posted on: April 10, 2015
author: Brian Lomax, Ed.D.
As a young tennis player, I had a bad temper. I didn’t like making mistakes. I didn’t like losing points. The root of my anger wasn’t a lack of emotional control, but rather because my thoughts were fixated on those mistakes and lost points, and that frustrated me greatly. If only I could be perfect out there! Once I learned to adjust my focus to what mattered at that moment, my angry outbursts stopped and the quality of my performances improved. It is through my own experience with such behavior that I want to give you 4 reasons why you should never get angry when you compete.
When you get angry and show it, you are telling your opponents that whatever they are doing, it’s working. It’s a clear sign you are starting to break down mentally and the entire world can see it. How you react to adversity during competition is the most visible sign of your mental toughness, and displays of anger are a sign of mental weakness. Do you really want to be giving away that information? It’s the opposite of having a poker face. Can you imagine professional poker players reacting in anger when they are dealt a bad hand? Their professional careers would be short. Be mindful of the information that your body language and audible self-talk convey to your opponent. Your opponent should only see what you want them to see.
The last play, point or shift no longer matter. It’s in the past and is beyond your control. Thinking about it won’t change the result, but it will serve to upset you further and it will take your focus away from your performance. Whatever you’re doing right now is most important, and this moment requires your full attention if you are to succeed in the long term. When I realized this, my bad temper disappeared.
Do you know anyone who makes good decisions in life when they’re angry? I doubt it. You’re simply too emotional in the moment, and the body chemistry of anger corrupts your ability to make good decisions as well as your motor skills, neither of which is good for an athlete. Quite simply, anger is a waste of energy. On the other hand, positive emotions help decision-making and creativity.
Every now and then, an athlete will tell me that he plays better when he gets angry. Sometimes the athletes who say this confuse anger with intensity. Those terms are not the same, and I would agree that increased intensity, to a certain point, could lead to better performance. However, the idea that anger leads to better performance is a myth. It is a story you tell yourself to rationalize your own behavior. When you tell yourself this story, you are confusing causality with correlation. To understand this better, let’s consider the concept of “regression to the mean.” The premise is that we all have an average level of play and when we are playing below our average for an extended period of time, anger can ensue, but from a statistical perspective, are you likely to continue to play below your average and possibly worse, or are you more likely to play better and come back to your average level? The answer is that you are more likely to play better and come back to your average level of play. The cause of your improvement in performance is purely statistical, not your angry reaction. The anger just happens to occur at that low point in your performance. If you truly believe that you play better when you get angry, then why don’t you keep getting angry even after your performance has improved? For a more complete explanation of this, read Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow.
If you’re an emotional competitor, I’d like you to keep these 4 points in mind during your next competition. Try to pinpoint the root cause of your anger and frustration so that you can determine some strategies to deal with it. You will be a better competitor in the long-term if you channel your energy in more productive ways.
P.S. – If you haven’t watched the Introduction to Mental Toughness video in the pX Online Training Program, I invite you to do so here: http://performancextra.com/online-pxtraining-system/. It’s absolutely free and I’d love to get your feedback on it! Simply register with your email address for access to this video.
Dr. Brian Lomax founded PerformanceXtra™ in 2009 with a mission of helping athletes achieve their goals and their top performances more consistently through a progression of mental skills that enables them to focus on what is truly important.
Learn more about the author: https://performancextra.com/brian-lomax/