Well it didn’t last long…..

I had lunch with a good friend of mine and he kindly pointed out that the last time I wrote this my baseball team had played 2 games: won 1, lost 1. Well they have now played 13, the season is well under way and we are now: 3-10.

So, early season optimism has evaporated, the headlines are gloomy and the radio hosts on my favorite sports station are apoplectic. It seems as though we all bought into the optimism and now feel personally let down (remembering there are 149 more games to go……)

I thought this was an interesting case study. Remember, we are all responsible for how we chose to react to a situation, even though we can’t control how we feel about it. So what is happening?

I pick out a number of these and I’ll consider their relevence to other things that may affect us in our lives:

1. People are looking for someone to blame – I guess this is the nature of sport, somebody must be held to account. To date I have seen the following blame figures mentioned: owner, general manager, manager, hitting coach, pitchers, young players, veteran players, front office staff.

How does this help us? Does it make us feel better? What do we expect to happen as a result? I’ll leave these for you to think on

2. We fee that we are owed something – we have been through this before, they owe us as fans a duty to improve. Ever felt someone owed you? How does that make you feel? Perhaps we can look at why we feel this way.

3. I don’t care anymore – perhaps this is the saddest. We have been disappointed so often we don’t want to put ourseleves out there any more.

4. Here we go again – the season is young but we already feel it’s all over. We have seen this pattern before and things became even worse so that is what will happen again.

All these things are, in fact, how we chose to react to the situation, although the reality of wins and losses is unavoidable. Once we get into this pattern of thinking it affects us negatively and we continue to think one such thought after another. Perhaps we get more angry and seek others to blame without ever getting closer to the answer. Perhaps we give up, lose interest and miss out on what was once something we really enjoyed.

I love baseball and want to see the Royals do well but in reality we all knew that this was a season of rebuilding. I will complain like everyone else but I chose to look for the positive and how we can build on it. For example one of my favorite things to do is go to a baseball game with friends, family, kids. It’s a great day out. Of course it’s better when we win but probably I actually get more out of the excitement in pre-game, the atmosphere when I am there, the great plays we make (occasionally) and how much fun the Hot Dog Derby is (you need to be a Royals fan to get that!).

Of course losing is frustrating but I can still find positives and have fun. I can take that to other things in my life.

I believe!

Baseball has started – the Royals are 1-1 after 2 games and there is still hope in the air. I think it was 3 years ago when the team slogan was “Believe” – this came from the Manager who coined it to encourage the team and the city to believe the season would be better. It was! Since then there has been regression, but as I say, hope springs eternal!

Someone asked me recently about client beliefs. What if someone comes to a coach with a goal that is clearly unattainable? How do you handle that?

As a non-directive coach, here are my thoughts:

1. Who is to say any goal is unattainable?
2. If I think to myself (or articulate to the client) what I think about their goal, whose agenda is that?
3. How do I help someone get closer to their goal if I have decided it’s not achievable?
4. How does it serve the client to tell them something is out of their reach?

Now, this is an interesting area. What if one of my goals is to do something like play major league baseball. Well I am a Brit, I’ve never played baseball let alone pro baseball. How likely is it that I will achieve this goal? Well, that is for me to discover. How will I do that? Research, find people to talk to, learn to play, get better, devote the time to it etc.

Now in reality, I know that this goal is not realistic for ME. However I have come to that realisation myself – actually I did so a long time ago! However there are things I look back on that I didn’t do that I think in hindsight I could have, if I had really applied myself.

I don’t want to ever feel those feelings again. I don’t want to think – “I didn’t even explore that avenue”. Working with a coach encourages me to explore these goals and test the reality for myself, then perhaps review the goal in the light of experience. Perhaps I can play in an over 40s baseball league? When I researched that, there are ex-major leaguers who do that too! Playing with them would be great.

So what’s the point here? I encourage you to let imagination run free. What do you really want, ideally? Then believe in that goal and move towards it. You will probably be surprised how far you get. If you don’t make it all the way, think how much further you are than if you had simply said to yourself (or been told) “that’s ridiculous, can never happen” and done nothing.

How’s that working for you?

Dr. Phil uses this question and it can be very useful. When we become committed to a course of action it often requires us to change something that we have been doing. I saw a famous quote (attributed to Albert Einstein in some sources): “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

I like that quote although, personally, I think it a rather narrow definition of insanity!! However the point is well made. Once we decide on a goal, how do we expect to achieve this if we continue to carry on behaving as we did before?

Of course we don’t expect that, so we change our behaviour. For example when I want to become better at a particular tennis shot, I need to try a new approach, however uncomfortable that may be initially. I do it because I have an expectation that the result will be worthwhile, despite initial pain (sometimes in the tennis example, literal pain!)

Of course the goal needs to be something worth working toward (the subject of other posts here!) but the point is the behavior is changing. I am now equipped to answer the question: “How’s that working for you?” with a positive affirmation that it is difficult, but I can see the tangible rewards as my game starts to improve. If I don’t see these results I can answer that it isn’t working as I’d hoped AND I AM DOING SOMETHING ELSE AS A RESULT.

What I want to avoid is saying: “Well I am doing this because I’ve always done it and I don’t seem to be getting any closer to where I want to be.” Essentially, that is just complaining and not taking responsibility for making a change.

So, what are you doing to reach your goals? How’s that working for you?