Who doesn’t want to win in sports?
Winning is about competitiveness, and competitiveness involves high emotions. Emotions in sporting events get heightened due to silly mistakes made at a crucial moment, bad calls, an opponent getting ahead of you, error in judgment or simply underperforming on that particular day. In the heat of the moment, the wrong emotions can even get you thrown out of the game.
Novak Djokovic’s disqualification from the US Open 2020 bears evidence. A negative emotion, unintended to hurt anyone but berate himself, had him striking a ball, accidentally at the line judge, straight on the neck. The verdict – Novak, a stronger favourite and contender of the Cup, now remembered, forever as the man who exited the tournament, unceremoniously.
Negative emotions like anger or frustration, during play destroy your mind before it damages your performance. It is momentary but possesses the power of an atom bomb. For some, these emotions wring out every iota of confidence, ability to focus and filled with despair for fear of an impending defeat. There are innumerable instances where bad behaviour jeopardised a sportsperson’s credibility and even a spot in the team.
Do you remember, Luis Suarez, the Uruguayan striker who bit Giorgio Chielleni during a World Cup match? It cost him a four-month ban from football. In 1997, Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear. After losing 2 match points and a warning from referee Mills Lane, he did it once again, this time removing a small part of Evander’s other ear, earning him a disqualification. Zinedine “Zizou” headbutting Materazzi on the 110th minute in the 2006 World Cup, earned Zinedine a red card and France, eventually lost that match. Closer home, in an IPL match between Mumbai Indians and Kings XI Punjab, captain Harbhajan Singh slapped Kings XI player, Sreesanth and was banned for five matches.
To be fair, Djokovic has played cool throughout his career. He is known for his amazing and warm acts of kindness. Who hasn’t seen the video of him asking a young Aussie ball boy to hold his trophy while posing for photos on court or holding the umbrella and handing a cool-aid to a ball boy at Roland Garros?
Djokovic was extremely apologetic and shocked when he, unknowingly hit the ball at a line judge. However, the US Opens 2020 will be remembered for his abrupt ejection as per the rules. He stands to lose all ranking points earned at the US Open and will be fined the prize money won at the tournament, in addition to any or all fines levied with respect to the offending incident. As Lao Tzu quotes, “The best fighter is never angry.”
One act of madness quashed all the kindness. A severe lesson learnt.
With so much happening around you and within you, it seems hard to keep all those emotions all bottled in. In fact, it’s worse in case you do.
Here are a few ways to manage and control negative emotions like anger and frustration whether you are a sportsperson or a corporate honcho.
- Control the controllable. Pay attention to the things, you can control and don’t deplete your energy or time on things that are beyond your control. Focus on your effort, prep instead of dwelling on your opponents, the weather, the scoreboard, or the noise outside.
- Moderate your breath to your advantage. The best way to be in charge is to be manage your physiology. Keep the distractions away by focussing on your breath. A 5×5 deep inhalation and exhalation can balance your breath and mind.
- Stay calm and collected. No matter how prepared you are, things that can negatively impact your performance, may occur. Accept that this will happen. You have the choice to react and waylay your plan to achieve your goal or just let it go. The reason, the opponent sledges in a game, is to goad you to deviate from your prep and plan.
- Practicing more when you feel frustrated at not performing better, is sometimes, not the key. Working on better coping strategies of handling your emotions, smartly is vital. Techniques like reframing help to not allow another person or a situation to dictate what things mean to you. Talk, positively to yourself and manage your internal dialogue, in a way that encourages growth and motivation. This helps you to refocus and be in command of the situation.
- Visualise things that reduce stress. Like seeing yourself acing your game. This is a great technique to do the night before a match or just before head out to compete. The imagery, focused on confidence and toughness leads to increased motivation, and self-belief.
- Improve your resilience quotient. Hold yourself accountable and make the choice to respond to tough situations in mature ways. There will be bad calls or incorrect calls. Handle each adversity with emotional maturity. Scores won’t change if you demonstrate your anger by swearing or throwing your bat or racket or banging your hands on the table! Be more accepting of mistakes and encourage yourself to move forward
- Think of consequences. Your emotional outburst can disappoint your coaches, mentors, team and family. Is it worth it?
- Use humour, exercise, music and sleep to relieve your anxiety, or any other pent up emotion, you may be harbouring.
- Seek help. What happens at play, gets triggered by what you may be feeling from an experience, earlier on. Reach out to a professional coach to help you tide over it.
Anger and frustration are natural emotions. They become counter-productive when repeated and form a habit. Sports and emotions go hand in hand. Knowing positive emotions and signs of emotions that threaten your performance, is of import. When you think of players that were discerning of their emotions, which ones come to your mind?
They can control their effort, their breathing, and where their minds go. But they cannot control the other team’s talent, the weather, the umpiring, the crowd noise, or the flight and bounce of the ball.
The calm and collected players MS Dhoni, Dravid, Messi, Federer use positive emotions to eliminate the negative. They use the aggression within them to assert and push their performance from good to outstanding. By taking the high road, you can perform longer and better to make a positive difference to the team.
Your game isn’t measured by your talent, skill or amount of practice, alone. Your mental toughness decides your victory from defeat, on the day it matters most – which is, every day.