I work with a lot of athletes struggling with sports performance anxiety. The first skill I teach them is acceptance.
Not because we like the anxiety or want it to stay, but because without acceptance, we have no chance of managing the anxiety.
The same is true for many other mental game challenges. Doubt, mistakes, fear, bad calls…they all are helped through acceptance.
In this article, I’m going to explain why acceptance is key to a strong mental game in sports.
What Acceptance Means
Have you ever experienced something like this: you feel anxious before a game, and all you can think about is how much you wish you didn’t feel that way?
That is resistance, the opposite of acceptance.
Or maybe you’ve made a mistake in a game, and all you can do is think about how stupid that was and how much you wish it hadn’t happened.
That is also resistance. Not acceptance.
Or perhaps there was a bad call, and you just can’t let it go. Again, that’s resistance.
So what is acceptance?
It’s the absence of resistance. It’s when you allow something to be there and you accept that it happened.
It’s the old annoying saying, it is what it is.
Now, why on earth would we want to be okay with the fact that we’re anxious, or that we made a mistake, or that there was a bad call? That seems pretty stupid.
Well, it’s not that we’re okay or happy with it. We are just recognizing what we can and what we cannot control—and accepting what we cannot control, instead of trying to fight it.
Fighting it, because it’s out of our control, will only make matters worse.
What Happens When Acceptance is Missing?
Without acceptance, we are stuck in a cycle of resistance. We get so caught up in the fact that we feel a certain way or that something has happened that we are unable to focus on the present moment.
Since I mentioned anxiety, mistakes, and bad calls earlier, let’s focus on these to highlight what happens when we are without acceptance.
When we feel anxious and fight it, what this causes is more panic. The feeling of anxiety is a nervous system response: the fight or flight response.
The fight or flight response is triggered by a perceived threat. A stressful situation.
Now, think about when you panic over the fact that you’re anxious and you try to force it away. Are you bringing calm into the equation, or introducing more of a threat?
More of a threat, since you know you don’t play well when you feel anxious, and so you worry about how you shouldn’t feel that way and how poorly you’ll play if you don’t get rid of it.
Without acceptance, you are making the anxiety worse by furthering the threat response.
Following a mistake, we want to accept that the mistake happened. Not because we’re happy about it, but because that’s the only way to truly allow ourselves to move on.
When we don’t accept the mistake, we resist it. Resistance to a mistake comes in the form of overthinking. We tend to dwell on the mistake, question why it happened, and wish we could go back and change it.
But that’s all we can do about it…think. We can’t change it. We can’t do anything about the mistake except learn from it and move on.
Okay, so to learn, shouldn’t you think about it?
Yes, but briefly. Learning from a mistake is important. But during a game, what matters most is refocusing on whatever is next.
If you can learn quickly, that’s even better.
However, to learn from a mistake requires acceptance, as well. Otherwise, we get stuck in a self-critical spiral, which tends to snowball into more mistakes.
Lastly, with bad calls, this example highlights those parts of the game that are completely out of our control. Bad calls, coach yelling, annoying opponents or fans; all of these distract us, especially if we cannot accept them.
When we don’t accept bad calls, for example, we grow angry and can at times feel as though the bad call costs us the game.
In other words, we get distracted by the bad call and are no longer fully focused on what we can control to play well.
With all three examples, we see that without acceptance, the anxiety, mistake, bad call, or anything else has even more of an impact on our game than it should.
How to Practice Acceptance
Acceptance allows us to move on with our attention. We no longer need to think about the thing and are therefore free to focus on what’s happening in front of us.
That is the key to any good performance: being fully focused in the present moment.
Acceptance allows us to do so.
But how can you go about practicing acceptance? Especially since the things you need to accept are so frustrating, painful, and not at all what you want to have happen.
Tip #1: Remember, Acceptance is Not About Wanting
One of the biggest pushbacks I get from athletes in one-on-one mental coaching when talking to them about acceptance is that they don’t want those things to happen.
We often confuse acceptance with wanting.
It’s not that you want to feel anxious or want to make a mistake. It’s that you recognize that once the anxiety is present or the mistake is made, it’s not within your control, and therefore acceptance is the best solution.
Many players will say, I’m not okay with making a mistake. As a result, they don’t want to accept it.
But whether or not you’re okay with a mistake doesn’t change the fact that it happened. The same is true with a bad call or feeling anxious before a game.
But resisting those things only makes matters worse.
So remember, acceptance is something we apply because we acknowledge what is in our control and what is not in our control. It has nothing to do with wanting these things to happen.
Tip #2: Focus on Self-Talk
This second tip involves how you actionably practice acceptance in the moment.
Let’s say you’re anxious before a game. To practice acceptance at that moment, use your self-talk to say things to yourself like:
- I accept that I’m anxious.
- It’s okay that I feel this way.
- I can play well even though I feel anxious.
Or, maybe you’ve made a mistake during a game. Use self-talk to say things like:
- I can’t control that now, just accept it and refocus.
- It’s okay, it’s in the past. Accept it and move on.
With acceptance, we are trying to control our attention. Instead of having our attention stuck on our anxiety, or the mistake, we want our attention focused on the play at hand or simply in the present moment on something we can control.
Self-talk is like the driver who’s steering the car. The car is your attention. We use self-talk to steer our attention away from what’s distracting us and toward where we want it to be placed.
Tip #3: Acceptance Does Not Mean You Don’t Care
The final piece to this I want to mention is that when you accept your anxiety or the mistake or the bad call or anything else, it doesn’t mean you don’t care.
In fact, if you know fighting your anxiety makes it worse, dwelling on mistakes leads to more mistakes, and getting frustrated over bad calls distracts you, then accepting those things actually proves you care about how you play moving forward.
So often, we get confused about what care actually looks like on the field or court.
I need to show I’m upset in order to show that I care about the mistake I just made.
That’s great, but can you change the fact that you just made that mistake?
No.
But what you are affecting is your ability to make the next play. And if you show you’re upset, that may cause you to make another mistake.
So, in that case, by trying to show you care, you are actually distancing yourself from playing well.
Remember, acceptance actually shows you care. Because you are doing all you can to position yourself to be successful.
Final Thoughts
So much of sports performance comes down to focus. Your focus is either helping you play your best or causing you to underperform.
Acceptance is a skill we apply to control our attention.
Anxiety, mistakes, bad calls, fans, coach yelling…they all distract us. And at the moment, they’re all out of our control.
Through acceptance, we are letting go of the things we can’t control and focusing on what we can. Mainly, whatever we need to be doing at that moment.
By building the skill of acceptance, you are showing you care and positioning yourself to be a successful player on a consistent basis.
Now, acceptance, along with many other mental skills, is what I help athletes develop through my one-on-one mental performance coaching program.
If that’s something you are interested in for yourself or your athlete, click here to learn more about the program, or fill out the form below to contact me directly.
Thank you for reading, and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
