blame your coach, but we must recognize certain coaching styles increase the pressure some athletes feel.
If your coach is a yeller or pulls you after one or two mistakes, you will not find yourself easily adopting the attitude that it’s okay to make mistakes.
There was a college basketball player I worked with who was pulled after she made one or two mistakes.
Her coach would bench her and sometimes keep her benched for the remainder of the game.
She struggled with fear of failure because she knew there was a very real consequence to making mistakes.
Another reason athletes struggle to accept the possibility of mistakes is perfectionism.
When you expect yourself to be perfect, any sort of a mistake will be seen as something to avoid.
A third reason is the negativity you feel following a mistake. If you beat yourself up and have a lot of negative thinking after you mess up, it’s easy for fear to grow in relation to mistakes.
There are many more reasons why athletes will grow to fear failure. But it is the fear itself, seeing mistakes as things to avoid, that holds athletes back from giving themselves the freedom to make mistakes.
3 Tips to Gain the Freedom to Make Mistakes
I’ve used the term, to avoid mistakes, a lot so far. The reason is, when you play to avoid mistakes, you will inevitably underperform.
That doesn’t mean you should play to try to make mistakes. But it does mean you need to play freely and accept that mistakes may happen.
When you play to avoid mistakes, you hold yourself back and keep yourself from performing up to your potential.
Tip #1: Recognize How Avoiding Mistakes Hurts You
If I think that avoiding mistakes is by best option, I will keep playing that way. However, once I realize how hurtful this type of playing is, I will work to change my mentality.
That is the first step in getting yourself to be more okay with the potential of mistakes. You must recognize how playing to avoid mistakes actually leads to more mistakes.
Spend some time thinking about your worst games and your best games. During the bad games, were you playing freely, or playing scared?
During the good games, were you trying to avoid mistakes, or playing like you had nothing to lose?
Once you can strengthen the association between wanting to avoid mistakes and playing poorly, you are one step closer to gaining the freedom to make mistakes.
Tip #2: Set Different Goals
When you try to avoid mistakes, on some level, that is your goal.
Your mind is focused on not wanting to mess up, which is where we see you play scared and hold yourself back.
If my goal is to not miss in basketball, an easy way to achieve the goal is to not shoot. Unfortunately, that also means I won”t have the chance to make a shot.
If my goal, however, is to take more shots or take open shots, I am more likely to shoot and more likely to make a basket.
When your goal is to avoid messing up, your mind will seek the easiest way to achieve the goal. Which, more often than not, leads you to hold yourself back and hesitate during the game.
You want to change your goal to more of a want to goal. Focus on a controllable action you want to take and accomplish during the game. Such as taking more shots, being aggressive at the plate, or moving your feet.
It’s a simple adjustment, but one that helps tremendously with taking your focus off not wanting to make mistakes.
Tip #3: Change How You Respond to Mistakes
When you respond negatively to mistakes, this strengthens the fear surrounding mistakes.
There’s one basketball player I’m currently working with who fears how he will respond to mistakes. He knows his confidence drops and he gets down on himself.
He especially knows how poorly he plays once this happens.
So, he hesitates to take shots and holds himself back due to this fear.
He and I are working on changing the way he responds to mistakes. What he has seen is that once he’s able to respond to mistakes better, he no longer needs to fear his reaction. This has led to freer and more natural play.
For yourself, work on changing how you respond to mistakes. Don’t allow yourself to get negative after they occur during games. Work to move on as quickly as possible.
After games, don’t waste time beating yourself up. Learn what you can from the game and then apply that throughout the week. That way, you are using your mistakes to improve.
The better you are at managing mistakes, the less you will fear mistakes. And the less you fear mistakes, the more you will gain the freedom to make mistakes during games.
Mental Coaching for Managing Fear
When you play with fear of failure, you will inevitably underperform. Being scared of making mistakes results in timid play.
To work against this, you must develop an attitude where you accept the possibility of making mistakes.
You must play with the freedom to make mistakes.
The three tips I have outlined above will help. But if you would like a more in-depth and personalized approach, I offer a 12-week one-on-one mental performance coaching program.
If you’d like to learn more about the coaching and see if it’s right for you, click here to schedule a free introductory coaching call.
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
