CREATING POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE IN YOUTH: STRIVING TO BE AN ADULT THAT HELPS REDUCE YOUTH ANXIETY
It’s so cliche I cringe when I hear it. “Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports. The best hitters in the history of the world got out 7 out of 10 times.”
Yes, it is true, if you play professional baseball and hit .300 you are one of the best in the world. But, even when I was younger I realized hitting .300 was basic. Knowing this the, level of pressure I put on myself to hit at a high level was something I was not psychologically prepared to handle. Let me rephrase that: I was not mentally capable of dealing with the self-induced pressure I created in my own mind. This was not pressure from my parents, coach, or teammates. This was pressure I created, myself, within my own head. And it didn’t get better in college. In fact, it got worse. Exponentially worse. There were moments, thinking back now, where I vividly remember almost blacking out because of the anxiety I felt playing, all self-imposed. The crazy thing is, I had the most amazing and supporting parents, friends, and teammates. They all had my back. They would have dropped everything at an instant to help me. If I could have articulated what was going on to myself and expressed these feelings to any of them, they would have done everything in their power to help me. Unfortunately, I didn’t come to terms with how intense my self-sabotage was until well into adulthood.
I tell you (parents) this because your child or athletes want to be good. Nee, they want to be great! And they want to please you (parents & coaches), with ever fiber of their being. Most of them are putting enormous amounts of pressure on themselves to be good. FOR YOU! Reflect on that for a minute. They want to so badly to be great for YOU! Their desire to perform, in all capacities, is more driven by your approval than their enjoyment of the task at hand and their intrinsic to desire to be good for personal growth. I see it all the time. A child or teenager wants to be good to please their parent or coach.
I don’t know about you, but as an adult, teacher, coach, and parent the last thing I want my child to be motivated by is the desire to please me. That’s an empty, external focus that runs its course quickly. It’s certainly not the intrinsic inspiration that breeds and develops skills that lead to long term success across multiple domains or the scalable skills that lead to adaptability, problem solving, grit, and personal growth. Without the ability to derive an internal locus, problem solve, and adapt our youth severely limit their ability to have long term success, wellness, and happiness into adulthood. Trading for short term athletic success to please a parent or coach in lieu of becoming a well-adjusted adult that has the capabilities to make themselves happy is tragic.
As impactful adults, we need to be mindful of our interactions with our children, students, athletes, and all youth under our care. Through that mindfulness we need to reflect on our words, body language, and tone. Each piece of communication needs to be intentional and well thought because we, as adults, have the power and capacity to create the environment that will foster growth.
When you speak to your child, keep in mind that humans have a limited capacity for keeping focus in complex, stressful situations. Once a stressful situation is present, we gravitate toward the focal point that has the most psychological significance for us. For example, if you want your athlete to become a better hitter, they must be able to embrace failure and use it as a tool to improve. Help them create a plan where they walk away an at bat understanding that there are lessons they can learn from the experience to help them become a better version of themselves. Doing the opposite (yelling, screaming, throwing a temper tantrum, filling their head with negative self-talk) does not allow them focus on the solving the task at hand (which in this situation is putting the barrel on the ball). Their focus instead is shifted to the psychological significance of the moment, which is pleasing an adult for the sake of reducing external pressure. Remember, youth will put enough pressure on themselves, most of it fabricated in their own psyche.
Knowing these psychological implications, as experienced, intelligent, and caring adults, we must strive to temper our enthusiasm. I use the word enthusiasm because our behavior is a manifestation of anxiety that is emotionally driven. We all sincerely want what’s best for our children, students, and athletes. Yet, we are human and we are driven by emotions. The problem with emotions is that they are irrational. Emotions override our ability to think, respond, and act logically.
Next time you feel an urge and desire to respond to poor performance or even poor effort from your children, students, or athletes take a deep breath. Become mindful of your current emotional state. Reflect on why you feel this way and what your emotions are telling you. What is the reason for your feelings? What do you want your child to accomplish or learn from the situation that just happened? If it was failure, what lessons can they learn from that failure. Remove yourself from knee jerk reactions and teach yourself a bit of stoicism because the amount of pressure our youth are putting on themselves does not need to be compounded by greater psychological stressors from the very people that should be teaching them appropriate coping mechanisms to deal with stress, anxiety, and failure.