Do you want to win?

posted on: September 23, 2015
author: Brian Lomax, Ed.D.

Do you like to win?  Of course you do, right?  Perhaps you think that’s a silly question for me to pose, but what if I told you that while most athletes say they want to win, their behavior often says something entirely different.  It says that mistakes and being perfect are more important to them than winning.  Their focus isn’t fully on the long term goal; it’s stuck in the past.  Because of that, they aren’t able to perform their best throughout the competition.

Let’s use the sport of tennis to illustrate this behavior as its scoring system is particularly devilish.  With a winner and loser on every single point, tennis players often fall into the trap of judging themselves based on the result of a point.  Players may react emotionally and/or lose focus because of this.  They become concerned with something they can’t change (the past) and therefore they bring less energy to what is in their control (the next point).  Their behavior says that they care more about being perfect right now, and that winning the match is a lower priority.  Most players think that the desire to be perfect and the desire to win go hand-in-hand.  They don’t.

The total number of points won in a tennis match does not determine the winner, and neither does the total number of games.  Winning sets is what matters, and therefore it is not necessary to win every single point.  When you realize this and stop judging yourself after every point, you come to understand that the tennis scoring system is actually quite forgiving.  It allows you to lose points with no real consequences on the scoreboard.  How great is that?!  You don’t have to be perfect!  Lose a point – so what?  Simply play better on the next one.  The next point is always an opportunity to play better.

Getting comfortable with this perspective takes time, and so I want to show you two lists of behaviors that demonstrate what you value more while you are competing.  These behaviors represent the extremes and you may see that you display behaviors from both lists at various times.  Your goal is to enact more of the behaviors from the “want to win” list and fewer from the “want to be perfect” list.

If you want to win (play well), here is what you should do:

• Be focused on the present point
• Maintain good body language regardless of what is happening around you
• Be calm and use your breathing to keep your muscles relaxed
• Give your best effort throughout and never stop competing
• Encourage yourself to keep going
• Strive to perform your best on every single point
• Use routines to help you maintain focus
• Always believe you can succeed
• Be fair and respectful at all times
• Be excited and grateful to compete
• Understand that you don’t have to win every point to win the match
• Choose to be confident in your abilities
• Look for opportunities to break your opponent mentally

If you want to be perfect, here is what you will do:

• Get overly emotional when you win or lose a point, especially when you lose one
• Keep your focus in the past on a mistake or lost opportunity
• Not try as hard when you’re down in a match
• Let your body language, breathing and self-talk be dictated by everything going on around you
• Make excuses for why you lost or played badly
• Be broken mentally by your opponent
• Act in a way that doesn’t make you proud
• Judge yourself after every point
• Choose to have low confidence in yourself and your shots

I know that it may have been tough to read the behaviors on the “want to be perfect” list as we have all been there at some point, myself included, and will probably be there again in the future.  However, with this new awareness, the point is to catch yourself in these behaviors and try to adjust them so that what you are doing on the court is helping you with the long-term mission of winning the match.  If you play a sport other than tennis, the same concepts apply.

Behavior while competing isn’t always going to be perfect either, but strive to align your actions in competition with your desire to succeed.  This perspective is what “playing to win” truly means and will make you a great competitor.