Is Your Athlete Afraid of Failure?

Failure phobia is a phenomenon that describes those who are afraid of failure. This epidemic plagues athletes everywhere because it causes them to worry more about making mistakes than making plays.

Failure phobia can arise in the form of anxiety, apprehension, even lack of confidence and unwillingness to make mistakes.

It is well known that the most effective athletes are aggressive at all times.

In order for high school athletes to optimize their aggression, they cannot operate in failure phobia.

Embrace Mistakes

The good thing about fear is that it is just a mindset (False Evidence Appearing Real), and as a mindset it can be changed.

Yet, the bad thing about mindsets is they can be hard to change.

High school athletes need to flip the mental script by actually embracing mistakes rather than fearing them.

That’s right, mistakes should be viewed as necessary and positive.

Fun Over Fear

One way to always embrace mistakes is to deploy fun over fear.

Every athlete begins their journey for the love of the sport. The excitement and joy we get from playing a game we love often subsides after years of training, difficult coaches and critical competitions.

Yet fun can be the antidote to all types of fear.

I recently took my daughters to an indoor waterpark. When we walked in, an enormous 50ft slide that stretched from floor to the ceiling took our breath away. My first thought was, ‘I would never go down that slide, that’s crazy!’

After a couple hours of fun with the family, going from slide to slide, the girls popped the question: “Dad can we do the 50 ft slide?”

I was having so much fun I relented and agreed to join them. Even though I closed my eyes and held my breathe for the entire drop, I can say that I did it!

Athletes can employ this technique by keeping the game a game and avoiding getting bogged down by meaningless pressure.

Familial Fear

Another way to overcome fear is to recognize where it comes from. Fear seemingly appears from nowhere but it is often planted subconsciously from the nervous energy of those closest to us.

As a dad, I can be more anxious about a big game than my kids are.

Coaches are the same way. Often a big win can define their career or justify their strategy and means a lot to them.

Even friends at school can be overly excited about a rivalry or big matchup that their apprehension and questions can lead athletes to become more fear focused.

Athletes must recognize familial fear when it occurs and prevent it from entering their mindset.

Fail Forward Faster

Perhaps the best method to overcome fear of failure and embrace our mistakes is to recognize that failure is a part of the plan.

Life is set up for humans to accomplish success by overcoming obstacles.

Every video game has a difficult challenge to overcome, in fact, kids wouldn’t play them if it wasn’t for killer zombies, super heroes, or a difficult challenge to defeat.

Gamers enjoy the thrill of the challenge and remain ready to turn the tables of defeat towards victory.

We must also embrace mistakes as an athlete.

Although this can be difficult due to familial fear, adopting this mindset will all athletes to end anxiety over making critical mistakes.

Make Mistakes (Great)

After adopting a mindset that mistakes are ok, high school athletes much then take actions to capitalize on their newly adopted thought patterns.

That’s right, we must actually be willing to make mistakes.

But making any old mistake won’t do.

We must be willing to make great mistakes or at least make our mistakes great!

Deflate Mistakes

Humans hate to feel bad. We run from negative emotions like hurt, pain and anguish.

Negative feelings keep us from embracing a willingness to make mistakes and overcome fear of failure.

Yet we can deflate, or lessen the impact of mistakes simply by acknowledging failure and accepting the mistake.

People have a natural response to forgive admitted failure; we often apologize and affirm anyone who admits a mistake.

When someone hurts our feelings we can be extremely upset, but the moment they confront us with an apology we tell them that everything is okay. We may even say, ‘it wasn’t your fault.’

This is our natural reaction despite harboring negative emotions about the incident.

High school athletes today rarely admit failure and accept responsibility. Learning this practice will deflate the negative energy around mistakes.

This is especially the case in a team setting where coaches and teammates understand the need to support one another.

Admitting mistakes will make athletes more aggressive and less prone to failure phobia.

Don’t Duplicate Mistakes

One key to making great mistakes is to avoid duplicating mistakes.

We have less tolerance for mistake makers who are constantly messing up according to the same pattern.

We can avoid duplicating mistakes by acknowledging the failure, because admitting failure is painful and will cause us to avoid making the mistake again.

The other element of not duplicating mistakes is to take greatness, or the lesson from each mistake.

Take Great From Mistakes

We’ve all heard, everything happens for a reason.

This saying recognizes the fact that life is a series of lessons.

Similar to a Math or Science lesson, our teacher will provide a series of problems that will help us work towards an ultimate solution.

As we learn to recognize patterns, we can apply the solution over and over again like a magic key that continually opens doors.

Once the emotions subside and time heals emotions wounds, we can usually determine the lesson in any incident. Somehow, someway, the mistake will make us better.

The more we recognize this fact of life, the more we can begin to actually look for the greatness in every mistake.

Who knows, we may even graduate to the point where we can actually begin to appreciate mistakes!

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