Take all judgment out of your game and try this instead

Who sits in film listening to your teammates defending themselves on every play? Who silently does it in their head like.. “why am I the only one getting called out today?!” With coach’s comments adding to the downward spiral of trying to prove ourselves to be good, bad, right or wrong, leading to. everyone either super proud, crying, or pissed off. Good good. Same , me too haha

Take shame (feeling of “I’m not good enough”) out of your game and game analysis. Or at least begin to turn down the volume on the things you notice hurts more than helps you. A simple wording shift might be a step towards having the mindset of never ending improvement instead of constantly trying to prove or defend ourselves while watching film.

I want to invite you to experiment with me and try this: Take all judgment out of your game and game analysis. There is a difference between evaluating your game and judging it. Evaluating without judgment is making statements without the words good, bad, right, wrong, should have, etc. Evaluating is saying “what might be possible if we try this…”

Try it. Or at leasts begin to be aware of the feelings you get as you do judge. Just notice. Is it helpful for you? If so, great. If not, what can we change?

When we come at our game analysis and film watching from a place of curiosity instead of critique, it will elicit more of an excitement to work towards change instead of a pressure to (producing pressure or excitement to motivate yourself to work might get the same results, but has a much different energy behind it. One leads to burnout.)

Being curious and having an experimental mindset in practice, might including saying…okay if something doesn’t work after we try it, we are one step closer to finding something that collectively will help the team improve and win. We have to get to a place where failure excites us, because we get to continually find new ways, like a puzzle, that might work next time. The biggest block to this excitement?? When the “I am not good enough” shame of failure becomes bigger than our curiosity, belief, and excitement to improve. So if no one else has told you this season… YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH! YOU ARE LOVED AND WORTHY … whether you improve or win or not…it will just be more fun if we do.