What's The Challenge With Perfectionism?

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When you lose your cool on the tennis court, do you give up, tank or start pushing the ball? Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn with sportspsychologytennis.com Today I'm going to answer a question from Sarah. Sarah had this to say about her game. I'm 14 years old and been playing tennis for about eight years. One of my coaches calls me a bull because I'm always so stubborn and get so upset when I do something wrong. But the only reason I get upset is because I know I can do better. But when I get upset, it's like I just stopped trying to I give up. So I've been trying to find ways to keep my cool and stay mentally tough. I hate losing and then I get all these thoughts of what people are going to think of me, especially my parents. I've been trying to deal with this but I can't. And as soon as I start to think of it, I start to push the ball in the court or hit extremely hard for no reason. I can be extremely hard on myself. And I could really use your help.

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Sarah, part of the reason that you're hard on yourself and that you get easily frustrated and hate losing is because it sounds like there's some perfectionism that you have with your game. Now what goes with the perfectionism? One of the things that goes with the perfectionism is very high expectations for your performance. Even in a practice situation where your coach sees that, where you're not being able to learn fast enough or you're miss hitting shots and you probably get upset and coach sees that you get upset. I don't think it's so much about being stubborn or being a bull as it is that you demand so much of yourself that you price in perfection in terms of your performance. Now there's some good parts about that because you're always looking to improve, you're always looking to get better, maybe highly motivated, want to succeed, always willing to learn and take coaching. So that's the good part. The challenge is when you go out to the match court, it's easy to implode or give up or tank for this type of a player because all of a sudden you're not playing up to your own expectations. And that's why when you say you're very self critical of yourself, well you're self critical and you're judging yourself based upon what you think you should be doing. I call it the shoulds and the shouldn'ts. I shouldn't double fault, I shouldn't miss a routine ball, I should execute all my winners. I should never miss an easy volley or overhead, for example. So that's the trap with highly critical, perfectionist, self critical athletes. And it's also tied in with this issue of worrying about what others are going to think if you don't win or you don't perform well, such as your parents. So it's all related to the perfectionism and the self critical behavior. Well, what can you do? There's two things that you can do right away and that is you have to stop focusing on what you think others expect of your game, such as your parents. You have to go out there and play for yourself and be a little bit more selfish with your game. The moment you start thinking ahead, oh, what are my parents going to think? That probably elevates some of your frustration and anger that you have on the court. So remember, it's your game, it's not your parents game. You're not out there to make your parents happy. You're out there to compete and have fun. Secondly, you have to be able to manage these expectations that are getting in the way. Expectations are often the root of self sabotage for many perfectionists. So I call it throwing away expectations. Obviously it's not that easy, but the key is instead of holding these hugely strict expectations on your game, you want to go out there and focus on things that are more relevant and more important to the process. So basically what I'm saying is stop judging and start focusing on what you have to do to win points. That's preparing for your serve or preparing for your return. Focusing on maybe good footwork on your ground strokes or taking the ball early. Little things that are going to help you stay in the moment and not judge yourself. Thanks for your question. Hey, if you're interested in mental coaching for tennis and you're 12 years and older, or you have a young athlete that's 12 years and older, please contact us@sportspsychologytennis.com and we'll email you over the mental coaching programs. Thanks.

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