In this video let's talk about your standards for yourself as an athlete
so if you expect to score 30 points every game or throw a shutout or hit two doubles
in a home run every single time out you might be setting yourself up for failure
so a lot of the reason that athletes feel frustrated feel really disappointed themselves
or get really angry on the field when they make mistakes when they don't live up to their typical
game is because they set performance expectations that are too lofty to be reasonable and that they
really can't meet on a consistent basis so if you look at the highest level athletes and you
kind of map out what a typical basketball season or football season or baseball season or whatever
season looks like you're gonna see that it's a a bunch of ups and downs it's going to be waves
your stats are going to become an average of all your good games and your bad games and everything
in between so if you always set your expectations at this very very high point so say you expect to
score 40 points in a game because you've done that once or you expect a throw for 400 yards
passing in football because you've done that once or you expect to go three for four every game as
a softball player or baseball player it's going to be really tough to live up to that because that's
well above your average right well above your your typical game so yes it's important to have high
expectations of yourself hold yourself to a high standard personally and that's something I did
as a pro baseball player but at the same time you have to know that every single day there's going
to be fluctuations and within those fluctuations is the average and so every great game that you
have is going to be balanced out by a terrible game right that's how you get back to that middle
ground that average so if you find yourself taking the game home with you where you go home
and you're upset a lot of the times because you didn't play as well as you wanted to and you're
frustrated and angry with yourself or you're seeing that frustration anger overflow onto the
field when you make mistakes or you miss shots or whatever it is ask yourself this question are my
standards set too high yes I want to be great and I have to hold myself to a high standard but on my
daily expectations of what a typical game looks like too unreasonable to be met on a consistent
basis and am I then taking that home with me and decreasing the joy and the happiness that I
get from from my my sport because I am constantly frustrated because I've set the bar too high one
of the big things you learn from long seasons and from you know playing quite a long time in
your career like I did in baseball is that you live to play another day yes today matters but
when I don't pitch well in game number 84. I know that there's game 85 and a game 112 and game 127
and game 138 to look forward to so I don't have to hang my entire all my self-esteem or my self-worth
on any single game and really my self-esteem isn't based on how I perform on the field you want to
set expectations that are reasonable look at your stats look at your averages and say okay what
do I typically do you know if I typically score 12 points or I typically throw for you know 240
passing yards where I typically you know can go one for three because I hit 333 as a hitter those
are more typical outcomes and that's what I should be looking at and that's where I should be saying
okay can I set this bar for me at a reasonable expectation and then if I see that wonderful I'm
going to feel good about it and if I go below it I'm going to understand that there's always
going to be highs and lows and that's just a part of being an athlete and the important thing is to
feel good about yourself as an athlete enjoy what you're doing and to set reasonable expectations
about your performance for the future if you enjoyed this video subscribe the channel below
you can also find my mental skills book called this slump shall pass it's written for athletes of
all sports and I think you'll love it thanks again for watching and I'll see here in the next video