Skill over Scoreboard: How to Not Have A Pyrrhic victory - Episode 37 w/ Coach Bryn

The word competition comes from the Greek word kompetir, kompetir, which means to make one better. So it is in essence a collaboration between you and your opponent or your competition, however you want to phrase it, to— you're collaborating to get better, okay? To use the, the fact that the person to the lane to the right of me and the person to the lane to the left of me is not there just to be somebody who's a formidable opponent that gives me butterflies and makes me all nervous, but actually to motivate me to run my best. I'm excited for you to see this week's episode, but before we get to that, I have a message for you.

If you're a parent of an elite athlete or a coach of a high-performing team and you want you're looking for some help or assistance with making them more mentally resilient, perform with more confidence, be more consistent, anything like that, then this is for you. I have an 8-week program all designed to address exactly that, to help your athlete be at their best on a more consistent basis and not get tripped up by those little voices in their head and getting down on themselves for mistakes, but performing like we know they can. So what I want you to do is don't delay, schedule a— just grab a time on my calendar through this link, and let's set up a time to talk about your specific situation and how what I'm offering in my 8-week program can help.

Okay, so it's brindresher.com/freeconsultation.

So click this link, grab a time on my calendar. I look forward to talking to you. And now on to this week's episode.

Welcome, welcome, welcome back everyone to another episode of the Mental Advantage Podcast. This is your first solo episode that is not a recap of 2022. I hope that you are going to like, comment, and subscribe if you haven't already, because we've got an episode in store for you. As an athlete, as a performer, as a high-performance athlete, you want to win. I mean, it's a given. Who doesn't want to win? Everyone does. However, today's topic is all about how we really want to win the right way instead of just winning for winning's sake. Have you ever heard of a Pyrrhic victory? A Pyrrhic victory? Well, I was having a discussion with one of my athletes and they were— we were talking about this whole concept of a lot of times when I ask my athletes questions, they will tell me, um, yeah, well, we won. And it's like, well, I'll be frank, I'm not all that interested in whether you won or lost. It doesn't mean that I don't value winning, of course. I mean, who doesn't want to come out on the victor side of any typical competition? I'm a super competitive person myself. I like to win, right? But I want to earn that win. I don't want to just win for winning's sake and say I won. I'm always reminded of the famous John Wooden quote, uh, that says that you can play your best and lose, and you can play your worst and win. And that is what I define a Pyrrhic victory as, which is a victory in name only, where yes, the scoreboard does denote that your side of the match, the game, the event went your way according to the scoreboard, but Here's the interesting thing about it. The scoreboard doesn't always tell the full story, and we want to be able to look ourselves in the mirror after any said game, match, event, and be able to say, yeah, I left it all out on the field. So we want to talk about how to have real victories versus a Pyrrhic victory. A Pyrrhic victory, as again to remind you, is just a name, a great sac— like a victory that is in name only but doesn't really tell the whole story, okay? And there's sometimes great sacrifice that goes into that. It's almost like there was nothing really that brought about this joy of winning, you know? It's like when you're playing— if you were, for example, a high school basketball player playing against your 5-year-old little brother and of course you can easily best him, but I wouldn't think that you would feel that this was a hard-won victory because also your 5-year-old brother is crushed. Uh, but you came out a victor, and to the victor goes the spoils. Yay, I won! Yay, I beat this person! But did I earn it? Okay, so when we're talking about being a high-performance athlete, we want to learn how to earn our victories. And we're going to talk about some of that category or some of that qualifications today. So the first thing is, is that you want to make sure that you're going into the game with some personal goals beside just an end goal of winning, right? Winning is not exactly, let's be honest, uh, an original goal. Okay, so for if you happen to not be in the world of sports, right, I want to make sure that everybody understands this. Sure, everyone wants to win. There's not many people that engage in, um, competitions, games, you know, uh, sporting events that don't want to win. Okay, however, so we want to have our personal goals. So in other words, I as a track athlete, a former track athlete, obviously my objective was to beat my previous best time, my previous best time. So I could beat all the girls in my heat or even win overall the race for the, the, the meet. But the question would be, did I get better? So that's a question you want to have is when you're setting your goals for any particular situation, no matter what sport you're in— football, basketball, wrestling, track, volleyball, tennis, whatever it is— you want to have a personal goal that is tied to, that's going to push you and be just beyond what you've last been able to do. Something that is going to be asking you to sort of pull on your tank to come out with something just a smidge better than your previous outings. Okay, so that's important rather than just victory, right? We have this saying with my athletes, and my other coaches have said it before, but it's skill over scoreboard. Skill over scoreboard. So the scoreboard may— you may be up, but if sometimes when you're up, it still doesn't mean you're playing your best. It doesn't mean that everything is actually being displayed out there as far as potential and capacity. So we want to be able to tap into that and know that in those instances, this is why you want competition that pulls that out of you, right? So one, you want to have a goal that is just above what you've done the previous time. Going back to my track example, I want to maybe improve by a tenth of a second. Or something that is going to show that I made the best of this opportunity against the comp— I use this competition to make me better. Okay, and I'm— I think the other thing is you want to look at the word competition comes from the Greek word kompetir, which means to make one better. So it is in essence, a collaboration between you and your opponent or your competition, however you want to phrase it, to— you're collaborating to get better, okay? To use the, the fact that the person to the lane to the right of me and the person to the lane to the left of me is not there just to be somebody who's a formidable opponent that gives me butterflies and makes me all nervous, but actually to motivate me to run my best. Because together there's going to be a specific outcome, and it is not whether I win or they win, or I lose and they win, or however you want to phrase it, but that either I made them better today or they helped make me better. And it could be both. It could be both. Okay, so in other words, maybe I don't win, but I run my fastest time I've ever ran. All right, because of the depth of the competition in the field. Okay, so you do want to have a situation where you're asking yourself, did I make myself better, or did they make me better? Okay, or did I— did I make— did they make me better, or did I make them better? Excuse me, I'm sorry, I asked that question the wrong way. Did I make them better, or did they make me better? And both could be true. Both could be true. So one, you want to have a goal that's a personal goal set to improve just a smidge above. Then you want to use the field, the competition, to bring out this level of yourself that maybe you couldn't access alone. Because it is said to be found, right? When you're— I remember I ran my fastest time in high school, uh, when I was competing as the anchor in the mile relay, when I didn't want to be the anchor. I felt it was too much responsibility. I had never ran anchor before, and you know, it's an honor to run anchor because you'd be considered the fastest, but I didn't think that I was. I didn't think that I was. I didn't know why my coach had chosen. However, in that race, based on when I got the baton, I had to run my fastest because we were behind, and we were rarely behind in this particular race. But I did not cross the finish line first, okay, because first and second automatically go to state. We came in third. But what was interesting was, had I ran a tenth of a second slower, we would not have qualified for state. So I responded to the job, I guess, at hand because I, you know, it was like I had to, I had to perform. It was my body just went to work because it knew what it needed to do. So you want to get into a place where you're using your competition to pull that out of you, okay? And then the third thing The third thing about not having a Pyrrhic victory is to know that it's not always going to result in a victory itself. Okay, sometimes you're not going to win and you have to be okay with that. But as long as you're improving, then you know what you're capable of. You start to find and unlock new levels and layers of this process, and you have the ability to sort of evaluate what, you know, how am I setting my goals? How am I going out and playing, right? Am I just playing to win, or am I playing to get better? My main objective every time I walk onto the field, the ice, the court, whatever, should be to be the best me that I can be, right? And then help uplevel all those around me to do the same, right? I want you to bring your A-game today when you're up against me so I can either beat you at your best or at least stop you in the process, right? To be able to have the honor of saying, if it were playing basketball, for example, like, you got to go through me to get to that basket, and I'm going to make you earn every point that you score tonight, right? I'm going to make sure that I'm going to make it my business to stop you from having your best night ever. Right? And in that, I'm going to have to tap into a part of me, right? A lot gets revealed in a person through that competition. So we don't want any more Pyrrhic victories. We don't want those, okay? It's not about just winning. It's about defining your own wins, defining your own wins so that you have the ability to really look yourself in the mirror and say, Not only did we win, but we were our best in that process. In that process. So I'm looking at you to start to look at yourself and say, okay, again, A, right? What is the objective here? And again, don't say just to win, or if it is, just know that's already a given, so you don't need to state it. Okay, like, yeah, we're going out, we're gonna win tonight.. So in other words, my goal is to best my last time out. So for example, if I'm on the defensive end of this court, then maybe I want to make the most stops. If I'm on the offensive, I want to score the most or have the most assists. All right, so I have an objective here, and I want to have these levels based on something— the data that I've had in the past of what's possible for myself— and then I want to up-level my goal just a smidge so that I can see what else I'm capable of. Okay, then I want to know that this is about you coming and bringing your best, right? So that I'm, you know, like, basically, like, either there's only two objectives here, right? Either I'm making you better or you're making me better, but either— or we're both making each other better. Either case, we're gonna have the best matchup ever. And I want you to bring your best game no matter what, because that way I know I beat you at your best, or you beat me at my best, and that's just how it was. Okay, so when it comes to victories, don't be like everyone else and just want to win. Win where you get— have a real win, which is where you get better. Right? What is next, right? Win. What is next? What is the next level that I can achieve, right? That's what I want a win to stand for. What is next level for this? So bring that. No more Pyrrhic victories, just a victory in name only. Anyone can beat certain teams on certain days, you know. Of course, the old saying, any given Sunday, but it's more like, uh, we just recently, at the time of recording this, um, we had Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady, two of the greatest quarterbacks to play the game, are both going to be sitting at home on Super Bowl night because they didn't win, right? But I know and I hope both of them walked off the field feeling like they played their best that they could have, knowing that this just wasn't their year. But there's always next year, maybe for Tom Brady, that is. All right, so that is today's episode. It's a short one but sweet. We're talking about pyrrhic victories, and we don't want them anymore. We want to win, and we want to win well, and we want to win in— we want a personal win, not just scoreboard win, right? Skill over scoreboard. All right, thank you so much for watching. Again, make sure that you leave a comment below what your biggest takeaway from this episode is. Also, please make sure to share this episode with someone because sharing is caring. Like, comment, subscribe, all that good stuff, and we'll see you in the next episode next week when we have another powerhouse guest coming at you. Talk to you soon.