Strategy to Manage Social Approval in Sports

Welcome to the Success Starts Within podcast. A podcast dedicated to teaching you all the tools and techniques you need to master the mental game and take your performances to the next level. Here's your host, Eli Straub. In this episode, I'm going to go over social approval and the impact it has on your game as an athlete and then a strategy that you can use if you're currently struggling with looking to others for approval. Hey there, I'm Eli Straub, a mental performance coach who works with athletes from around the world on building a stronger mental game. When we are experiencing social approval as athletes, this means that we are looking to other people for validation that we are a good player. This is a very common challenge to deal with because it's one thing to know you're a good player, it's one thing to have confidence in yourself, but throughout our lives and careers as athletes, we are constantly getting feedback from others. Coach is telling you that you did a good job or is getting mad at you. Your teammates will likely be giving you feedback, parents will be saying things, other people will be saying things, so it's natural to develop this worry and this need for other people to think you're a good player and when it does turn into a worry and when it does turn into a need, I need that validation from other people, this is where challenges form. Now I worked with an acrobat one time who was a professional acrobat and she and I were working specifically on the challenges that she faced when she was training because she worried so much about what one of her coaches thought. When she would go to training and that coach wasn't there, she didn't worry too much about anything and she performed a lot better and the practice was more effective. When that coach was there, her attention began to drift. Now instead of being in the moment focused on what she was working on for the day, she felt like she was performing for the coach that led to her being distracted and it also led to her performing and practicing with fear. I was just on a coaching call with a basketball player yesterday and we're beginning to work together within my 12-week program, which by the way if you are interested in my 12-week program, I've put a link to learn more about that in the description below and he was sharing with me how he's afraid of taking shots and this fear comes from being afraid of disappointing his coach, disappointing his teammates, and disappointing his parents. When athletes are dealing with a fear of failure, when they are dealing with performance anxiety, or even perfectionism, where they're wanting to perform perfectly, there will be a certain amount of social approval present because when we are afraid of making mistakes, normally it's because we are afraid of what other people think of us. When we are worried and anxious about how we'll perform a lot of times again, that has to do with the opinions of other people. Now it's by no means bad obviously to one other people to think that you're a good player. It is a completely normal drive and desire that we have as athletes and human beings. It's when this desire turns into a need to where I don't have confidence in myself unless I get the approval from other people and I'm so scared of losing that approval from other people that I play scared, I play tense, I play timidly, I hold myself back due to this fear. So we have to know how to work through this social approval or this need to have other people think that we're good players as athletes. Now there are a couple different ways we can do this, but the strategy I want to go over today is a strategy that works to build your own self-confidence and it will be a combination of learning how to evaluate your game for yourself and then also using a sport psychology technique that works to develop and build your confidence long-term. So after games if I'm looking to other people or I'm constantly wondering what are other people thinking about me, did my coach think that I played well today or is my coach mad at me and maybe I read into what coach said or I read into something that you know a parent told me or a friend told me. Now I'm starting to think about that over and over again and I'm carrying that with me or maybe I'm only focusing on the stat sheet and then I'm interpreting that as well everybody saw that I didn't play very well today because I didn't get a lot of good stats. Instead of looking to other people instead of basing how we feel on the way other people talk to us or even what our stats look like we need to have an evaluation process or system in place for ourselves and I think the best way to do this is to have a set routine where after practices and games you write about how you did you can do this in a journal you can do this on your phone whatever is going to be easiest for you and there are a few different questions that you can use to help you begin this post-performance evaluation process for yourself. The first question I always like athletes to answer is what do I think I did well today not what did other people comment on not what do the stats reflect but what do I think I did well maybe it has to do with being a good teammate maybe it has to do with something I did well in terms of the result I did get a lot of points I got a few hits today maybe it has to do with I moved on from mistakes well today but you want to think about what were those positives and you want to outline those first then you can move on and ask yourself what are some mistakes that I made today and you'll just list those out and then the last question you want to ask yourself is how do I learn from those mistakes and then you want to write that down as well if you get into the habit of doing this after every practice and every game you are building your trust in yourself to be able to evaluate your game in an objective way and in a productive way to a point where you've already gone through your evaluation you already know how you play you've already thought through it yourself to where you don't need to look to other people as much for this approval because you've given yourself the you know the approval that you played well looking at those positives but you've also already gone through the process to where if you did make a few mistakes you know what you need to do to learn from those and improve moving forward the second part of this strategy as I said is a confidence building exercise that works to build just your internal belief about yourself and it's a it's a drill that I got from from a book one time when I was reading it and it was actually a drill or a tool that I used myself back when I was beginning to work on my own confidence and work through my own social approval and it's called the mirror drill and what you do is you you have a kind of a conversation with yourself in the mirror where you're just talking about this is going to be at the end of the day you're just talking about what you did well that day what you're happy about what you're proud of yourself for that day and you know to be honest with you it is a bit of a cheesy a weird exercise to do and every single time I ask athletes to do this they give me the same feedback that I experienced the first time I did this exercise which was this felt really embarrassing it felt really weird to look myself in the mirror and talk to myself and tell myself what I did well that day and what I'm proud of myself for but I also received the same feedback about a week later that I experienced which was well I feel fine now now it's gotten to a point where it's a little bit more normal and that's it's a cool progression to experience for yourself because you go from feeling embarrassed to talk to yourself embarrassed to say what you did well which highlights this insecurity that we have you go from that to a point where you feel more comfortable talking to yourself about what you did well which shows the progression in your confidence so an example would look like you know I'm looking myself in the mirror and I tell myself you know I'm proud of how hard I worked today at practice I listened to feedback from coach I worked on some things I'm proud of the way that I that I played offense I'm proud of the points that I got I'm proud of how hard I played on defense I'm proud of how prepared I was I did a great job of getting mentally ready for the practice today I'm really happy with how I went through my post-performance evaluation something really simple like that when we pair these two exercises together and you get into the habit of evaluating your game using that post-performance evaluation and then you also get into the habit at the end of the day before you go to bed of going through and performing this mirror drill you will notice that over time this need for the approval of other people will go away it won't be immediate it won't be overnight but it will slowly happen over time and the less you need the approval of other people the more free you'll be to play with confidence to play aggressively and to not play scared of losing that approval now as I said earlier if you are interested in my one-on-one 12-week mental coaching program I've put a link in the description to learn more I've also put two links to my online courses the confident competitor academy and the mentally tough kid course in the description below as well thank you for watching thank you for listening and I wish you the best of success and all that you do if you want to hear more mental game tips subscribe to the podcast subscribe to the success starts within youtube channel follow Eli on instagram the handle is @elastraw and subscribe to our weekly newsletter at successstartswithin.com