Video transcript:
If you want to develop into the player that you know you can be while also getting the most out of your abilities right now, then you have to view yourself and your career as this endless work in progress. Endless meaning that there is never a point in your career or in your life where you are out of the fight.
One thing that I think has been harmful to a lot of athletes’ performance and long-term development is this sense of urgency that is placed on them at younger and younger ages, where today it seems like a 12-year-old now has to think about how they’re gonna put themselves in the best position to get college looks. It’s this mindset that says “There’s always someone out there outworking you, and that you have to find some way to separate yourself so that you can get to where you want to go, because if you don’t, then you’re not gonna reach your goals. This mindset is a great motivator. It’s great at getting you in the building and putting in the work. But it’s just not a great competition mindset and a lot of young athletes and even more experienced athletes don’t know how to turn this off when they get into competition. The problem is that it can reinforce this notion that some achievement in the distant future is gonna make all of our hard work and even our participation in our sport worth it. And now each game becomes this opportunity not to play the game that you love or compete just for the sake of competing, but to justify ourselves and all of our hard work. And each game has this feeling of finality to it. The weight and this stress that this puts on you is not sustainable. It will crush you eventually.
The reality is that the mental game is an infinite game. There is no point in time where everything is lost and there’s no point in time where everything is gained. If you win, if you play well, if you do achieve, then that’s, that’s great, but you gotta get up and you gotta do it again tomorrow. I mean, even the best athletes in the world who have achieved all that there is to achieve, they say that it’s not that fulfilling. It’s not as fulfilling as they thought it would be. It’s a little underwhelming. And then if you lose, then it’s back to the drawing board. It’s, how can I do this better next time?
When you play with the infinite game mindset, you put in the work for the sake of itself, and every chance that you get to compete is a gift. And fulfillment comes not from achievement, but just from playing the game itself. Even just from the small things like getting to go to practice every day and just getting to compete with your buddies.
And don’t get me wrong, it is great to set goals. It is great to strive and to achieve achieving goals is a good thing, but we have to understand that it’s just a cherry on top and it’s a byproduct of playing that infinite game. Have the mindset that you are an endless work in progress.