An athlete’s objective when playing sports is to win. This challenging task includes many obstacles, and athletes often struggle with fear of failure, overwhelming expectations, negativity or perfectionism. These are all mental problems that athletes encounter while playing a sport. Upon research, there are also mental strategies to overcome these tough challenges.
It is important to always stay motivated when trying to accomplish anything in life, especially in sports. An athlete’s environment and the support they surround themselves with matters. When someone struggles with a lot of negativity, it helps to talk to positive people so that the mind does not lack confidence. To have someone or people constantly in someone’s ear speaking words of encouragement and motivation will eventually start to affect them positively. All this will start to show in an athlete’s positively improving performance.
Another constant mental problem a lot of athletes experience is the feeling that everything needs to be perfect. They need to win every game, perform the best on the team, all without relying on their teammates. In other words, some athletes are perfectionists. No matter what someone is the best at, there is always room for improvement. Improvement shows progress, and showing progress shows development into being the best. For an athlete’s career for the long levity of it, making mistakes is one of the best things to do; we truly do learn from our mistakes and they better us. Being afraid to make them only limits one’s best capability.
Fearing failure is a feeling that almost everyone experiences, even if they are not an athlete. Actor Robert Pattinson, best known for his role as Edward Cullen in the movie series ‘Twilight’, expressed during an interview with Willie Geist’s Sunday Sitdown that he said, “I used to get so paralyzed with anxiety before auditions,”. Throughout the years, Pattinson tried a variety of methods to overcome this issue and came up with the theory that “You build everything from anxiety and fear,” Pattinson said. Some agree and some may disagree but the overall point is everyone experiences this problem and has different methods to overcome it. The most important thing to remember is that sports have teams, coaches, and sometimes mentors there to help. Nobody is ever alone and practice makes progress.
An athlete always has expectations from their coach but some have expectations from their parents or someone at home too. If the expectations are unreasonable or considered too much, it will allow the athlete to perform poorly. From a different perspective, this is called performance anxiety. Because this issue does not naturally go away, a common way to deal with it is by managing the expectations that an athlete receives. This could also mean setting goals for themselves or focusing more energy on the game rather than the backlash and cruel expectations.
Winning is a necessary and important part of playing sports. Athletes experience mental battles and pressure from others all the time. Surrounding themselves with positive people, having a great support system, frequently practicing their skills, and accepting improvement can significantly help these mental issues.
