Making it Personal vs. Taking it Personally

On the heels of “The Last Dance” documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls of the 90’s, we were all left with a very distinct sense of Jordan’s motivation and/or his ability to turn almost anything into motivation: it became personal.

Almost laughable at times, (and since made into numerous, hilarious memes), when Jordan was slighted, felt slighted, or decided that he could have possibly been or felt slighted, he went somewhere in his mind that few of us will ever experience. He was able to throw gas on the flames of a fire that was burning on imaginary wood…worst/best case scenario. His depth of competition went to the core of the very existence of himself and those who opposed him. His own personal Thunderdome.

This theme also arose while watching a show about Michigan State’s 2000 Men’s Basketball Championship team. After a Final Four loss in the previous season, there was rioting in East Lansing on the MSU campus. Mateen Cleaves, point guard of both of those teams, said that they felt responsible for the chaos, that, had they won, it never would have happened, and they used it as motivation leading into the following year.

Now, from the outside, this doesn’t seem healthy…at all. It is definitely not a strategy that I will be teaching to young students and athletes, nor do I condone teaching. However, many young, impressionable minds will begin to add this to their approach to competition. Since the docs-series didn’t come with a user’s manual, my goal is to help make a very clear, very necessary distinction:

There is a difference between making it personal and taking it personally.

(Just read that again and let it sink in).

The worst thing that we can do, or allow, for children is let them wander into the next level of development unprepared. Immature athletes, immature people, could easily READ this “making it personal” strategy but ACTIVATE this “taking it personally”.

Anger. Anger is the difference. Pain is the difference. Offense is the difference. All of these things are detractors from performance. How many “angry athletes” have you seen perform well-below their ability? Especially in the ranks of elementary through high school sports, an angry athlete is a useless athlete. Taking something personally taps directly into insecurities, self-doubt, and fear, none of which are a part of the recipe for success.

Making it personal, on the other hand, is a controlled management of emotional response, a catalyst for focused effort, and a contributor to high performance. Watch an action film! As soon as “it’s personal now”, the afflicted character goes into a hyper-focus montage before single-handedly dispatching numerous enemies against all odds, and then, ONLY then, do we really see an emotional outpouring after the job is done.

Whether making it personal or taking it personally, it will reach our emotions, whether we acknowledge that or not. Exhaustion is the constant outcome.

Like anything else, this takes practice, this takes training, and this takes commitment. From a competition or motivational standpoint, it can be an asset. This isn’t the only way to motivate yourself. It won’t work for everyone. Michael Jordan was one of the greatest competitors of all-time, in any arena, and he found what worked for him.

What will work for you is personal, so take it that way and make the most of it.

Competitive Wellness Series - Primal Cues

I’m currently listening to “The Talent Code”, by Daniel Coyle on Audible, and if you’re in the market, even just for a single chapter of a book, Chapter 5 on “primal cues” is an eye opener. The book itself investigates talent: how it develops, why “hotbeds” exist, and what to do to enhance it. With a heavy stress on myelin, and its role in increasing speed of electrical communication between neurons in the brain, Coyle investigates ways to maximize training, acquisition, and performance. 

My knowledge of such things is limited, but my interest is deep. Training is training, coaching is coaching, but understanding where talent, and talented performance, come from essentially sets a neurological goal for each task. It is no longer, “Do this over and over until you get it right,” but “Do this with the intention of mastering this piece of the larger puzzle before we move on.” There are so many layers to each instruction, and then just as many to each execution, evaluation, and effortful change, as Coyle notes with many examples. Chapter 5 explained one of these layers explicitly. 

Coyle discusses his own children, noting their individual abilities in regards to foot speed. This led to an investigation of both 100 meter dash champions and top NFL running backs. A leap from his own kids running in the backyard, exposed was a correlation between birth order and some of the fastest athletes of all time. Typically, these athletes were late in the birth order in their families. The association, the bridge, was that these humans spent the early portion of their lives “keeping up” with the rest of their family. This provided an increased need for quickness, and a greater length of time developing myelin around neurons sending messages of speed. 

In regards to “primal cues”, Coyle refers to those instincts that have been part of human existence since...well human existence. They are the triggers and motivations that have risen with evolution because, those who didn’t possess them or develop them in an appropriate amount of time, didn’t survive. These factors are ones that can produce learning and purposeful practice more naturally. See: the youngest child trying to keep up with his or her older siblings so as not to be left behind. 

As an athlete growing up, I never developed that “killer instinct”. I was much more cognitive than carnal. My old high school coach introduced me to the new coach at my alma mater as “maybe the most intellectual player the program has ever had”. Knowing his intending it as a compliment, I also understood how it is exactly what made me a waste of potential, (and also led me into a profession of helping young athletes avoid the same fate). 

Within a program and community of abundance, we had two freshman teams and a sophomore team before JV and Varsity merged as one. The first true “trigger” of survival came in year two, cutting from two teams to one. From both playing days and coaching, the “B team” players who made the Sophomore team almost always had a different edge to them. That competitive spirit that you rallied the team around came from the “less talented” players. Was this the result of them having worked harder and improved more? Was it the result of them kicking into “survival mode” thinking the deck was stacked against them? I would venture the same is probably true of athletes in an environment with only a JV and Varsity squad. The compression of the learning curve associated with an activity an athlete is passionate about may be the key to quicker and/or greater success. 

All of this is well and good; insight into what may trigger effortful practice and intention of humans for improvement. However, if we aren’t able to apply this to our students, athletes, and ourselves, then we risk being those early humans that didn’t make it, or the younger sibling that wasn’t interested in keeping up...we may simply fall behind. So what do we do? What can we offer? How much can we convince our athletes that Now isn’t the end? How do we hit that trigger for a primal cue in a healthy and supportive way? Listed below are some quick thoughts to reflect upon: 

Create eustress in a controlled environment (a feeling of danger in a safe place)

Ex. Fluctuating lineups, awareness of competition

Provide an abundance of opportunity to fail and correct

Ex. Encouraging independent practice time of concepts

(I hesitate on “provide” because if the athlete is truly triggered, he/she will create that time on their own)

”Your survival is someone else’s survival” (create community of mutual reliance)

Ex. Team goals and consequences based on individual achievement

Most of these concepts come naturally to (good) teachers and coaches: find a way to motivate and expose bit-by-bit to stress that can be overcome. We each have our own ways of forging the steel of the next class or generation, and it always requires fire. The example that continues to play in my head is a childhood terror: the basement. Cognitively, there was no monster lurking, waiting for the light to turn off for its opportunity to attack you in whatever distance there was from the switch to the door. However evolutionary primal cues screamed inside us, “Get up the stairs as fast as humanly possible or you won’t make it out alive!” The footspeed, coordination, and confidence to move quickly that came out of that experience may have created some incredible athletes...if only we can harness that and use it for purposeful improvement. 

Stay scared friends, 

Own Your I

Follow up research: 

“The Talent Code” Daniel Coyle

“The Culture Code” Daniel Coyle

Martin Eisenstadt - clinical psychologist, parental-loss

Eustress

Competitive Wellness Series - Failure as the Challenge

I recently trekked to Garrettsville, Ohio for a Spartan obstacle race. Participating in the “Beast” version of the event, I had 13+ miles and 30+ obstacles between me and my first ever “Trifecta”, (the completion of the three core races of the Spartan promotion at different distances). Being the reluctant runner that I am, I was thankful for the muddy and thigh-high aquatic excuses to pace myself to solid-ground jogs and precarious-footing power-walks. After a palm-tear early in the race, (most frustratingly because of a mental lapse, not a physical one, though I was able to complete the obstacle during which it occurred), I had something to occupy the sensorial survival input and distract me from the distance still left to be covered.

Now, it needs to be very clear that I am not competitive outside of myself in these events. I run in the Open heats, that is, I am very realistic that if I entered my own age group it would spark a Rube Goldberg-esq chain of mental, emotional, and competitive personal judgments that would penetrate the perimeter of my peaceful, passive, protected Pride. That’s an overstatement, maybe, in that it takes away from the enjoyment of the Open. The whole draw of the Spartan Race for me has been connection to family, to friends, and to fellow racers. To help, to be helped, to recognize those who may need help, and to recognize when that “those” may include me, the value of these experiences are irreplaceable. Don’t get me wrong, those that race Elite and Age Group are incredible athletes and competitors, and I enjoy watching those races as a fan. I just know the Present Moment Me.

Immediately beyond the Sprint (3+ miles), Super (8+), and Beast (12+), lies the Spartan Ultra, a race doubled the Beast. This race hit the starting line well before the Open heat I was in, donning their purple pinnies. There were moments along the course where our courses overlapped, which led to some truly…genuine…interactions. These athletes were pushing themselves to perceived limits, either confirming them or blasting right through. During one particularly muddy trudge, most likely carrying something, I heard a couple Ultra racers talking about challenging themselves.

It followed along the lines of, “I’ve done the other races and wanted to really push myself” and, “I’m competitive and understand this is about finishing, but I can’t stand the thought of failing”. I took liberties to add a whole lot of words and delete a whole lot of grunts and obscenities, but that was the gist of it.

As I walked slightly ahead of them, (not bragging, they’d probably done twice the distance I had to that point), I heard this and began thinking that maybe for her the true challenge was not the race itself, but Failure.

As athletes and competitors, we are programmed to “hate losing more than we like winning”, an oversimplification and complete disregard for the value of failure as an input to greater success. How many times do we see success, or winning, beget complacency and underachievement? How often do we see those, who accept and embrace a setback, overcome even greater odds to become victorious, either in the standings, in the contest, or simply in life? It would be negligent of us to discard the possibility of Failure being the endgame of some endeavors. Maybe the challenge is failing. Kudos to those who are brave enough, and secure enough, to put themselves in a position where this may be the case, considering we are often impressed to believe failure is…well…failure.

I’m not the motivational type, not externally at least. I’m not going to tell you “the Universe only gives you what you can handle” or the like. I’m not saying anything new or unique, I’m not changing the world with Thought. Sometimes the consideration is the first step toward recovery, or achievement, or the final step to the Past…or something more poetic. Just consider that maybe knowing how to fail is an integral part of knowing how to succeed.

Before my race, there had been a few moments of “what ifs” that resulted in me not completing the Beast. On average, who I am said I would not have handled that very well. The “competitively well” of me made solid efforts to justify and weasel some sense into thinking I would have been ok with it, but for the most part even the thought of failure ate away at me. This isn’t always a “practice what you preach” arena…I know I”m still growing. The competitor in me will always punch my insides when I see my finishing time, or ranking, but I’ve extensive experience with losing, so I continue to master it.

Like when I saw that Elite runner, Ryan Woods, finished the Spartan Ultra, (DOUBLE the length and obstacles), two minutes faster than I finished the Beast…

Fail Well, Friends…but not too often.