Video transcript:
One of the most important and overlooked aspects of your baseball mental game is how you evaluate your performance. Reflecting on what you do well, and where you could see growth for the purpose of learning and getting better after every single performance. Now a lot of us look at performance outcomes to determine how well or how poorly we performed. We want to know whether or not we won, how many hits we had at the plate or how many strikes or walk outs we had at the mound or how many runs we gave up. If those outcomes lived up to our expectations, we feel great. But if not, we tend to hit the panic button because we feel like something went terribly wrong. This is when we dig ourselves in a deeper hole. We begin to put more and more pressure on ourselves to achieve those favorable outcomes even though we really have no control over them. By doing so we’re actually abandoning the approach that gives us the best chance to achieve those outcomes in the first place. This is what happens when we allow our emotions to control our evaluative process.
Now it’s 100% ok to feel strong emotions about our performance outcomes. When we care about what we’re doing, that’s going to happen. But if we’re looking to learn and grow from both success and failure, we have to take a more strategic approach. One: We have to understand that those emotions are temporary and that we can handle them. And two: We have to go into learning mode whether we’re satisfied or unsatisfied with the outcome, we have to ask ourselves: What led to that outcome? We have to look at how well we executed our process.
Some of the best athletes find that journaling is one of the best ways to do this. Just getting your thoughts down on paper to provide you with some clarity and to help you remember what you do well and what adjustments you chose to make. When journaling after competition the three biggest questions you should ask yourself are: What did I do well? What could I do better? And how will I prepare for next time? Again, when answering those first two questions, look back at your process. Ask yourself: Did I commit to my plate approach? Was I locked in on every pitch? Did I throw every pitch with trust and conviction? How did I respond to adversity?
Your answers to questions like these will inform your answer to question three. What will I do to prepare for next time? What will you do before you compete again so that you can continue to do the things that you already do well and improve in the things that you want to get better at? And sometimes you’ll find that you executed your process really well and you didn’t get the outcomes you were looking for and that’s just baseball. Other times you’ll find that you just have to change your process.
Either way, we don’t figure those things out unless we take an honest, objective look at our performance. Remember, that because baseball matters to us, we’re going to experience a wide range of strong emotions surrounding our performance and that’s okay. But if we want to continue to learn and grow then we have to go into learning mode. Think strategically, not emotionally.