A soccer player got discouraged after being moved to an unfamiliar position, assuming she'd made a mistake. The coach explained it was intentional evaluation. The speaker argues we invent negative stories when information is missing, and overcommunicating prevents that spiral.
Good morning, everyone. Here is your Moment of Yes for Wednesday, August 10th, coming to you from Richmond, Virginia, right off the campus of the University of Richmond. Here for one more day, and then D.C. tomorrow, and then home. So I'm here working with the University of Richmond women's soccer team. They had a scrimmage yesterday, preseason scrimmage before their season starts about a week, week and a half from now. And it was a tough scrimmage, a good scrimmage against a really, really good team. And after the game, one of the coaches was speaking to one of the players who was, you know, a little frustrated, a little discouraged, a little down. And the reason being is she was playing in a different position, and she thought she was playing in the position because she had done something wrong. And so she was, she was kind of down, and the assistant coach was trying to explain to her, no, that's not the case. And so once the head coach found out about this, he was able to kind of take her aside and say, oh, hey, listen, you've done nothing wrong. This is— I'm trying different people in different spots just to kind of see what we have to work with. And you could almost kind of see this release from her of like, oh. Okay, now I understand. And so, and then I had dinner with the coach after the game. We talked about this situation and it just came back to this idea of communication and overcommunicating. I'm really great communicating in public. Sometimes I struggle in my personal relationships. So it was a reminder for me as well as a reminder for all of us. Just this idea of when we undercommunicate, We leave room for stories. We've talked about this before. And for this young player, all she was doing was creating all these negative stories to why she was playing a different position. They weren't true. And even if they were true, until we really know what the real reason is, our mind stays super, super busy just creating story after story after story. And we know that 80% of those stories are going to be negative. Right? Because that's how we're wired. So, again, it was a great reminder to me because when you, when you just address it and when you can address a situation neutrally and unemotionally, you defuse all that storytelling. And even if it is, you know, difficult news for someone to hear, at least they now know the truth and they can process it, deal with it, and move on. So that's what I'm thinking about today. How does that apply to you in your life, whether that's work or personal life? And let's see what we can do about it. That's your moment of yes for today from Richmond. Have a great day, everybody.
