Managing Your Emotions

Far too often emotional changes within a player or throughout a team, dictate the whether a team wins or loses.  Managing both success and failure can be difficult.  Yet, oftentimes it is the psychology of your team that determines its ultimate success.

Here is an interesting article by a sports psychologists-
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-power-prime/201105/sports-become-emotional-master-athlete

5 Core Characteristics of Winners
http://www.blogface2face.com/2010/05/5-core-characteristics-of-winners.html

1. Self- Confidence
2. Risk- takers
3. Unafraid of hard work
4. Determination
5. Patience


One of the prime traits that I try to impart of the teams I coach is to be willing to fail. Winners have to live with the fact that failure is inevitable. We might fail a test, we might make a bad decision, and we might come up short. But winners also realize that failure is a learning lesson and not an ultimate defeat. We learn more by failing than winning because failing shows us how to win. Winners learn from their mistakes—and profit from them.

After my teams State Quarter Final loss this past Saturday I tried to have them reflect upon all their successes from this past season... The overtime wins, the most wins in 10 years, the first time in 10 seasons they got past the 1st round of the state tournament....  And have them focus on the learning part of the defeat.  How they played the defending state champion, who competes in championship games each season, and how we could learn from this experience and apply it to our future seasons.

Losing sucks.  It's awful.  Ultimately though... the more you learn from it, and the harder you work to overcome it, the greater your success will be.