What is your reaction to an error? How do you deal with adversity? What happens to you when things don’t go the way you want?
These are all interesting questions that each and everyone one of us needs to ask ourselves if we want to grow through self-awareness. The ONLY way to really know the answer to these questions is by watching ourselves as we are in those situations.
For some players, there are a lot of strong emotions arising from these situations. Why is that? Is it a choice? It just doesn’t look like fun. Why do we torture ourselves?
Surely no one would make this choice. If that is true then why do these strong emotional reactions occur?
One of the reasons could be that deep down there is a ‘feeling’ that I ‘should’ not have missed that ball.
The word ‘should’ implies control and a choice, but my feeling is that there is no control. When we swing freely there is some uncertainty in the outcome of the shot. It is important to acknowledge that uncertainty. That recognition that we don’t have total control of where the ball ends up can help us live with failure and adversity, but if we truly believe we have total control, then mistakes will certainly be very difficult to swallow.
It is no fun being a perfectionist!