the tuesday transition - issue 39
January 24, 2023: A results-based expectation is a judgement or a demand that you place on yourself, on your performance, that is focused on achieving a certain outcome or result. In other words, it is pressure to perform and produce the ‘correct’ result in order to feel good about yourself and your play.
Ring a bell? Something you’ve experienced?
Many, many, many of the players that I work with, tell me that they consistently feel pressure to perform and produce a certain result in order to feel good about themselves and their play. Meaning, they have a standard, an expectation, that they NEED to live up to – and it’s the only way they can leave a game happy and feeling good.
Having standards and high expectations is not a bad thing, not when it is coupled with a healthy striving mentality (which basically means knowing how to be kind to yourself in the face of adversity and things you can’t control, while also still holding yourself accountable to improvement and growth.)
Where standards and high expectations get difficult and UNHEALTHY is when they are tied to unrealistic, impossibly high expectations of perfection.
Standards (of playing perfectly and not making mistakes) are impossible to achieve because meeting these expectations is NOT SOMETHING THAT IS FULLY WITHIN YOUR CONTROL.
Let’s think about this. What things are NOT in our control at a soccer game? Coaches, refs, teammates, opponents, weather, field condition, etc. These things can all affect how you play, correct? They can affect whether you meet your standard and get that ‘correct’ result right?
Because of this, is your standard of yourself realistic? IT'S NOT.
Why? Because it is unrealistic to DEMAND from yourself a result (playing perfect and not making mistakes) that you can’t control!!! Example: If you are playing goalkeeper, you could do everything within your power correctly and STILL NOT MAKE THE SAVE because your teammate got in the way and deflected the ball accidentally.
Here’s the big news that you probably don’t want to hear, your confidence is directly tied to this heavy/unrealistic expectation. You know, the expectation that is so impossibly high that there’s no way you could ever meet it on a consistent basis? Ya, that one.
This basically means that (if you don’t change things) you are rarely going to be able to feel confident and good about yourself because you are rarely going to be able to meet the standard of perfection you have set for yourself – again because that standard is not 100% controllable by you.
So, how do we even start to grow our confidence if we are ATTACHING it to something that we can't achieve and we can't control?
The answer is we STOP attaching it to this results-based expectation. We have to consciously CHOOSE attach it to something else – a new expectation that we have FULL CONTROL OVER..
If you want to know more about exactly how to do this, read this – 3 Actionable Steps you Can Take to Be More Confident on the Soccer Field
And with that, I leave you with this…
Truth.
Till next Tuesday,
💎 What I’m digging: Berkshire Soccer Academy a girls soccer sleep-away camp! I’m going to be working with them this summer, SO EXCITED!
👩🏽💻 What I’m reading: Not soccer related per-say, but I’m very invested in the power of nutrition for overall wellbeing and How Not to Die is amazing…
🎧 What I’m listening to: The concept of ‘neutral thinking’ has been one of the best tools I’ve come across. Loving this audiobook by Trevor Moawad.
Grow your confidence through preparedness.
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Hi everyone! I’m Jenn and I create content to help female soccer players and coaches maximize individual and team potential by developing healthy mindset skills. Join other subscribers and sign up for the newsletter for all my best tips and advice!
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