Category: Focus

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Getting Beyond Destructive Rage

In Temper Temper I explored the borderline between harnessing anger and becoming its victim. Let’s take a look at what’s behind the rage.

EXPECTING

Get frustrated often? Chances are expectations are behind it.

I put expectations into two categories: surface and background.

Surface expectations are the obvious triggers for anger and frustration. “Traffic shouldn’t be so slow.” “I should have gotten that promotion.” “Why can’t I ever win?” “How could I make that mistake?“

Learning to flow through surface frustrations is a HUGE step in mental game. Those who can let go and return to the moment are more likely to perform well and enjoy the experience.

Some coaches say letting off steam is okay in these moments. A loud clap. Vocalization. Just do something to go from a yellow zone back to green.

I can see that as a tool but more of a band aid. The greater tool is developing a practice of not needing demonstrations of anger.

DON’T GET ADDICTED

It’s important to learn to handle frustration early. Frustration has a tendency to become addictive. And misleading. It still feels like the anger has a connection to the surface expectation, but the reaction has actually become automatic and even exaggerated.

This is the opposite of the habit we want to develop. We want immunity from these triggers. The more well-formed the habit, the more practice it may take to overcome.

EXTERNAL EXPECTATIONS

As I wrote in Temper Temper, we can also be influenced by what we think others expect. This happens in sports a lot.

A player loses a point and freaks out, not because of what just happened but because that’s what he thinks he is supposed to do. If he doesn’t show his anger, the fans might think he doesn’t care enough.

He has unwittingly been lured into performing for them instead of himself.

The fans might actually think he doesn’t care, but they don’t matter. When it comes to performance, all that matters is you and your opponent, and your opponent can be inspired when you show chinks in your armor.

Instead, keep them guessing. Use your resistance to frustration as a weapon. Be composed, unshaken, unflappable, even serene. An opponent who persists no matter what happens can be a terrifying force. Be the one with the nothing rattles him reputation.

ASPIRING TO CALM

Back to those surface expectations. Maybe what’s behind them isn’t really an expectation. Maybe it’s an aspiration.

I can aspire to a quick commute – and take steps to arrange my life to have one. But if I get frustrated with heavy rush hour traffic, I’ve probably confused that aspiration for an expectation.

I can aspire to run five kilometers under 22 minutes, but if I get frustrated with a near-best time of 24 minutes, I have collapsed that aspiration into an expectation.

To reduce frustration, look at the situation as objectively as possible and untangle whether an aspiration is involved.

For instance, thinking “based on my practice, I have a 70% likelihood of hitting a strike in bowling. I really want to bowl a 300 at some point. 80% of the time, I got strikes this week. Should I be frustrated or encouraged?” gives a different way of looking at the situation.

Or, observing “wow, I’m impatient for my commute to not be like this. I am a little worried about being late for work.” might defuse your frustration.

BACKGROUND EXPECTATIONS

Sometimes it goes deeper than surface expectations. If you become frustrated five minutes into an activity, it’s not about the surface. If you overreact on a regular basis, it’s not about the surface.

There is some other unspoken expectation involved. Generally these have fear at their core. By understanding what might be driving the emotions, we are in a better position to manage them.

Developing a practice of being aware of surface expectations and aspirations allows you to put frustration into context and set aside more quickly. Doing the same with background expectations is a path to superior mental strength.

Let’s go back to the traffic jam. A driver might think she is annoyed at the traffic or the chaotic driving around her, but because she’s enraged within minutes of getting on the road each day, she wonders whether something else is at play. Maybe it’s habit, but maybe there’s something more.

She recognizes a few fears:

I’m afraid of losing my job. Getting stressed during my commute makes me perform worse. And if my commute makes me late, I might get fired.

This might be what’s going on in the background, and she has a bunch of ways of addressing it, including questioning the truth of those fears. Would she really get fired for arriving late? She can act on her fears before the commute by leaving earlier, giving herself more freedom to take her time. And she can act on it in the moment, seeing that the traffic is out of her control, but what is in her control is arriving safely and in as calm a mindset as possible.

Her fears might go another level deeper, to a firm belief that caring for her family is her top priority. Her thought process cascades from this priority to road rage so quickly that she doesn’t notice the irrational leaps our brains can take. Reactions and emotions get exaggerated at each step, leading to our hero shouting in anger at her fellow drivers mere moments after starting her commute.

Background expectations take some work to unearth, and often they are bundled with longstanding habitual thought patterns. It takes work to sort through it, but it’s worth it.

MANAGING EXPECTATIONS

High performers have high expectations for themselves, but if they let frustration and anger get in the way, they mute their potential.

Expectations can derail our most prized pursuits.

The path to an expert mindset includes developing skill at recognizing expectations when they show up and setting them aside before they impede our performance.

And like any important task, practice is essential for mastery and the creation of new, automatic and helpful responses.

In a way, knowing ourselves might be the biggest key to navigating through frustration.

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Temper Temper

Have you ever gotten so angry that it seems you’re not in control of your own actions? So infuriated that it seems like you’re watching someone else have a fit?

In college, I lost my temper because I was behind in a friendly tennis match. I threw my racket toward the nearest fence. Except I missed. It flew up and over the fence and into another court beyond the fence.

A friend relayed another story of an athlete so frustrated by his performance that he intentionally ran into a tree.

At a sports event recently, I witnessed an athlete get so upset by a mistake that he broke his own finger.

As gruesome and comical as these outbursts can be, they highlight how destructive a loss of emotional control can be. When our winning mindset breaks, so do other things.

Constructive vs. Destructive Rage

Loss of mental control can halt progress toward our goals. It can hinder our work output – or destroy it. If we, for instance, slam a coffee cup onto a desk and drench a laptop, there goes weeks of data analysis. Bye bye to the family photos. That presentation? You’re starting again from scratch. After you spend hours or days replacing the laptop and getting it set up like your old, java-scented one.

Sometimes it’s not just a computer. Rage can damage our reputation and relationships. While being fiery or intimidating might be considered a plus by some, you’re more likely to lose your job, spouse or friends unless you manage your angry outbursts.

There is some thought that anger can fuel higher levels of performance. Watching the pure testosterone of a football team or a military unit, we see groups getting pumped up on adrenalin as they prepare for battle.

There is also some thought that expressing anger can help release it. An athlete might give a quick clap of her hands to dissipate frustration in an effort to move on.

It’s a fine line. When we embrace rage, we sacrifice calm and presence. Instinctual problem solving might work, but complex problem solving may suffer. Gross motor skills might thrive in the rampage, but fine motor skills may become unavailable.

In my own experience, adding a bit of intensity helps me tap into focus and access a higher game. Sometimes that intensity can take the form of anger, as in “there’s no f’ing way this skill is beyond me. I’m. Doing. It. NOW.” If I go beyond that, my performance suffers. I get caught in feedback loop of frustration and loss of confidence, and I need to reset. It takes an intentional effort to step away from the feedback loop of rage.

Temper as Proof of Commitment

This past year I’ve been playing a lot of disc golf and watching videos of the best in the world as they compete. It’s wonderful to watch the sport’s athletes make incredible and imaginative plays.

It’s not so wonderful to watch the athletes get angry. From local recreational play to the world championships, there is an undercurrent of unhappiness among players, borne of frustration. It’s the same frustration traditional golfers feel as they hit golf balls with clubs.

Sometimes it feels like people feel an expectation to be upset by mistakes, as though not being visibly frustrated is evidence that you don’t care. At the pro level, this can become a caricature. An outsider like me can understand disappointment when missing a shot within one’s wheelhouse. Often, the pros will throw a temper tantrum after barely missing a low percentage attempt.

It’s here where I see an opportunity for a mindset shift. What if the proof of commitment was brushing off imperfection? What if the most intimidating presence was the unbreakable, inscrutable genius?

We need a world-class and fully planned-out mindset strategy to get to that point. Frustration will inevitably tempt us. Our challenge is to be practiced in navigating it, so we find our desired experience.

Enjoyment in the Territory of Eternal Frustration

I gave up traditional golf as a teenager because the frustration was so unpleasant, and I gave up competing in disc golf many years ago for similar reasons.

I am approaching the game differently now, and as I watch disc golfers play, I wish they could find some of the calm I am feeling.

I wish the same for social change activists fighting against right wing extremism, confronting hundreds of setbacks for every victory, knowing that they may not even see the big win for another generation. That’s a lot of frustration to swallow, a lot of temper to manage. And it matters a lot more to the world than a missed disc golf putt.

Tempering Temper

So how do we not run into trees or break our fingers or fling tennis rackets dangerously close to fellow members of our communities?

Practice.

It’s that simple. And it’s as complex as you’re thinking it is.

Here are three starting points:

1. Focus on What Matters
Whenever we focus on the result, we risk focusing on things out of our control. Whenever we focus on the past, we reduce our ability to impact what’s happening right now.

One way around this is to maintain focus on the process. It’s not about saving America’s national treasures from greedy business people. It’s about meeting one more person who knows that Yosemite is a far more valuable asset than any oil well will ever be.

Another way is to maintain focus on the experience. If you are miserable playing a sport, why play? If you are miserable and a genius at a sport, how will winning change that misery?

How would you like the experience of playing to be? Find a way to cultivate that in service of performance. If you know you have an 80% chance of success with an action and that you did everything needed to reach that 80% probability, you’ll still fail 20% of the time. In this moment, temper is not going to increase your success rate, so why not find a different way to enjoy the experience?

2. Be a Refocusing Expert
Setbacks are inevitable when reaching for a goal, especially for those pursuing incredible, seemingly impossible goals. If you waste time losing temper in those setbacks, you are delaying the achievement of your goal.

We are emotional beings, so you’ll never hear me say “don’t feel frustrated.” I feel frustrated often. I want to see people get faster at recovery. Be resilient. Feel the pain, and become practiced at moving on.

Meditation/mindfulness is an excellent approach to managing rage. And confusion. And distraction. And disconnection.

No need to sign up for 10-day silent retreats or even set aside more than a few minutes of time. Just try sitting without devices or interaction for as long as you’d like. 1 minute. 5 minutes. 30. One’s endurance for mindfulness builds with practice, just like with any form of training. David Johnson’s podcast Beyond The Thoughts is a great starting point. Short recordings from an interesting and human point of view.

As you gain more skill at mindfulness, you will be more nimble at noticing your emotions and what is triggering them. You will feel more freedom to act rather than react.

3. Team Up
Whether it’s working with a coach like me to strengthen your mental game or surrounding yourself with friends who keep you accountable to your mindset, teaming up with others is a powerful strategy. When we are enraged, we’re not often our best coach. We’re busy raging. Working with others and designing how you’d like them to support your mental game can bring help you snap out of the reactive moment and snap back into your desired approach.

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Plateaus and Four Ways to Get Past Them

Everyone hits plateaus on the way to impossible goals, but there are things you can do to get past them more quickly: staying with the plan, changing the plan, easing up and staying one step ahead.

Why Am I Stuck On This #@?!ing Plateau?

I’ve hit a plateau. Actually I’ve hit hundreds.

We all reach a point where progress toward a impossible goal stalls or even feels like we’re moving backward. It plateaus.

If you don’t reach one, it’s a sign that you’re worthy of a bigger goal.

Plateaus can feel awful, but they can also be a beautiful waypoint. And they are an inevitable part of reaching for something extraordinary. By learning to move past them quicker, we reduce the pain and get to the finish line faster.

Four Plateau-Busting Strategies Plus 1 Essential Component

Below are four ideas for moving past a plateau. The common element to all of them is having people around you for support. Whether that’s a coach like me, a colleague, a spouse or a friend, information from external sources helps you to design your next steps and experience plateaus with less discomfort.

1. Stay With The Plan

It’s possible that you underestimated what it takes to reach your goal.

Sometimes our idea of how fast things should happen is simply wrong. Especially for those of us who have had an easy time learning new skills, we might believe the next skill should come quickly. Wrong. That’s called a fixed mindset, and it’s a recipe for disaster.

That new skill we wanted to learn in 10 repetitions might take us 100 repetitions to master. Or 1000. With a fixed mindset, those last 990 repetitions (if we do them) feel like a death march of failure.

Contrast that to the growth mindset. The growth mindset is neutral and observant. After 10 reps, the growth mindset experiences something like “Wow, we’re not making the progress we hoped for. Okay, let’s evaluate. What’s working? What’s not? Is this still the optimal plan? Cool. Let’s keep going and see how things progress.” The growth mindset is aware, it’s hopeful but not attached to a result. And it’s scientifically proven to lead to better outcomes.

Six years ago I started a quest to become one of the top players in a second sport. I had already won 14 world championships in freestyle flying disc, and I would win 2 more while taking on this new adventure. While I knew what it took to become a top player in freestyle, I didn’t have all the information on this new sport (called DDC). Fortunately, I had a great mentor who sped my progress.

And I still hit plateaus.

What I didn’t realize was that truly mastering the essential skills for DDC was going to take a lot more work than I thought. Once I came to terms with that, I not only stayed with the plan but doubled down on it. I knew my throws were not at a high enough level for the DDC I wanted to play, so I started noticing more opportunities for throwing practice. These sessions were exciting and injected new energy into my experience of DDC.

Thousands of practice throws later, I was more consistent and effective. My stress level in games went down because I could count on the muscle memory of my practices when executing plays.

2. Revise The Plan

Most of the time, our first instinct is to work harder or give up. That temptation to give up is real. It’s a heavy feeling to wonder whether we can actually get there and if it’s all worth it. When we get to this point – and we all do – it’s a symptom that we’re focusing too much on the end point and not enough on the experience of getting there.

Staying connected to a winning mindset is essential. Any victory is going to be fleeting. If the purpose is to finish a marathon or get a promotion or win a world championship, what happens once you’ve done it? There is a literal graveyard of people whose lives felt completely empty after achieving an impossible goal.

What if you could arrive at that finish line and be more of yourself, full of pride in the effort invested in the chance at victory? If we can do that, we emerge stronger with more long-term resilience.

So, the plateau. What you’ve been trying feels like it’s not working. Your performance isn’t improving. Your progress seems stalled.

For my DDC project, I had timelines for my progress and ideas of where I should finish at my next tournaments. It all seemed very obvious. And I was wrong most of the time.

I was catching up to the level of more experienced players and thought I knew what it took to get there. With every breakthrough, a new blindspot opened up between me and my goal. After feeling frustrated by underperforming over and over, I took a fresh look at the plan.

As I mentioned, I started practicing more often on my own. I also started noticing what else might work. Playing with the local club was a great learning lab, and it didn’t put me in enough top level games, so I played as many pick-up games after competitions as I could. Teaming up with elite players helped me learn to adapt and deal with more sophisticated game situations than what I was familiar with. And it started to build my reputation.

I noticed that the additional throwing practice was helping with basic technique but that the top players had resilient technique that performed in a variety of wind conditions, so I practiced in “bad” wind too and threw hundreds of incompetent shots in order to raise my level of competence.

By revising my plan often, I believe I shortened my plateaus and accelerated my progress.

3. Ease Up

This is the fun one, and it has its risks. Sometimes the best way to get past a plateau is taking a break. Most often, by taking a break, we are allowing our brain to go to work in the background integrating all our learning so it’s more ready to be used next time. During intense periods of learning and training, we sometimes don’t give our brain enough time to do its thing.

Over the past few years I’ve been learning new languages using an app called Duolingo. I’m probably one of their power users. I have a streak of more than 650 consecutive days of doing lessons. When learning new languages, I have the visceral experience of how we reprogram our brain when we master new skills. There are very few things as basic as the words we use to communicate. Changing that code sometimes feels like I’m twisting my mind. I go through cycles of immersing myself in Duolingo’s lessons and easing up to a minimum level. What I’ve noticed is that my brain starts to pick up new patterns after easing up. I give my brain time to catch up and lock the learning in, and I get more out of the next lessons.

For my DDC project, I’ve found the best results easing up after a competition. During the competition, I’m learning but my brain needs needs more time to let it all soak in. Giving myself some time after a competition opens the door for improvements. Something that was a struggle before is more natural. Or, strategic opportunities become more obvious. It changes every time.

Here is the risk: there is a fine line across easing up, being lazy and giving up.

When you decide easing up is your strategy, monitor whether it’s actually a strategy or whether you are avoiding doing the work. Monitor your gut. Is easing up just a sneaky way of quitting? Keep connected to the motivations for your goal and keep designing the experience you want to create for your life as you pursue it.

4. Stay One Step Ahead

Most of the time, we realize we’ve plateau’d while we’re already struggling. What if we could be one step ahead, predicting the plateau and solving it before it sets in?

Going back to my quest to learn DDC, what if I had been in deeper communication with my mentor about what it takes to get to the top? I had such absolute trust that my approach was much closer to “he’ll reveal what’s next when the time is right,” but what if I had been in conversation about what to expect, what to be doing differently.

It’s possible that I could have skipped or shortened a plateau or two. It’s also possible that I wasn’t ready to hear the complete plan. You know how when rereading a book, we see things we never noticed during the first read? If I read a book six years ago about becoming a better DDC player, I might have seen some lessons but not really noticed them, not known how they were actionable. On rereading, previously invisible lessons would jump out as A HA! moments.

To stay ahead of plateaus, we need to gather information and feedback and hope we notice the important lessons in time to speed us past a plateau and toward the finish line.

Ready To Jump To Your Next Plateau?

Which strategy do you need now? It may take some exploration.

Let’s be clear. Whichever strategy you choose, it leads to another plateau.

Sound depressing? It doesn’t have to be. As we navigate these plateaus, leaping from one to the next, what keeps it beautiful is being in the moment. By staying connected to why we are taking on the impossible, we can shape our experience as we stay in the process. We can see plateaus as inspirational evidence that things are working. And as an opportunity to optimize our plan.

As for me, as I write this I have made three finals at major tournaments this year, including a runner-up finish at the world championships in England. I’m ready to jump to what’s next.

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Elite Action Series Part 3: The Focus Issue

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Photo by Arthur Coddington

In the Elite Action Series, we explore proven strategies elite athletes have used to reach the pinnacle of their sports and how we can apply them to our lives beyond the playing field. Last time, we explored the strategy of assembling your team. This time, it’s about focus.

Strategy 3: Focus

Your systematic plan needs commitment. It needs our belief, the force of your will. There are lots of excuses right now for being unfocused. Few of them matter. We’re either on our plan or choosing not to be.

Focus may demand tradeoffs. As I prepared for this year’s world championships, I re-prioritized my life. Focusing on being the best teammate possible demanded that I step up my physical training, improve my diet and invest time in visualizing our performances. Lots of excuses here: anaerobic interval training hurts, repetitive catching practice is boring, desserts are delicious. All of them lure me away from my focus.

Those tradeoffs were worth it. Both my teams won the world championships. And yet even if we didn’t win, that focus allowed me to show up at the world championships more confident, knowing I had invested in my team. Interestingly, that focus bred more focus. By not worrying about physical condition or remembering our competition routine, I was more likely to play my best by staying in the moment.

Tradeoffs can take different forms. Performance is so important to tennis superstar Novak Djokovic that he’s willing to go more than a year without treating himself to a single piece of chocolate. People at the top of their fields like Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and the late Steve Jobs have famously taken distraction out of unimportant areas of their lives. For Obama, he trades off variety in his wardrobe for the focus that comes from not answering the unimportant question “what will I wear today?” Each removed decision allows focus to remain on the highest priorities.

What distracts you from tapping into your full potential? What’s holding you back from focusing? How hard are your competitors training? What tradeoffs are you willing to make to match their focus?