How Frustration Causes More Mistakes in Sports

0:00Welcome to the Success Starts Within Podcast, a podcast dedicated to teaching you all the tools and techniques you need to master the mental game and take your performances to the next level. Here's your host Eli Straw. How does frustration cause more mistakes during games? Well, in today's episode, I'm going to go over why this occurs where you get frustrated or angry either at yourself or other people and then that causes more mistakes. Hey there, I'm Eli Straw, a mental performance coach who works with athletes from around the world to build a stronger mental game. I was talking to a baseball player just this past week and he shared with me a scenario that illustrates why frustration is going to cause more mistakes. So he was pitching and the hitter hit a ground ball to the shortstop. It seemed like a pretty simple routine play, but the shortstop bottled it and then the guy was safe at first.

1:01The pitcher got frustrated. He got really angry at the shortstop. So then he turned around and the very next pitch, he threw it up and in and he almost hit the batter. So what we saw there was a mistake made by the shortstop led to a mistake made by the pitcher and he was very honest with me when he said it was the frustration and the anger that he felt that caused him to throw a wild pitch. He actually ended up walking the next batter so that was even more of a mistake for him. This then spiraled and this is a pattern that he experiences a lot where one mistake, whether it's made by himself or somebody else leads to frustration and then that spirals into more mistakes and then just a bad game. This happens for him when he's pitching and also when he's hitting a lot of athletes experience something similar where they get mad at somebody else and then that leads to more mistakes that they make. There was a soccer player I worked with who would get mad at his teammates because of the mistakes that they were making or what they were doing. This caused him to make more mistakes because he was focused on them.

2:05When we get angry at other people because other other teammates are now even officials or coach when other people are frustrating us. This hijacks our focus. So now all we're focused on is them. We're thinking that we wish they didn't do this or we wish they didn't do that. Why are they doing this? Why are they doing that? They're the reason I'm not playing well right now. So we start to look to everybody else and our focus is on them. If our focus is on them, we're not giving as much attention to what we're doing right now. The analogy that I gave to the pitcher when we were talking is I said, I want you to imagine that when you're frustrated at your teammate for making that error, your eyes are now looking at your teammate because that's your that's your focus, that's your attention. So imagine your eyes are looking at your teammate at shortstop, but you're trying to deliver a pitch to home plate, you're not giving yourself a very good chance of throwing them all accurately. That's what ends up occurring when our focus is on the frustration. So in other words, the focus is on something that is out of our control.

3:06So when when we are thinking about this idea of what's what's, you know, what's the reason why we are performing poorly after we get frustrated? If the frustration is coming from something outside of our cells. So we're not mad at ourselves for how we played. We're mad at somebody else or something they did a bad call or something like that. The distraction itself and the anger that then consumes us is going to either lead to us not being as focused as we need to be or maybe we perform more recklessly or, you know, our emotions are just taking over in that moment. We are allowing something out of our control to influence our performance. But what if the frustration is inward? It's frustration you feel towards yourself because you made a mistake. Well, we're going to see the very same thing occur where we are distracted. But we're also going to see this doubt take over. We're also going to see fear and anxiety likely take over because if you get frustrated at yourself, now that's another reason why you don't want to make another mistake

4:09because you don't want to keep getting frustrated at yourself. So then that anxiety, that fear, and then the doubt, those create more mistakes, whether it's you hesitating when you get the ball again and basketball because you don't want to miss again or whether you stand over the golf shot and you're second guessing yourself because you just hit a bad shot and you don't want to hit another bad shot again and your frustration is making you feel like, you know, you're going to hit another bad shot. Or if you're in baseball and you make an error in the field, you get mad at yourself and then you think, well, I don't want the ball hit to me again. And then the ball is hit to you and now you're not ready. When frustration is directed inward, yes, we're going to be distracted. Yes, our emotions are taking over. But we also develop doubt, fear, anxiety because we don't want to make that mistake again. That then snowballs into more mistakes, just like the frustration we feel toward other people results in that snowballing into more mistakes because we are distracted. So what you can do if this is currently happening and you're wanting to gain more

5:13composure after these situations occur is first and foremost, developing more of a mindset focused on things that you can control. So going back to that picture example, as we were talking through this, I asked him, what in that whole scenario was in your control? And he said his reaction, not even the next pitch, his reaction was what was in his control. But what he was focused on was the shortstop, you know, the frustration he felt that he felt like the shortstop didn't care. You know, as we started to talk about it, he felt like the shortstop wasn't as competitive as he was because how could he make such a simple mistake? But then I was telling him that the one thing he can control is his reaction. And he knows that if he reacts poorly, he's going to probably make another mistake or make him make an error or make a bad pitch or something. That means that he's the one not having the competitive approach because he's allowing

6:13the frustration to impact him, which is then turning around and resulting in worse performance. Now obviously that's not an easy mindset shift for him to make and it's something that we're working on just like it's not easy for any of us to make that kind of mindset shift. When it comes to managing frustration, we have to take responsibility for the frustration we feel and we have to acknowledge that the thing that is frustrating us is out of our control, whether it is a mistake a teammate made a bad call by the official, something coach did, something a fan says, or even a mistake we just made at that moment, it's out of our control. And the only thing that we can control is our reaction. So I talk a lot to athletes within one-on-one coaching and also through my episodes about this idea of focusing on the controllables that lead to success. So knowing what it takes for you to be successful in terms of the process controllable part to your play. And if that's what we're focused on, we will consistently position ourselves to be successful. But when you get frustrated, all of a sudden your focus has now gone on to things out

7:16of your control. When you acknowledge that the only thing you can control is your reaction, you're going to start putting more attention onto managing your reaction. Now that doesn't mean that the frustration won't still be there, but if we acknowledge that frustration leads to more mistakes and we understand it's because of our distraction or because it is a distraction of our doubt, you know, anxiety, fear, whatever it is, you know, those are the things that are driving the further mistake. We know that our reaction, so how we handle the frustration is what we truly need to be focused on. That's going to put us in a position to begin managing this better. Now it doesn't mean that you won't feel any frustration at all. And another analogy I really like is imagining kind of an old school thermometer, right, where you see the red line rise and fall. And I always say, right now if you're getting frustrated, that red line is going all the way to the top, right? It's rising all the way to the top. It's just, you know, going through the roof. Our job is not to keep that red line from moving at all.

8:17Our job is to notice when it's starting to rise and then reduce it. That's what you're trying to do because you're going to feel frustrated. Now it is frustrating when teammates make mistakes or you make a mistake. So you'll feel natural frustration. What we are trying to do is manage that frustration. So the strategy that you can try to use is like I was saying, first and foremost, acknowledging that the frustration itself ends up being more of a problem than anything else. Any mistake you just made or a mistake your teammates made. And acknowledging that that's the only thing you can control, managing your reaction. So then what you're going to try to do is become more aware of the times when you become frustrated. Then when you become aware of it, use a simple resetting technique where you take a deep breath and remind yourself, this is unhelpful, reset, refocus. Something very simple like that to remind yourself to refocus on what's going to happen next. And the exercise that I would encourage you to start doing is actually the same exercise I'm having that baseball player do is reflect after games and practices and think back to

9:22the times when you got frustrated during that practice or game, acknowledge what it was that was out of your control that was making you feel frustrated. And then think about or write about how you will react differently next time. That's a great mental rehearsal exercise to go through to begin building awareness of times when you are frustrated, but also building this skill of being able to respond differently. Because it's not mistakes that you make or mistakes your teammates make or bad calls that are truly hurting your performance, it's your frustration that then results in more mistakes that you make moving forward. So our key is to acknowledge that our reactions are the main thing we can control in that moment and then put focus and attention onto trying to mitigate and manage our frustration. Now if you are interested in one-on-one mental performance coaching where you'll work directly with me on improving your mental game, I've put a link to learn more about that in the description below. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and please feel free to share it with any athlete who you know gets frustrated after mistakes. Thank you for watching, thank you for listening, and I wish you the best of success and all

10:23that you do. If you want to hear more mental game tips, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the Success Starts Within YouTube channel, follow Eli on Instagram, the handle is at Eli's draw, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter at successstartswithin.com.