A few years ago I was approached by a collegiate athletic team and asked to provide counseling to some of their players. College athletes, how exciting! Athletes are motivated, self disciplined, and I thought they’d appreciate my style of giving direct feedback and being goal oriented.
Early mornings are for coffee and a good book.
I’d been counseling college students for many years at this point, but not specifically college athletes and I myself was not a college athlete*. I’m not very competitive and the sport these students played was brand new to me. Thus, after my initial excitement, came some secondary thoughts about the fact that I don't have a background in sports or counseling athletes and I needed to do some research before I agreed to take on something outside my expertise. This is how I stumbled upon Dr. Pippa Grange’s AMAZING sports psychology work.
One of the first things I learned from my new clients was that many of these individuals were verbalizing a narrative around their worth based on their ability to perform to other people’s standards. Yes, they had to perform to a certain standard to maintain their status on the team, but often times it went deeper than that and they had other people’s words and opinions filtering into their own self-talk. This can create an extremely negative narrative around winning with an ego-based point of view. At the same time this was happening in my professional life, I was navigating my children’s love of sports and each of their experiences in youth sports. What I was noticing was that the mindset these college athletes were working to restructure, had frequently started when they were quite young. Some of the coaches and teams my kids competed with were supportive and empowering and I could see how that narrative led to a more positive self-worth in the college athletes. But for others, the gas-lighting and ego-based winning strategies were harmful. These youth sports coaches often set the stage for how the college athletes I worked with felt about themselves, whether they knew it or not.
Regardless of the fact that sports psychology isn’t typically my specialty, goals, positive self talk, mindfulness, and reframing toxic narratives into more thoughtful perspectives definitely are. As time passed and I grew into my role with them, I was able to develop a wonderful working experience with “my team” and all the other athletes I’ve met since then. I really enjoy working with them and look forward to providing counseling to more athletes moving forward. But none of this would have been as successful as it was, if I hadn’t had the support of some local colleagues and some guidance from reading Dr. Pippa Grange’s book. A few months ago, I saw that Dr. Grange, was releasing another book called Fear Less: Face Not-Good-Enough to Replace Your Doubts, Achieve Your Goals, and Unlock Your Success and was speaking with Brene` Brown on her Dare To Lead podcast. I couldn’t wait to listen to the podcast and eagerly pre ordered her book. The podcast was powerful and affirming for me, Dr. Grange was able to clearly articulate many of the concepts and processes I’d been working on for years with my clients. And the book...chef’s kiss. Her discussion of “shallow winning vs winning deep” in Chapter 2 is absolutely on the money for how I hope my clients can view their wins and their losses.
My suggestion to anyone who works with athletes, or kids, or who wants to learn to reframe their own narratives around what winning means to them, is to check out this book and especially the podcast. I only wish I was as articulate around these concepts as Dr. Grange is and I think you will gain a lot from her voice.
Mindfully,
Meredith
*Whenever I have to play one of those ice breaker “Two Truths and a Lie” games, I always say I was an NCAA Athlete and people usually guess that’s the lie. But in fact, it’s true! Any guesses what sport I played? No chatter from the peanut gallery who already know the answer….