Over the weekend me and a friend of mine were discussing how in football, the quickest of judgements are made and beliefs are formed about players in an instant.
It got me to thinking about how sometimes we are too quick to judge ourselves. Both in a positive and a negative sense.
We make one mistake and we say “I’m no good at that, it’s not for me”.
Or we do something well a couple of times and we say “I’ve got this handled. I will improve at something else now. Next”.
Both scenarios hold us back without us even realising.
If you judge yourself on the negative too quickly then you never really give anything your full effort. And we know what happens when you do this. You don’t improve.
If you judge yourself on the positive too quickly you don’t try any harder and just remain at a ‘good’ level and good just isn’t good enough. You should be aiming for GREAT!
I seen this happen with some young athletes a few weeks back. They were practising a new drill and in their first attempts they were struggling to get the hang of it. I said to them, don’t judge yourself just yet. Give it 10 tries and then see if you have improved. They did and guess what? They improved and were pleased with themselves.
The lesson?
Don’t always listen to your mind until you have given something enough time to judge it over. We generalize far too quickly and if we are not careful we end up forming negative beliefs about things in our lives that just don’t make sense. Worse still is that these beliefs prevent us from trying in the future.
Do you judge yourself too quickly?
If so give yourself more time to get it right before you are too hard on yourself. This is a problem for many athletes.
You have to learn to be your own coach not your own critic. Encourge yourself, say to yourself "I'll give it one more try", "eventually I will master this", "I am improving bit by bit".
Stay positive and stay persistent!
Martin Robert Hall
Performance Psychologist
It got me to thinking about how sometimes we are too quick to judge ourselves. Both in a positive and a negative sense.
We make one mistake and we say “I’m no good at that, it’s not for me”.
Or we do something well a couple of times and we say “I’ve got this handled. I will improve at something else now. Next”.
Both scenarios hold us back without us even realising.
If you judge yourself on the negative too quickly then you never really give anything your full effort. And we know what happens when you do this. You don’t improve.
If you judge yourself on the positive too quickly you don’t try any harder and just remain at a ‘good’ level and good just isn’t good enough. You should be aiming for GREAT!
I seen this happen with some young athletes a few weeks back. They were practising a new drill and in their first attempts they were struggling to get the hang of it. I said to them, don’t judge yourself just yet. Give it 10 tries and then see if you have improved. They did and guess what? They improved and were pleased with themselves.
The lesson?
Don’t always listen to your mind until you have given something enough time to judge it over. We generalize far too quickly and if we are not careful we end up forming negative beliefs about things in our lives that just don’t make sense. Worse still is that these beliefs prevent us from trying in the future.
Do you judge yourself too quickly?
If so give yourself more time to get it right before you are too hard on yourself. This is a problem for many athletes.
You have to learn to be your own coach not your own critic. Encourge yourself, say to yourself "I'll give it one more try", "eventually I will master this", "I am improving bit by bit".
Stay positive and stay persistent!
Martin Robert Hall
Performance Psychologist
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