We have all witnessed (or perhaps been) the coach who is standing in front of the team, spit flying, hands waving and attempting to motivate players by asking them to go out and defeat the enemy.

In the heat of the moment, an emotional war cry such as this may seem like a harmless motivation. However, in the big picture of life, on and off the field, this will do more harm than good for an athlete.

If you enjoy helping athletes reach their highest potential on the field and in life, then there are three important reasons for you to shift your approach from defeating the enemy to embracing your opponents.

Growth mindset

In sports, career, relationships, and life in general, growth comes from competing with ourselves rather than against others to reach our desired success. When we place our focus on the opponent, we take the focus off of improving ourselves.

Opponents are simply an obstacle to help us reach our highest potential.

I get it: as a coach, you need to plan for the opponent and prepare for what they will throw at you. However, the opponent should be respected, as they will help your team achieve the success it desires.

If we really want to grow, we need to focus on the one thing we can control—ourselves.

Scarcity

We are taught at a very young age that enemies must be defeated. This approach creates a win-lose dichotomy. Thus, in order to win, the enemy must lose.

This is a scarcity mindset—the belief there is not enough in this world. This “win at all cost” mentality turns off the creative mind and turns on the competitive mind. Remember, competing against the opponent is not a formula for achieving our highest success. Only competing against ourselves can do this.

When our mind is free to focus on creating win-win scenarios, innovation and creativity happens. Athletes see opportunities they would not normally identify when they have tunnel vision on beating the opponent.

Hoping the opponent's star player has to miss the game for some reason, as a means to beat the opponent, is a scarcity mindset. Athletes who focus on playing their best while wanting the opponent to give their very best is a win-win, or abundant mentality.

When athletes operate with a win-win mindset, each obstacle is an opportunity to win. Either the scoreboard reflects their hard work, or they walk away with real time feedback on where they need to grow and get better.

Future impact

When athletes learn over and over from trusted coaches that an obstacle is an enemy, they begin to form a paradigm which they will take with them into their lives after high school.

When faced with an obstacle in the future, we want our athletes to get excited by the challenge to compete against themselves to reach their highest potential off the field.

For example, a former athlete who has a sales career is not the top salesperson in the firm, which is a spot he wants to hold. Instead of placing focus on competing against himself to get better and make the top spot, he relies on an old paradigm of viewing an obstacle as the enemy.

Instead of being resourceful, innovative, and competing against himself, he is analyzing the other sales leaders hoping for them to fail. He might cut corners or be dishonest with customers just to get a new sale.

Help your athletes form good habits today, which they can apply to real life situations in the future.

Start encouraging your athletes to embrace and respect their opponents as obstacles to help them improve and reach the success they want on and off the field.

 

As founder of The Recovering Athlete™, Cletus Coffey teaches and trains coaches, teams, athletes and professionals how to take skills and success learned on the field and apply it to life off the field. As a former defensive back/receiver in the CFL and Arena Football League, and as a first team all- conference football player and a college decathlete at Lewis & Clark College, he faced even bigger challenges once his athletic career was over. By combining his success as a professional athlete and a business/industry expert, he now helps others win at the game of life, not just sports. To connect with Cletus Coffey, email him  info@cletuscoffey.com, follow him @cletuscoffey, or go to https://www.facebook.com/cletuscoffey/ to learn more.