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Growth is important in your ability to become a better player in the sport you play. The ability to grow stems from how you think about change and progress as an individual player. Athletes like Lionel Messi(soccer player), Michael Jordan(basketball player), Keiran Behan(gymnast), Bethany Hamilton(surfer), and Muhammad Ali (boxer), have gone through many struggles in their past and yet with patience and a strong belief in their dreams, they grew and have become renowned athletes.
To have the ability to grow takes a lot of mental toughness and requires discipline. Growth is not just about your skills. It has to be in terms of skills, mentality, diet, exercise, etc. You have to be able to choose the right meal plan, get that additional practice, and continue to develop your mentality. Growth is all about time and patience. It’s important to recognize that everything takes time. It is really important to be persistent even when there are no games or training. Slacking off just makes it harder as the process continues. Like they say “you snooze you lose”…
Every player needs growth. Doesn’t matter what level you play at, it’s important to recognize that having the mentality to keep growing and improving is what will differentiate yourself from other athletes.
Being open to improvement is the most important tool for growth. It’s ok to make mistakes in games, but it’s very important to LEARN FROM THOSE MISTAKES. You may have heard this many times and it’s 100% true.
Growth is all about making mistakes and learning from them.
Quite often we give in to the fear of making mistakes and completely avoid trying new things. We want things to be so perfect that we don’t take risks or get creative. This narrows our ability to grow and learn.
So what should we do?
The below things worked for me, though I admit it is a continuous daily process where I have to remind myself a lot! I hope it helps you too.
Try, try till you succeed! Work hard! –Stop that negative voice in your head!- It’s OK to make mistakes, It’s OK to try something new.
Believe– Believe that you can recover and make a better decision if the mistake was a really silly one
Patience– Mistakes happen all the time, so having patience in the ability to fix it will help us have that growth mindset.
As athletes, we all need a Growth mindset. This mindset helps us to overcome the struggles of always being perfect. Having a fixed mindset and believing that if I play one bad game then I am terrible, is what will hurt your ability to grow. Believe that there is always improvement and growth from a mistake and over time, as an athlete, you will notice the changes.
As the Japanese saying goes “Becoming 1 percent better every day is a simple, practical way to achieve big goals”…Imagine, by the end of a year you would have improved 365%!!!!
What did you do or want to do to grow? I would love to hear from you. Chat with me!
Follow me on my Instagram @inside.athletes
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