You Don’t Have to be Serious to be Competitive

Is she serious or confident?

I’ve recently had this conversation with two of my clients. They both get really nervous about competing. Those nerves get bigger and bigger until. One can’t breath and the other slows down. How does this happen? They are focused on the nerves, the nerves turn into anxiety and get in the way of competition. One is thinking about not being able to breath while the other is thinking about slowing down. That thinking pulls them out of doing. I said to my client, if you are thinking about not being able to breath you are not doing. You can’t do both. They are opposites.

Competition has become very serious for so many of my competitors. I don’t hear my clients saying that practice is as serious. As a matter of fact many clients state that they don’t ‘play like they practice’. Should competition be that much different than practice? In some ways no: you can be as good in a competitive environment as you are in practice and it should be fun. In other ways yes: there is no thinking in competition. Practice is designed to learn and improve skill and make mistakes. Competition is designed to take the skill you’ve learned in practice and the changes you’ve made by making mistakes and just do it.

I looked up synonyms for serious: grave, grim, severe and solemn. Those do not conjure up good thoughts or feelings to me. How about you? Serious competing not only leads to a lot of thinking but it also leads to muscle tension and rapid heart rate; neither of which are conducive to competing.

I challenge clients to think about why competition has to be serious: how does it help and how does it hinder. I ask about their best performance. For both of these clients being serious has not helped and when they’ve had their best performance they’ve interacted with others, joked around a bit and had some fun. They’ve both found a bit of a middle ground, have competed and done better.

Everyone is different but I can guarantee you that being serious is not necessarily a helpful tool toward making you a great athlete. The word doesn’t symbolize positive things and the thoughts and feelings associated with it can be even more detrimental. You have to find your optimal competitive space but I’ll bet making it a little bit more like practice (without all the thinking) will benefit you.

One last point I want to make is this, on the outside it may look like someone is serious but they may actually be feeling confident. Don’t mistake feeling serious and feeling confident. They are two completely different things.

Where did you learn that you needed to be serious to be a good competitor?

Dr. Michelle