Change can be a difficult process for anyone, leaving something you know – something comfortable – for that which you don’t and what may not be. Despite its difficulty, change is a necessary fact of life and certainly in competitive sport. Those who chose to change do so hoping they are moving in a positive direction and those who resist change have it forced upon them. It is important to have the capacity to choose positive change to progress at the rate the world is moving around us. Change both necessarily difficult and difficultly necessary, and in such cases having a road map is key for success. Knowing how to initiate and execute this difficult process of change involves three benchmarks of cognition – The Three A’s: Awareness, Acceptance, and Action.
Awareness
For you to choose to change something about yourself, whether it be a behavior, belief, thought pattern, or skill you must first become cognizant that there is either a problem, or something could be done better. For example, consider a star high school soccer player. She is the highest scorer on her team, but has a bad habit of telegraphing where her shots will go. Her coach knows this will hurt her in college, but the player doesn’t see a problem because she’s the still the star. This athlete will not chose to take active steps to improve because she isn’t aware of a problem even if confronted with the coaches feedback.
In my one-on-one work with athletes, we talk about developing more awareness for thoughts and feelings that we might not notice on first glance. Our behaviors are based on thoughts even if we are not expressly aware of the connection so if you wish to change a behavior it becomes crucially important to become aware of the underlying thoughts.
Furthermore, we are blissfully unaware of the conscious experience had by others, we only know the world through our own eyes, so it is very hard to recognize your own mental strengths and weaknesses as compared to others. In other words, it is much easier to compare my jump shot technique with a NBA pro than it is to compare my mental skills with theirs. A great tool to help develop your awareness of mental strengths and weaknesses is though journaling. When you are able to read back your own thoughts, it puts a slight distance between you and them, providing enough space for you to fill with analysis and awareness.
Acceptance
In inviting this self-criticism, it is important to maintain an overall theme and goal of positivity and growth rather than ruminating on the negative aspects of yourself you are now aware of. Accepting that you are not perfect but are someone who deserves to improve, grow, and progress is the antidote to rumination. Separate who you are from what you do. For instance, consider a field-goal kicker who misses a last second field goal to lose the championship. Just because he made an mistake does not mean he is a terrible player, or even have any bearing on the next kick he will take. A mistake is just that, an acute error that can be learned from.
For mental skills training, if you know you have a difficult time focusing but you refuse to accept it, you will shy away from training it in fear of revealing your weakness. Conversely if you were to accept that you have a slight weakness but are willing to train it, you likely won’t have that weakness very long! You will be more motivated to improve if you believe you are someone worth improving.
Action
So now we have become aware of something that we could be doing better, we accept that just because something can be done better that we are not bad for it, and it is time to take action. While this step seems like it would be the most difficult, the wonderful thing is if you have achieved the previous two cognitive benchmarks, taking action to change is the easy part. It easy because you are aware of the thing you wish to change, and you have remained positive about it in that change will make you better.
When the action towards change is difficult it is often because a person has failed to meet the previous criteria. Consider the soccer star from our previous example. If her coach is constantly reminder her about looking where she will shoot the ball, she may try to fix it for her coaches sake, but will lack the internal motivation so there is dissonance between what she wants and what she’s practicing. Secondly, if she hasn’t accepted that she has room for improvement, her coach’s feedback will be received as an attack on her as an athlete or worse her character.
Action towards change does not take a single route and often contains many setbacks, resets, and re-evaluations. For athletes seeking change and growth it is important to be surrounded with people you trust to give you honest feedback whether that be coaches, parents, teammates, specialists, etc. When taking action towards change it is important to be moving towards an ideal rather than away from the negative. To take action towards change you have to have a clear image of what change looks like, what it doesn’t, and a few benchmarks along the way.
Change
In order for someone to take steps towards changing something about themselves they must first be aware of a problem or shortcoming. Psychological phenomena are often more difficult to be aware of because of our lack of comparison to others conscious experiences. Journaling your thoughts can greatly improve your awareness of your inner experience by highlighting automatic conscious processes previously hidden. With an increased awareness it is important to maintain positivity and a theme of growth through accepting you can have room to grow without denigrating your self-worth or image.
The difficulty in change lies in setting the conditions for it to occur rather than taking action towards transformation. Once the conditions are met, action towards positive change is the next logical step. If you find yourself struggling to change something whether it be a physical skills, behavior, or cognitive process, take a step back and ask yourself if you have achieved both Awareness and Acceptance before you try to take Action.
Leave a Reply