The opinions expressed by Entrepreneur authors are their very own.
In our recent book entitled Extreme balance: paradoxical rules that make you a championBen Askren (co-founder AWA), clinical psychologist David Sacksand I share interviews with champions, scientific insights, and expert evaluation that can challenge readers to rethink their approach to success. In the following excerpt, we discuss the benefits and disadvantages of an “all-in” versus “there are more important things in life” mindset when competing in sports and business.
To buy Extreme balance Now: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Entrepreneurial Bookstore
Legendary New York Yankee Derek Jeter – as described by Tom Verducci in his 2009 book Illustrated sports article about that 12 months SI Athlete of the Year— “jumped” a teammate who performed poorly in the 2001 World Series loss after his teammate said, “Well, at least I had fun.”
According to Verducci’s article, when he recalled this moment years later, Jeter said, getting offended again, “Fun? I can’t relate to this… It makes me angry when people don’t care – not when they fail; everyone fails – or when people act like they don’t care.
University of North Carolina head wrestling coach Rob Koll, a former NCAA champion for UNC and a consistent winner as head coach at Cornell and then Stanford, describes his “unrelenting, almost pathological” hatred of failure. “It drives me and motivates me like nothing else,” says Koll. “It doesn’t mean you have to act like a child if you lose, but it has to motivate you. When we lose a dual meet or a recruit, I work twice as hard.”
Caring deeply about which means that success is exciting and failure is life-or-death scary. If you permit yourself to experience the terrible horror that comes with committing to a single goal and then failing to realize it, the pain of that disappointment can assist you to find much more energy and resilience so that you simply won’t be upset next time.
Ask anyone who has achieved their ultimate goal and they may inform you that a part of the journey included painful failures that inspired them to search out a different level of commitment. Legendary wrestler and coach Dan Gable went undefeated throughout highschool and college before suffering an upset in his final match against Larry Owings in the 1970 NCAA finals. Gable said that while he had been successful so far, he needed this loss to reinvigorate his commitment and eliminate any sense of invincibility. As he says, I “said hello” only after this defeat. He then set his sights on the Olympic gold medal, which he won in 1972 without losing a single point.
Stories like this show that great achievements might be largely fueled by the pain of failure. Instead of trying to keep up perspective and soften the blow of their recent failures, champions turn that pain into greater effort and determination. Therefore, attempting to persuade yourself that “it’s just a game” makes no sense. Instead of mentally lowering the stakes, find a approach to pick yourself up and give it your all when the stakes are high to avoid that terrible disappointment in the future.
Consider a situation where your performance is literally a matter of life and death. Such scenarios occur often for surgeons, pilots and military leaders, and for them there is no escape from the pressure. If you are leading a group of soldiers on a mission in hostile territory, maintaining perspective means knowing that the lives of others are in your hands. You should be at your best when it matters most.
It is known that not everyone is cut out for this sort of work. If you fail under a lot of pressure, it is best to select a different profession path. In military combat, emergency medicine, and law enforcement, you do not have the luxury of adjusting your stakes to your chosen stress level. Instead, you should adapt your performance to a reality where the stakes are high. For those that do, the stress of competitive sports pales in comparison. It should come as no surprise, then, that athletes who have experienced difficult circumstances in their lives – resembling a combat tour or growing up in a crime-riddled neighborhood or war zone – are often the most resilient and mentally tough athletes.
To buy Extreme balance Now: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Entrepreneurial Bookstore
Until you experience the life or death pressures we are talking about, it is unattainable to know the way you will react. Psychologists call this natural response the dominant response, and the approach to determine your dominant stress response is to place yourself in a stressful situation and see the way you cope. Just as physical exercise will reveal flaws in structural integrity, highly stressful situations will reveal our deepest mental weaknesses or highlight our biggest strengths.
Is your dominant response to emphasize to stop working and focus on the task at hand? Or do you react by freezing and hoping you’ll survive? If it’s the former, challenge the hardest opponents and fight like your life is at stake. But if it’s the latter, keep your perspective and treat your sport as a sport, not a war. In the meantime, work on your dominant response so you possibly can tackle greater challenges in the future.