How Important is Winning?
As a young skater, I won gold medals at almost every competition. Nothing beat the satisfaction of grasping the textured round award in my hands after a long busy day. As time passed and I joined the more competitive divisions, the honor to stand on top of the podium seemed to glide away from me, and happen less often.
The fulfillment and pride that accompanies the heavy medal as it loops around a skater's neck stirs a craving for victory. I desired to win every event, but felt increasingly disappointed when that did not occur. Overcome with frustration, it now seemed impossible to score higher than the other participants. I felt inadequate.
At home, I asked myself why I felt so disappointed. I realized that only focusing on the outcome of my competitions discouraged me a lot.
The next time I stepped onto the ice, I felt determined to make a change. I strategized about what I could do to increase my skills. Pinpointing certain moves and attempting new routines, I stretched my limits. I shifted my focus on improving myself. Not only did my confidence grow, but my love for ice skating did, too.
Wanting to win is a normal feeling, however, one must value the process it takes to be successful.
I discovered that paying attention to my own goals, instead of fearing what others thought about me or if they could do better, helped me to make more progress. Not basing success just on whether I won or not also proved valuable to me. Switching to these mentalities can feel like a stretch, but a couple memorable points may help.
The Growth Mindset
Having a "growth mindset" is crucial to improvement. Such a person believes that their abilities are not limited, but can be expanded and developed. Characteristics of this include those who:
Embrace the time and
Effort needed for improvement.
Employ failure as a catalyst for greater gain.
Enable challenges to become tools to push forward and learn more.
A growth mindset builds a passion to listen and learn through difficulties. They invest themselves in the process, allowing their skills to be open to development. This is important because it enables one to tackle obstacles and work through setbacks.
3 Tips to a Growth Mindset
Redefine failure. Recognize failure as a way to learn. By changing your perspective, you can notice opportunities for growth. In addition, failure will not seem so scary anymore as you will be able to bounce back stronger after a setback.
Practice everyday. Transform disappointments in everyday life--from spilled milk to especially what is experienced during ice skating practices. When obstacles arise--such as failing to land a jump--remind yourself that this is your "springboard to improvement." Utilize this opportunity to learn something new, and try again.
Be kind to yourself. Oftentimes failures and mistakes feel bad. Refrain from scolding yourself, and invest yourself in the effort needed to work on your skills.
Focus on What You Can Control
Sometimes athletes get carried away with the singular goal to win. It is easy to forget that the ability of our competitors is not in our control. Know what you CAN control, and then direct your energy in the best direction for the best outcome.
Why not make training a competition against yourself? Focus strongly on your own preparation, and build confidence within your own abilities. When setting important goals, create standards to improve yourself, without letting the pressure of how others are doing affect you negatively.
If you start to worry about a competitor’s successes, then you often lose focus, time, and energy. Comparing yourself to others can be extremely detrimental. It can be a distraction, and cause a loss of personal progress. Instead, compare yourself to your own past results and push forward.
Reevaluate Success
Ask yourself a personal question–what is your own definition of success?
For my younger self, success–to me–meant winning, holding a shiny medal in my hands, and standing on top of the podium.
In competitive sports, especially, attaining first place seemed to equal success. However, winning does not always mean success. Winning is only the outcome of a competition, but success is relative to your own perspective.
Athletes often fail to realize that they can measure their own success. It is a personal matter as it relates to your own ability and standards. Success should be about accomplishments caused by your own effort, not those out of your control. To me, it means having a performance that I felt proud about and having a productive practice.
This doesn’t mean that you should give up your focus on winning completely. Coming in first place is an important goal in any sport, but in order to get there, working on improving personally is an important primary step.
Takeaway
The presumption in sports is often that "Winning is everything." However, developing a growth mindset, focusing on what you can control, and reevaluating what success means will change that limiting point of view.
Winning is everyone’s ambition in a competition, but more often the winners are the ones who focus on the everyday work and the smaller steps which build momentum to reach the first place goal.
“The key is not the will to win… everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”