Get Over A Painful Loss, Restore Your Motivation, And Start Winning Again
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This Execution Plan has two parts: a written part that includes ACTION Steps and an audio visualization session.
The first thing you’ll want to do is take yourself through the lesson and complete all the ACTION Steps.
Next, listen to the audio visualization session every day for the next ten days. By the end of ten days, it is very likely you will be healed. You’ll know because you’ll be able to think about your next competition with hope and confidence.
Finally, after you’ve completed this Plan, you’ll want to go through the Execution Plan called How To Believe in Yourself. It will add another layer of confidence so you can deliver peak performances and start collecting gold medals again.
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you do not put forth a peak performance…and you lose.
In most cases, your losses will disappoint you, but not DEVASTATE you. In these situations, you will move on fairly easily and quickly.
There are times, though, when a loss will haunt you. It may cause you to lose your confidence and motivation. In a worst case scenario, you may brood about it to the point where you obsess over it for days, weeks, or even months.
It is very important that you heal yourself losses that are this traumatic. If you don’t, the negative energy surrounding it will build up in your unconscious mind until you face it. Until you face it, you will struggle with low motivation, low confidence, and even choking.
The first step in healing a traumatic loss is to understand why it is haunting you. Here are the two reasons why a loss will haunt you:
Now that you understand why a loss is haunting you, there are two steps you must take to heal yourself. They are the following:
1. Face your feelings of disappointment, shame, and failure using the miracle of self-acceptance.
2. Remove self-doubt. You do this by discovering WHY you lost and use this information to win next time.
The main thing we are taught in Western culture about our negative feelings (shame, fear, disappointment, sadness) is that they are shameful. Basically, our culture believes negativity of any kind is a weakness. The Nike t-shirt “No Fear” pretty much sums up our attitude towards our negative feelings.
So we take a ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude towards such emotions and ignore them. In the name of mental toughness, we pretend our shame or disappointment or sadness isn’t there.
We tell ourselves to ‘get over’ our feelings, not let other people ‘get to us’, and that we’re calm, confident and cheerful even when we’re shaking in our boots. We even take pride in our ability to ignore our negative feelings, believing that mental toughness means never having such emotions.
If you try to confide your worries to a friend, he’ll say things like, “Don’t worry, be happy.” If you read self-help books, they’ll tell you that fear is “False Evidence That Appears Real” or that all you need do is invoke the law of attraction or be positive and your negative feelings will go away.
The technical name for ignoring your negative feelings is suppression.
You push your feelings completely out of your mind to the point where you’re not even aware of them.
The Unconscious Mind
Our unconscious mind is made up of the painful feelings (energy) that we push away from our conscious awareness because they are painful.
The idea that we suppress our emotional pain into the unconscious mind was made popular by Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, the most famous psychologist in the early 20th century.
Using hypnosis, Freud discovered that some of his patients’ symptoms that were actually being caused by the fact that they had suppressed painful emotions into their unconscious. When Freud helped these patients bring their fears into their conscious mind, their symptoms magically disappeared.
Carl Jung, a disciple of Freud’s, treated a 27 year old military officer who was suffering from severe attacks of pain his heart region and a choking sensation in this throat, as though a lump were stuck there. Tests showed there was nothing wrong with him physically. Jung asked him about his dreams and the man revealed he was in love with a girl who had jilted him and gotten engaged to another man.
The patient dismissed the story as irrelevant: “A stupid girl, if she doesn’t want me it’s easy enough to get another one. A man like me isn’t upset by a thing like that.” Yet after only a few bouts of weeping over her, his heart pain disappeared. The lump in this throat vanished – he had stopped ‘swallowing’ his tears.
Self-Acceptance = Experiencing Your Feelings Without Resistance
To heal your disappointment, bounce back, and triumph, you start by invoking the miracle of self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance is simply the act of refusing to suppress your painful feelings any more. Instead, you allow yourself to experience your fears and frustrations without resistance.
Most athletes are quite dismal at this. We judge, condemn, and rebuke ourselves anytime we aren’t 100% confident and happy.
Tremendous relief comes from self-acceptance, because you do not have to pretend, cover up, or suppress your shame, disappointment, or feelings of failure about losing any more.
You enjoy an inner relaxation that is heavenly.
You are also able to explore WHY you lost so you can draw the lesson out of it and use it to become a much better athlete and person.
It was a five year old girl who taught me what self-acceptance is.
Years ago I owned a summer training camp for kids in my sport.
One day we took some girls rollerblading. A five-year-old girl, Lyndsay, could not find a pair of rollerblades to fit her.
When it became obvious she couldn’t go, Lyndsay sobbed in disappointment.
Then Lyndsay’s mother showed up, tired and impatient. “Lyndsay, stop crying.”
Lyndsay’s tears turned into hysterical sobs. Her mother: “If you keep this up, you won’t be back tomorrow.”
After a few moments, Lyndsays looked up at her mother and said, “I just want to cry a little.”
Lyndsay was only five years old, but she got it.
Sometimes in life, there is just loss. And when that’s the case, the crying IS the healing.
Accepting yourself means letting yourself experience your disappointment when you lose.
This is the path to healing. As a wise man once said, “The only way out is through.”
It’s the same thing you did when you were five years old. Your body knows how to heal itself, and it will if you let it. You just get out of your own way and let the feelings run their course. The truth is that when you do not suppress you painful feelings, they are not very strong and they do not last very long. The only reason they become incredibly painful is because we resist them. It’s why we have the saying, “What you resist, persists.”
Self-acceptance is one of those secrets nobody tells you. Instead, your parent, your coach, and your teammates will try to cheer you up.
They’ll say things like, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault.” Or, they’ll try to get you to focus on the next competition right away.
The problem with this approach is that you end up suppressing your disappointment and shame. You try not to think about it…but it eats away at you.
You never figure out why you’re doubting yourself, and you lose your motivation.
“Why bother?” you think to yourself. “Maybe I should just quit.”
A Personal Example
From 2000 to 2004, my team had to play the same powerhouse team in the finals. And for four years straight, we LOST.
In 2005, we entered the finals optimistically: “It’s going to be our year!” we proclaimed.
But our hopes were dashed AGAIN when we lost two games straight.
There was, however, an important wrinkle to this competition: if we won our next game–against a different team–we could still earn a berth into the National Championships.
We had exactly 45 minutes to re-group for this all-important game.
It was at this moment that my body took over and instinctively prepared me for the next challenge.
Upon entering our dressing room, all the wretched disappointment inside me over losing for four years came bursting forth.
I sobbed bitterly, and couldn’t stop.
Images of old losses flashed before my eyes, and I sobbed some more. At one point, I went to the bathroom and put my head under the dryer so my teammates didn’t have to keep listening.
Three minutes before our next game, our goaltender, who knows me really well, calmly handed me my helmet. She looked me squarely in the eye. “You have three minutes,” she said.
I put my helmet on. Suddenly, I was completely focused, and filled with energy.
We won, and to this day, my team insists it was one of the best games of my career.
A Caveat
I want to emphasize that it’s not necessary to cry in order to experience your feelings and heal them. Every person has a different way of emoting; do not judge yourself if you are not a “weeper.”
As long as you are open to your feelings and are able to experience them, this is all that is needed to heal them.
Experiencing your feelings without resistance is easier when you accept the fundamental truth that loss is part of life.
In his book Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, comedian Alan Alda tells the story of when his dog died.
He was distraught. His Dad, trying to shield Alda from the loss, had the dog stuffed.
Now Alda was doubly traumatized. His dog was gone and his Dad didn’t know how to comfort him.
That’s when Alda learned how to deal with loss: by accepting that loss and change are part of life.
He says: “You can’t hang onto something longer than its time. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.”
To keep your sports mental game strong, you need to grieve every loss so you can move on with hope and confidence.
Most of us have been suppressing our feelings for so long that we need to practice turning towards them again.
Here’s a quick and easy ACTION Step that will get you grooved in the self-acceptance mindset – experiencing your feelings – so you can heal them.
First thing in the morning for the next 14 days, take out a blank sheet of paper and write the following first half of a sentence:
If I were 5% more self-accepting today–”
Then, thinking about your loss and your disappointment over it, come up with at LEAST five to ten endings for that sentence. Here are some examples:
–I would realize that I was ill-prepared for my match –I would admit that my opponent played out of sight! –I would examine the video and figure out why my strategy didn’t work –I’d feel more motivated to train today –I would let in my feelings of failure and be okay with them
You will find yourself feeling better within a few days. You may also find yourself spontaneously having strong emotions over your loss (and even crying). If this urge to emote strikes you, do not hold back on it, even if you are in public. Let the feelings emerge. If you need to excuse yourself and be alone, do it.
When the feelings come up, nurture yourself through them by reminding yourself that they are perfectly okay. Allow yourself to have them for as long as you need to.
Self-Acceptance, Not Self-Pity
Remember, self-acceptance is not self-pity.
Self-pity is not experiencing your feelings of disappointment, shame or failure. It is a form of protest. You are mad about losing and believe you should not have to go through such hardship.
OTHER athletes can under-perform, look bad out there, and lose…just not you.
Once activated, self-pity wants more pain, and will feed off itself.
If you find that your disappointment and feelings of failure are not dissolving no matter how much you open to them, then you are either in the throes of self-pity OR you are continuing to doubt yourself, or both.
To get out of self-pity, I suggest you remind yourself that your so-called ‘failure’ is not hardship, not does it mean you were meant for defeat. It is the universe’s way of pushing you back to the middle of road when you have wandered off to the side. The universe is merely saying, “Child, polish your skills and execution.” When you understand that this is the message of your experience of failure, you can embrace it what it is teaching you.
Now that you have confronted your pain over failing, it’s time to face the truth about your past failures and flaws – the ones you’ve been beating up on yourself for.
It’s time to stop punishing yourself over losing or under-performing and start learning instead.
Tennis legend Andre Agassi learned this lesson the hard way.
Losing to Pete Sampras at Wimbledon in 1993 was so shameful for Andre he began his downhill slide to from number 2 to number 141 in the world.
Why?
Because Sampras just was not very good for years and years.
Beating him in Rome in 1989, Andre remarked, “He seems like a good soul. But I don’t expect to see him on the tour, ever.”
Not only that, but Agassi “had” the Wimbledon match and lost his focus. After losing the third and fourth sets, Sampras was yelling and cursing at himself.
That’s when Agassi made the ultimate sports mental game error of thinking about the outcome.
During an injury delay called by Sampras, Agassi thought he had it in the bag. “Two Wimbledons in a row–won’t that be something?”
Then promptly he lost the fifth set and started his downhill slide in the rankings.
Think one loss can’t make you this upset?
Think again.
If you conclude something serious – like you are not as good as you thought, or you’re not mentally tough, or you are not meant to be a winner – it can do major damage to your will to win.
And you won’t even know it.
Of course to solve a problem like this, you need to drill down and uncover the conclusions lurking in your brain after a bad loss.
And then you need to fix them. Here’s how to do it.
To remove self-doubt and restore your confidence, you need to figure out what you’ve concluded about yourself as a result of this loss or under-performance.
Write 5-10 endings to the following sentence:
“Since losing to _____________, I’m afraid I’m ________________.”
Or,
“Since under-performing last month, I’m afraid I’m _____________.”
Here’s an example:
“Since losing to Sampras, I’m afraid I’ll never bring my A game consistently.”
Now take that sentence and realize that it’s in danger of becoming a BELIEF, such as: “I can’t bring my A game consistently.”
A belief is anything you think is true.
And every “I CAN’T” belief you have sitting in your brain is very, very dangerous.
Because we don’t believe what we see in this world.
We see what we believe.
Your “I CAN’T” belief can become a self-fulfilling prophecy IF you let it. You will find evidence everywhere to support it.
For example: If you think you cannot bring your A game when you need it, every time you make a mistake in competition, you’ll count that as “evidence” that you are a mental marshmallow.
Or, let’s say you’re a hockey player and you’re in a slump. At some point you might be tempted to conclude, “I can’t score.” After that, every missed shot or shift without a goal will convince you that you are right – you “can’t” score. You might be taking wicked shots that almost go in, but it does not give you confidence because you are discounting all evidence that you CAN score.
Next we’re going to dive into your recent loss or failure a little more. You’re going to be like a doctor and DIAGNOSE why you did not perform well and then come up with a solution.
Keeping your recent loss or poor performance in mind, please answer the following questions:
Here are some case studies of athletes who explored their feelings of fear, shame, and failure to discover what shortcomings they need to fix in order to start winning again. All names have been changed to protect confidentiality.
Karen, Figure Skating
Karen came to see me because she had lost her motivation four months after a bad fall.
Karen said she had no confidence in her ability to win anymore. And, she was frustrated with her coach and parents, who were constantly giving her pep talks.
At first Karen scoffed when I asked her to listen to her fears about competing.
She just wanted to talk about discipline. How could she get back on track?
I persisted. I kept asking Karen to visualize a time she felt really confident when jumping. I knew this would force her fear to come to the surface.
After many tries in which she couldn’t get an image, Karen made a breakthrough. She finally touched the fear in her heart about missing axels, falling, and re-injuring herself.
I asked Karen what her fear was asking her to do. It was easy for her to answer: “My timing is a mess. I don’t know how long to wait before jumping. Sometimes I jump too soon or too late.”
Karen left my office determined to get her timing back.
If you don’t listen to your negative feelings and DIAGNOSE what they are asking you to do or learn, your fear will grow stronger. Your body will literally yell at you, making you anxious and even panicky before your next competition.
That’s why you need to be open to what your body (your feelings) have to say at all times.
Joan, Tennis
Recently I worked with Joan, a tennis player who had choked at the key moment in her doubles match.
She had no idea why.
After some probing she admitted, “Lisa I hit an overhead smash to win but the other team called it out. I was wild with anger and wanted to protest, but my doubles partner didn’t back me up. Instead of sticking to my guns I backed down. But after that, I wasn’t the game. I lost all the key points.”
The reason Joan had lost her confidence?
She violated her own integrity and overrode her instincts. This weakened her terribly. To restore her confidence, Joan needs to be honest with her partner and assert herself. Otherwise her anger will eat away at her from the inside, causing her to punish herself with mistakes.
Brandon, Badminton
“Lisa I won the first match and was up 18-12 in the second. I just needed three points to close it out. But I got anxious. I hit the bird into the net and then out. He got momentum; I got frustrated…I ended up losing the tournament. Lisa I need more mental strength.”
Can you see Brandon’s MAJOR problem?
What he’s missing?
He’s thinking about the fact that he got nervous and choked.
And he’s putting himself down for choking.
He forgot to ask WHY he got so nervous.
So I asked Brandon the one question he WASN’T asking: “What was happening in this match that filled you with choking fear?”
As it turns out, Brandon’s opponent is a long time rival. Brandon beat him five months ago by moving him around the court.
See, Brandon’s trademark is his quickness. He specializes in exhausting the other player, moving him around the court so he can’t get shots back.
That’s how Brandon won five months ago. But then the inevitable happened. After he lost, Brandon’s rival got mad.
Then he got better.
When he saw Brandon again, he was returning Brandon’s shots. This unnerved Brandon, whose strategy hinges upon his opponent not being able to get the bird back. He doesn’t have a great serve or disguise shots well, so this is his major way of getting points.
The bottom line is that there’s a story behind every match, every game, and every race. There are physical, technical, and tactical REASONS why one side wins.
There aren’t many flukes in sport. That’s why it’s so sweet when you win. But Brandon forgot to dig up the story. He got upset about his fear instead.
Again…no matter what the cause of your choking fear, there’s usually a very good DIAGNOSIS — technical, strategic, mental, or physical.
Once you know what it is, you can fix your performance issue. In Brandon’s case, he needs to stop being a one-trick pony. He needs to develop a great serve and a stellar drop shot. He also needs more patience when his opponent returns his shots.
Nadia, Golf
Nadia, a golfer, called me because she was suffering from ‘overwhelming nerves.’
Nadia’s nerves were so bad she couldn’t get her hands to stop shaking before important putts.
Usually when an athlete is having really intense emotions it’s because there is a build up of emotional baggage from the past.
I asked Nadia to reflect on past disappointments in golf and open up to her choking fear instead of blocking it.
Nadia was really shocked to discover that underneath her anxiety was tons of anger. This confused her. Anger? She had always associated anger with hurt. She didn’t realize she could be angry about golf failures.
Nadia finally realized she was angry about her lack of progress in recent years. She said, “Players who aren’t nearly as dedicated are playing better than me. I’m no longer considered the best golfer in my club. I am just another golfer.”
I asked Nadia to interview the two women in her club who were playing better than her and ask them why they had improved.
Both women said it was their new golf clubs – something that shocked Nadia.
Golf clubs aside, Nadia realized that her anger was keeping her from learning anything new about golf. An intense perfectionist, Nadia needed to feel totally dominant over all the other players to feel confident.
She said, “I have really been trying to protect an image of myself as being the BEST, the one who makes NO mistakes.
I dropped this and I’m getting curious about different technical elements of my game, and I’m learning a lot. For example, in my last tournament I kept missing putts. Instead of pretending I was having a good day, I asked one of the fellows here who is a really good putter for help. He told me how to deal with really fast greens.”
By listening to her fear, Nadia learned strategies about golf she never would have discovered otherwise.
Now you know the true value of fear, shame, and disappointment. These feelings can be your friend if you listen to them. They tell you exactly what you need to learn to win.
Your next step is to set a goal for this competition that will give you the best chance possible of avoiding your biggest mistake.
The way your goal does this is by raising your awareness of your technique or strategy. This is called a RIGHT FOCUS goal.
Your Right Focus is:
1. Under your direct control, and
2. Tactical (strategic, not technical)
When I say ‘under your direct control’, I mean just that.
You can control it 100% of the time. In other words, no one can prevent you from doing it (not even yourself!). For example…
You can’t control making a shot, winning a point, scoring a goal, or getting a personal best. If you could control these things, they would ALWAYS happen every time you compete, as often as you wanted.
Here are some examples of things that ARE under your control:
Skating low and lateral across the blue line…
Watching the ball the second it leaves your opponent’s racquet…
Looking at the ball while you’re swinging your club…
You get the idea.
The second thing your Right Focus must be is strategic.
It’s the opposite of technical.
For example…
Most baseball players at the plate think about their weight distribution, the location of their hands, or the turn of their hips.
This is a technical focus. They’re thinking about technique.
Hank Aaron, holder of Major League Baseball records for home runs, never did that in games.
What did Aaron focus on?
His strategy.
“I stayed up thinking about the pitcher I was going to face the next day……my whole pattern of thinking would be: “What is good for Koosman, what works good for Koosman, and how is he going to try and get me out?” But here’s the key…
Aaron didn’t just THINK about his strategy. He visualized it. “I used to play every pitcher in my mind before I went to the ballpark…I would start visualizing myself, like I’m standing at the plate, with runners at first and second, or second and third, whichever, how he’s going to pitch me in that given situation.”
To help you, here are some more RIGHT FOCUS examples…
Let’s imagine that you are a volleyball player and your biggest fear is that you will not make a “kill” (spike the ball and score a point) in the upcoming game.
And, let’s assume that the REASON you don’t make kills when you are nervous is because you get so uptight that you leave early to jump and hit the ball rather than stay calm and get your timing right.
Therefore, your RIGHT FOCUS goal will be to make sure that when you try to make a kill, your timing is “just right.” You are not “too early” or “too late.”
If this is your goal for the entire match, chances are you will get your timing right. And, chances are you will make a KILL.
Here’s another example. Just last week I talked to a goalie who was disappointed by his latest try-out.
GOALIE: “I really struggled in try outs – there were 12 goalies and 6 made it. I should have been able to get noticed more.”
LISA: “What is the biggest mistake you were making?”
GOALIE: “I could have covered my angles more. People have told me that all season – to make sure I’m always following the puck and not the player.”
LISA: “If you DON’T follow the puck and you follow the player, what happens?”
GOALIE: “When I follow the player I’m too far back into my net – I’m almost on top of the goal line, and I let in more goals. When I follow the puck I push out and challenge.”
See, you’d never make a mistake intentionally.
It only happens because your AWARENESS of something is a little bit low. This happens in pressure situations because when your anxiety goes up, your awareness goes down a bit.
In my goalie’s case, his awareness of where he is in the net can get low. To correct it, he needs to set a RIGHT FOCUS goal to follow the puck.
At this point I asked him the obvious question: “Did you have a GOAL to follow the puck?”
I’m sure you can guess the answer: No.
Here are some more examples of RIGHT FOCUS goals:
Tennis Watch what you opponent is doing (e.g., Is he attacking the net? Playing to your backhand?)
Hockey Take the puck and drive to the net with speed.
Basketball Keep the exact right gap between you and your check when on defense. Volleyball To communicate with your setter. Golf Keep your eye on the ball when putting.
Write down the name of your next competition. Then, write down a goal for this competition that is under your control. This is your RIGHT FOCUS goal.
Step 3 is the most difficult one of all. It’s to COMMIT to your RIGHT FOCUS goal. By this I mean that you decide that your goal is the most important thing in your life during your competition…and you’ll do anything to achieve it.
Whenever I’m working with athletes, sometimes they will say to me things like, “Lisa, what if I forget my goal?”
At this point I ask them, “Do you ever forget what the score is?”
No, every athlete knows what the score or standings are…because she CARES more about them than anything else.
When you care as much about your RIGHT FOCUS goal as you care about the score, or your ranking, or the standings, you will find your nerves melt away and choking becomes a thing of the past. This is because you are completely committed to achieving a goal that is 100% under your control, and it’s all you can think about.
Why Committing To Your RIGHT FOCUS Is Difficult
If you’re objective, you can see that as long as you don’t over-think things, coming up with a RIGHT FOCUS is pretty easy.
It’s just that COMMITTING to it is hard. And, often it’s hard for good reason.
Case in point:
The other day, I was playing tennis and chose the simple RIGHT FOCUS of watching the ball religiously.
I did this because my tennis partner is sneaky. I can never tell if she’s going to hit the ball shallow or deep. If I don’t watch the ball from the second it leaves her racquet, I’m toast.
Well, my RIGHT FOCUS of watching the ball lasted for about 20 minutes.
Then, it “spontaneously” left me.
I noticed and ordered myself to re-instate it – NOW.
…No luck.
Instead of chastising myself, I took a break to trouble-shoot my mindset. I asked my brain:
“What gives? Why can’t you keep the RIGHT FOCUS? It’s totally working.”
The answer came quickly. I was exhausted, having just done a 48 hour fast (no food) for a medical procedure.
My body was done, and did not want to be pushed. (Watching the ball religiously has one consequence above all others: it gives me a chance to run down every ball).
When I don’t keep this RIGHT FOCUS in tennis, some shots go whizzing by me. I don’t have to expend any effort at all. (But I don’t hit the ball, either).
You can see that COMMITTING to the RIGHT FOCUS has a price.
Going to the wall physically is just one.
Your RIGHT FOCUS might challenge your comfort zone…or make you face a technical weakness…or anger a jealous teammate who wants you to fail.
Whatever the price, I suggest you pay it, and reach your potential.
To re-cap:
A question I get a lot is, “After a loss, what’s the best way to de-brief with myself, my coach, my teammates or players?”
It’s a doozy.
Depending on how you handle it, a loss can either be a WMD (weapon of mass destruction) or a positive tool for change.
Here are some quick Do’s and Dont’s:
1. NEVER de-brief within an hour or two of losing. I mean NEVER. Give yourself, teammates, or athletes time to absorb what’s happened. Losing hurts…so give yourself time to lick your wounds.
2. Always lead with the question, “What worked?” This will make you realize how many positive things you did out there.
Athletes are intensely self-critical and are rarely happy with themselves.
So force yourself or your athletes to celebrate until it becomes a habit.
3. BAN complaints and solicit requests. Next you need to problem-solve, so get to it.
Draw the lesson out of the event – but do it in a constructive way.
Instead of complaining, make requests. Rather than saying to your teammate, “Dude how come you never pass to me, do you think I’m useless?” you can say, “Man I could sure use a goal. If you set me up I’ll be eternally grateful.”
This applies to making requests of yourself too.
Instead of, “Stop being a wuss,” you can say, “Christa I need you to be more aggressive in your strategy.”
If you’re a coach, this is twice as important.
If the game was a disaster, you can vent on your team but a) only once or twice per season maximum and b) only about things they can control, such as rebounding, body-checking, work ethic, etc.
And here’s my favourite phrase when I was coaching and mad at my players: “You’re better than this. So go out there and do a better job.”
Simple and highly effective.
There it is – a three step process for de-briefing after a loss.
Your friend,
Lisa B.
