How I TRY to control my frustration at the moment
I wrote a little about this in my self reflection. I usually get frustrated when something goes wrong during my practice, and screwing up more after that makes me even angrier.
What do I TRY and do now? I have also started talking and communicating more, I try to say encouraging things that lift up the mood for me or my teammate. I do sometimes say "come on" disappointingly, but I'm working on that. I also realized clapping is positive, which lightens the mood (slightly for me). And sometimes I get frustrated so much that I get tired of being frustrated and just try to do better.
What else can I do? I either heard or read somewhere that smiling (even a fake smile) can have a positive impact on your mood and can trick your brain into thinking it's happy. So I'll give that a try. And maybe telling myself that I WILL do better in the next rep (like an order).
There are many ways to look at frustration.
ReplyDeleteOne way is to see why / when we get frustrated
Typically disappointment arises from the gap between expectations and outcome, also called expectation failure (EF).
Obviously the size of disappointment will depend on the size of expectation as compared to size of outcome.
As an example, check your disappointment when you accidentally drop a Rs30/- chocolate bar as compared to dropping a Rs500, 2kg, chocolate truffle cake.
1) If the disappointment is big enough it could turn into frustration.
2) If the disappointment is repetitive (everyday dropping your Rs30 chocolate bar) then also we get frustration.
3) If disappointment from one event is carried forward to another event then the cumulative effect can be frustration.
In the 1st one, to avoid frustration, we can examine the size of expectations and tone it down. For example, instead of thinking that I will get every shot right in my practice or game, if I get 50% of my shots right that is good enough. Now the pressure to succeed is half, so EF has an escape route. The trick here is to examine one's expectations and go into your training or game with a more reasonable mindset.
In the 2nd one, to avoid frustration some people keep a written record to track their daily performance, so that they know what failure is expected the next day. So instead of just expecting success we are also expecting failure. Also, then they can (in deliberate practice) focus on that little improvement every day or every week and so on. Basically instead of just the repetitive failures, the improvement in success is what is visible now.
In the 3rd one, you can quickly reset yourself after the disappointment so that it does not add up to the next disappointment and build into a problem after some time. This resetting oneself can be done in many ways
> Some people like to focus on the next-one (knowing Oh! that is past). They typically say to themselves, This one is over, lemme focus on the next one.
> Some people like to focus on previous instances of success - kind of reinforcing that 'I have the ability'.
> Some people like to distract themselves by briefly thinking about something pleasing - like a fav song or fav food or memory etc., a kind of a mental break. I am sure there are more strategies and we can ask more people how they do it and you can then decide which few you would like to use.