Fear of Failure
One of the signs of fear of failure is an athlete who worries too much about making mistakes. If you (or your athletes) do this, you perform cautiously.
In this mindset, athletes try to avoid mistakes and not lose. You’re stuck in what we call a “fear driven mindset.”
The golfer tries not to hit the ball in the water. The skater avoids falling on her jumps. The tennis player avoids double faulting on serve. The batter avoids striking out.
Ironically, fear causes you to focus on what you don’t want to happen.
Your mindset if driven by tension, indecision, and carefulness… None of these help you perform well!
When performing tentatively, your body is not free to react and get into a flow. You cannot execute your skills the way you trained yourself to do. Worrying about mistakes leads to a lack of trust.
When you’re focused on avoiding mistakes, you’re not focused in the present. Your mind might be racing ahead to the outcome of the game. A basketball player might focus on not missing a shot for fear of causing his team to lose the game.
The key is to focus on what you want to do instead of what you want to avoid doing. I call this a success driven mindset in The Fearless Athlete CD program.
Here’s an example:
The Fear Driven Mindset
“I feel like I need to be perfect in today’s game so my coach will put me in as a regular starter.”
The Success Driven Mindset
“I know if I work my game plan and focus on one play at a time, I’ll feel confident and succeed.”
Another key is to understand the ultimate fear behind your mindset. Most athletes try to avoid mistakes because they don’t want to disappoint their teammates, parents, coach, or feel like a failure. They worry too much about what others will think or do…
Stop the Mind Reading!
Your first step is to stop focusing on others’ expectations for you. If you start to think about disappointing others, you want to stop yourself right away. It’s not relevant to helping you execute the next play, shot, or pitch.
If you want to learn all my strategies for overcoming Fear of Failure and Perfectionism, check out this program: The Fearless Athlete
Related Sports Psychology Articles
- Fear of Failure in Perfectionist Athletes
- Turning Athletic Failure Into Growth and Learning
- How Elite Triathletes Overcome Failure
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The Fearless Athlete
For the last two decades, I’ve been working with athletes and helping them optimize their physical ability by teaching them the secrets of top performing athletes. Now, you too can learn how to regain that child-like fearless attitude.
Mental toughness is what separates the winner from the loser in any competition. Champion athletes train hard in practice, perform without fear in competition, and trust their skills in crunch-time.
The Fearless Athlete program is ideal for any athlete that wants to overcome fear of failure and uncover inhibiting perfectionistic traits; or for any coach or parent who wants to teach athletes to perform with trust and freedom in competition.