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Intro to Reversal Theory 
Reversal Theory is a general theory (meaning that it attempts to explain the entirety of human experience) based on over 30 years of research and application that explains the and indeed emphasizes the inconsistency and changeability of individuals (which is what makes it useful for practitioners). In addition to a rich history in sport and exercise, it has been applied in areas as diverse as psychotherapy, clinical psychology and counselling, smoking cessation, recovery from illness, politics, religion and organisational development.
The theory specifically focuses on motivational states (or styles, terms that are used interchangeably) –proposing that people regularly reverse between different psychological states, depending upon the meaning and motives felt by in individual in different situations at different times.
These reversals are healthy and necessary, both to ensure that one’s motives are being met, and to appropriately match personal style to the needs of a specific situation or other person.
Reversal Theory proposes that key emotions (such as anger and anxiety) and values (such as achievement and control) can be traced to four domains of experience, each with two opposing motivational states. We reverse between states based upon personal meaning, and whether the values of the state are being fulfilled or not. The four domains and eight states of Reversal Theory are:
Domain
Means-Ends
Focus is on the intention of an activity –and whether motivation comes from achieving goals (ends) or experiencing the process itself (means). States are Serious and Playful.
Rules
Focus is on rules and norms
–and whether we perceive rules, belonging, and
conformity as either supportive or restrictive. States are Conforming
and Rebellious.
Transactions
Focus is on interactions and exchanges between people –and whether motives are based in power, ability, and control; or in care and emotional support. States are Mastery and Sympathy.
Relationships
Focus is upon whether one is motivated by fulfilling one’s own needs or another’s. States are Self and Other.
Sadly, Reversal Theory has been often misrepresented (and misunderstood) in the mainstream of sport psychology. You’ll often see it in the “Anxiety” chapter of a textbook, if at all, but anxiety is just one of 16 primary emotions in the theory – more on that to come. That is a reflection of the fact that the first domain – means-ends – was the first to be researched and developed and, in my own opinion, some lazy updating or a lack of an attempt to fully understand the theory (rather than a deliberate critique).
Effective Goal Setting for Sports Performance
Goal Setting has become such a mainstream activity in business and sport that you might be forgiven for wondering if it is worth covering at all. Indeed, one of most basic premises of theories of motivation is that we, as humans, select goals that will satisfy our psychological or biological needs. Nowhere is this more true than in the achievement-based environment of sport., This article will tell you how to make the right choices or go about the process in the best possible way.
Why Set Goals?
A common view of goals is as a tool to be used in the quest for higher levels of motivation. Goal-Setting Theory and subsequent refinements based on research and practice provide a process to create goals that will motivate us to higher levels of performance.
Goals, in this sense, provide a motivational focus; a purpose if you like. If you set goals appropriately you will find that you gain access to feelings of satisfaction, confidence and calm. The flip side is that inappropriate goals can be a source of anxiety or stress.
Your goals also represent a means of evaluating your performance and represent core values and beliefs about sport and success. In short, criteria that focus on self-improvement or effort are considered to be more positive than a focus on performance against others. Of course, this is a simplified view and context needs to be taken into account - are you a developing athlete or about to compete in your swansong at the Olympic games, where only a medal will do?
Remember too, that goals are not the be-all-and-end-all of motivation. In fact, only setting goals as a source of motivation can shut off many potentially important sources of inspiration and creativity. In other words, balance is required.
How to set goals
There is a great deal of literature on the market that includes goal setting, and a popular way of expressing the principles of goal setting is SMART (Specific, measurable, adjustable, realistic and time-based). I have seen several versions of SMART, however, so I will set out some principles below and let you find your own way of remembering them.
1. Make goals as specific as possible. “To compete in the Olympics”. Well, as admirable as that is, you need to ask when, in what sport, in what event?
2. Divide long-term goals into short-term goals with deadlines and priorities. “To complete in the Olympics in four years time, in the 100 metres (athletics). This gives more direction. However, what do you need to do in three years time to be on track to achieve your Olympic dream? What about this season? What about this week? By creating ‘stepping stones’ the path to your ultimate goal will become much more clear. It may become apparent that to achieve one goal you may have to trade off against another – so know your priorities.
3. Set measurable goals. “Work hard in training” indicates the right sentiment, but will not provide guidance towards your goal. “Attend every session this month” or “Hold a pulse rate of 170 for this next set” however, might.
4. Make goals challenging but achievable. You have to be able to decide, with all available help, whether your goals are achievable. Even if you have been identified as a talented athlete, the chances of reaching the Olympics may be slim. Slim is fine – remember your goals must be challenging – but goals set too high can demotivate rather than motivate.
5. Evaluate your progress regularly, and be flexible. With your measurable goals, that provide stepping stones to your ultimate goal, you will be able to see how well you are progressing. If, two years before the Olympics, you break you leg, you might still achieve your final goal, but you will have to alter the stepping stones. If you break it six weeks before the games, however, your final goal will have to change. If you achieve your goals before you expected to, set new ones.
6. Consider writing down your goals, and share them. We tend to commit to goals that are written down, and shared goals (either as part of the process or after they have been set) are more effective still. If you keep a training or competition log (there’s a tip!) this might be the ideal place to keep your goals written down. However, this is very much down to individual preference.
Process, Performance or Outcome Goals?
While outcome goals, which relate to your performance versus others; or performance goals, which are your whole performance independent of others; can be very useful, it is important to ask yourself “How will I achieve that?”. The resulting answers will provide you with Process Goals. For example, to run in the Olympics you must achieve a qualifying time. What do you need to do to achieve that time?
Process goals can consist of:
• Technical goals – such as length of stride
• Tactical goals – the race or game plan
• Physical goals – these are easier to set if you have scientific testing available, but could include your diet or fluid intake, say
• Psychological goals – such as maintaining concentration for the whole race
Another way of looking at your goals might be to list your current practices (e.g. physical or technical drills) and other habits (e.g. diet) and add ‘so that….’ to the end of each one.
For example: “I train with weights 3 times each week…so that…… I can increase my strength by 10% this season ”
If every ‘so that’ on your list can be followed by a goal or ‘stepping stone’, your everyday behaviours are in tune with your goals. If not, your behaviours could be unhelpful or unnecessary, or there may be other goals that you left unexplored.
Summary
I have covered in some detail the ‘how?’ of goal setting and a little of the ‘what?’. If you follow these guidelines you will find that you can stay focused on your dreams and gain confidence as you get closer to doing so. Remember to be flexible, as in life, things change!
References and further reading.
For a complete discussion on goal setting theories and research:
Hall, K. and Kerr, A.W. (2001). Goal Setting in Sport and Physical Activity: Tracing Empirical Developments and Establishing Conceptual Direction. In G.C. Roberts (Ed.), Advances in Motivation in Sport and Exercise. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics
For more information on SMART goals:
Bull, S., Albinson, J.G., Shambrook, J (1996). The Mental Game Plan. Sports Dynamics.
Do you want to improve your mental skills? Try Ken Ravizza's DVD "Mental Skills for Competitive Athletes" or Daniel Gould's DVD "Five Essential Mental Skills for Sport"Improve your focus and motivation or sports confidence with handy strategy cards from Mindsport Ltd's Sam Kotadia.
Check out our Sports Performance Center.
Communication Skills for Athletes: Giving Feedback
Communication is a skill that is often overlooked. Indeed, when we are in the presence of others we are constantly communicating, whether we like it or not. What we don’t say often says more than what we do say, and we sometimes say one thing and mean another
What is communication?
Is that a strange question to ask? Well, not really, because many of us will have experienced the manager at work that believes he is communicating through his barrage of memos, or the teacher that talks at the class but doesn’t listen. Both of these people communicate, to a degree, but are they effective?
Verbal communication occurs when we talk, listen, shout, sing, write or read. Non-verbal communication occurs through facial expression and body language, and can be very powerful. We’ve all noticed when someone says one thing and means another. That person has failed to realise that while they verbally communicating one thing, they are sending out a powerful and contradictory message when they quickly cough or shift their eyes from yours.
With whom do athletes communicate?
Athletes in different sports have to communicate with many different people in different ways. The elite athlete might communicate very openly and emotionally with a coach, say, that they have worked with for a long time – even more so than with their own parents. The same athlete may have to hold formal, contractual discussions or conduct press conferences. The variety of different people that an athletes may need to communicate with is great, and include coaching staff, the media, fans, team-mates, scientists, family, officials (umpire/referee) and competitors.
When do athletes communicate?
Apart from “all of the time”, of course! There are times at which effective communication are key. These include:
- In training – getting more out of your coaching sessions, letting your coach know when you are experiencing difficulty and helping team-mates out with their training;
- Before competition– making sure your coach knows whether preparation is going well; making sure your coach’s pep talk is helping you;
- In competition – using signals and code to communicate tactics, to help team-mates perform, to keep the team together, to request help; and
- After competition – feeding back on how you felt to your coach, asking for feedback from your coach, seeking emotional support; dealing with family & other important people.
The importance of feedback
Feedback is essential to the athlete. Positive feedback provides an important source of motivation, while technical feedback is required to make gain a competitive edge. Indeed, what use are goals if you cannot evaluate your progress against them? While the scoreboard is your primary source of feedback against outcome goals, you will often rely on feedback from others to evaluate progress against process goals. You can also learn to give feedback effectively to build a stronger, more constructive relationship with your coach and you can choose how to respond to feedback – learning from the positives and ignoring harsh or unhelpful feedback.
Receiving feedback
Eliciting feedback from your coach shows that you trust them, and tells them
that you are ‘coachable’ and a good investment of their time.
When asking for feedback:
• Give notice – time for the coach to gather their thoughts
and give some examples;
• Choose the right time – ask for time outside of practice
or competition, when the pressure is off;
• Receive genuinely – do not be defensive, show interest
in what is being said, ask for clarification and examples; and
• Show your appreciation – respond positively by following
the advice, and thank your coach.
Try to be relaxed and open when receiving feedback. Defensive behaviour– not accepting advice or not giving up your argument has detrimental effects on your relationship with others.
Giving Feedback
Giving feedback is important to ensure that a coach does not repeat unwanted behaviour and that you get the most out of the time you spend with them. You can also learn to give feedback to team-mates without appearing ‘bossy’ or stepping on anyone else’s toes.
When giving feedback remember to AID your coach or team-mates by stating the Action, the Impact of that Action and the Desired Outcome.
- Their Action – what it is that they are doing, in an objective or descriptive way, as if you were playing back a recording to them e.g. , “In your team talk you talked about winning for the fans out there” or “You ran straight across the penalty area”;. Descriptive feedback is different from evaluative feedback in that it literally describes what you have seen (‘you stood still’) or heard (‘I couldn’t hear your voice’. Evaluative feedback on the other hand contains opinions related to what you saw (‘you were lazy’) or heard ‘you didn’t shout’.
- The Impact of that action – what it made you think about, how it made you feel, or the tactical implication of the action e.g. ”I talked to a few others about it and it made us feel more nervous about going out for the game than normal” or “That meant that the supply to the centre-forward was cut off and the attack broke down”.
- The Desired outcome – how you would like your coach or team-mate to behave in future, e.g. “It might be better if you talked about the tactics then gave us a few minutes on our own to mentally prepare for the game” or “If you make your run towards the near post it gives us more attacking options”.
Supportive feedback tends to be best received. It builds trust, is usually reciprocated and helps develop more effective relationships. When you give emotional support you are opening up a likely source of support for when you need it.
Giving feedback under pressure
During a game, or any other pressure situation, however, you can’t give feedback in this way to a team-mate, as you can’t sit them down and take the time required. In pressure situations bear the following in mind.
- Be positive. Instead of bawling someone out for what they did wrong, focus on the desired behaviour. Point them in the right direction. This is where team goals are useful – if you all know the team goals you can make a goal-directed comment that reinforces team cohesion.
- Make a request. Tell your team mate exactly what you need – use statements like ‘it would help me if …’ or ‘ what I need from you is…’
- Don’t highlight mistakes – focusing too heavily on what has already passed, .e.g. “what did you pass to him for?” –takes your team-mate out of ‘the now’ and is more likely to make another mistake as a result. It can also cause resentment. If you follow up any such comments with more detailed feedback it is likely to make your team-mate feel encouraged and coached, rather than resentful and humiliated.
Some final advice
Seek to understand, then to be understood (Covey, 1992). Really try to understand the person that you are talking to. If you take the time to listen carefully to their point of view and to understand where they are coming from, you will find it far easier to find a way of getting your message across. Just like any good doctor – diagnose before you prescribe.
When the time comes to deliver your message make eye contact, stay on track, repeat key messages and ask if you are being understood.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot. Think before you speak, or roll your eyes, or throw your hands in the air.
References and further reading
Syer, J., & Connolly, C. (1998) Sporting
Body Sporting Mind. Simon and Schuster
Landsberg, M. (1997). The
Tao of Coaching. Harper Collins.
Do you want to improve your mental skills? Try Ken Ravizza's DVD "Mental Skills for Competitive Athletes" or Daniel Gould's DVD "Five Essential Mental Skills for Sport"
Competition Preparation for Sports Performance
At what point in time does ‘training’ end and ‘preparation’ begin?This is an important question to ask, because it clearly varies from sport to sport. In track athletics, for example, most of the year’s training is geared towards successful performance in one or two key events in the relatively short outdoor season. In professional soccer, however, top players can play around 70 games for club and country. Each week, therefore, they will have periods of training and preparation according to their match schedule.
The most general advice that I could give here is that competition preparation should begin at least 24 hours beforehand. However, at major tournaments or championships normal training often stops some time before actual competition, so the preparation period could be a relatively long period.
Do you have a pre-competition routine?
In the last 24 hours before competing, it helps to have a routine that you can rely upon to get you into the right physical and mental state for competition.
Uncertainty is a source of stress for many of us and, as some of you may know, the sudden realisation that you have forgotten something can cause outright panic! Having a routine is an important part of staying in control of yourself and your performance.
If you want to make sure you are really prepared, a simple pre-competition routine can be really beneficial. Start by setting out three columns on a page with headings ‘Time to race’, ‘Activity’ and ‘Notes’. Use the notes section to add more detail if required, perhaps to build in some contingency. Set out the activities that you need to carry out to perform at your best, in order of time to competing, so that they are easy to follow.
Who’s in control of your competition preparation?
As you develop as an athlete, it is advised that you take more of the responsibility for setting and refining your routine. As a youngster you will need direction, and later some guidelines, but most of the best athletes can take care of themselves and only use their coach as a source of information or support. Paula Radcliffe, for example, has taken control over her whole regime, and spends much of the year away from her personal coach, but uses experts that she trusts to help her when required.
Role of Goals in Preparation
Your ‘race-day’ routine provides an opportunity to focus on the process goals that, when put together, add up to a great performance. Putting tasks into your routine that keep you focused on doing things right in your race (process goals) will help keep you on the right track and help you to deal with unwanted distractions.
Focusing on your goals will also help you to create a sense of readiness. If you have achieved your goals in training, and other competitions, having them in a list can be a good source of confidence.
Controlling the Controllables
Another helpful exercise which helps ensure that you are in control of your performance is to look at controlling the controllables. Ask yourself “what might influence my performance in … (the next competition)?”. Then divide these into 4 sections and identify whether they are: Controllable or Uncontrollable; and Helpful or Unhelpful to you. You can plot these on a page, divided into quarters (controllable/helpful, controllable/unhelpful, etc).
First look at the controllable influences. Are there any controllable influences that are currently unhelpful? If so, what action can you take to make them helpful?
Then, look at the uncontrollable influences. If any of these are unhelpful, what can you do to try reduce the influence of these factors upon your performance? This can come down to attitude, such as “well, the weather is uncontrollable, and can be unhelpful, but it is the same for everyone so I have to learn to cope with it”, or there may be something you can do to plan for unhelpful events.
What if……?
You can always plan for the unhelpful scenarios, no matter how unexpected. Groups of athletes that I have worked with have identified some incredible situations, such as a tornado hitting the race venue, or the water being turned off half way through a slalom canoe event. However, this exercise tends to throw up events that do happen at competition, including bad weather, other competitors’ tricks, traffic jams and security alerts. The message is this: if you have experienced these things in your mind, and have decided on how you will cope with them, you will be at an advantage should they happen on the day.
Using imagery in preparation
Imagery (a.k.a visualistation/mental rehearsal) is often used to learn or practice skills, or to stimulate positive emotions, but it can also be very useful in preparing for the big event.
As well as imagining the race – in some sports such as golf, alpine skiing or slalom canoeing, fori example, you can ‘walk the course’ in your mind – you can put yourself into the atmosphere of the competition, the venue, the social scene. The more you get to know about an event and its environment or atmosphere, the more composed you will feel when you get there. For example, if a venue is know for having poor warm-up facilities, or a certain ‘buzz’, try to experience these in your mind. If you know who will be there, recreate scenarios in your mind and practice your response.
Final Tips
Try to view competition as something greater than the duration of your match or race or round. Give yourself time to get things right, and recognise that your actions several days before, even weeks before, your event can have a bearing on performance. You won’t for example, suddenly manage to rehydrate on the day of a race if you have neglected your fluid intake all week.
The more you use a plan or routine, the more you refine it based on experience, the more reliable it will be on the big stage. Try developing and using a these preparation techniques over a period of time that starts with minor competition, even though you might be tempted to put less effort into your preparation at these events. To begin with, your plan might feel awkward, but wit time, practice and fine tuning it will come good if.
Build in some flexibility and don’t get hung up on details. What we don’t want is for your plan to become a source of stress. It is there to take some of the mental effort and strain out of the competition experience, not to add it!
Finally, your routine is yours. What works for you might not work for others. What works for others, therefore, might not work for you.
Do you want to improve your mental skills? Try Ken Ravizza's DVD "Mental Skills for Competitive Athletes" or Daniel Gould's DVD "Five Essential Mental Skills for Sport"
Improve your focus and motivation or sports confidence with handy strategy cards from Mindsport Ltd's Sam Kotadia.
Check out our Sports Performance Center.
Post-Competition Review
Why review your performance?Goal setting can be very useful, but unless you monitor you progress against those goals it’s usefulness is limited.
For example if you go for a long time in training without any feedback it can be quite demotivating because you have no real sense of where you stand in relation to your ultimate goal. Post-competition reviews, however, provide an opportunity for you to feed back to yourself, with the help of a coach or team-mate, on how you performed against your goals.
Reviewing will also help you to:
- build confidence, by giving yourself credit for the things you did well
- find ways to adjust training and preparation to improve your performance
- make decisions based on evidence rather than emotion.
When I was cutting my teeth I worked a lot with talented swimmers (teenagers) and between training, competition and school there was very little time for contact. What I did was (starting with review) implement a regular cycle of planning and reviewing competition. I was amazed at what a great vehicle it was for the swimmers development. They became much more knowledgeable, 'professional' swimmers as a result.
When to review your performance
It is advised that you always leave time between your peformance and it’s review – literally sleeping on it will ensure that your response it not driven by your emotions. If you review too soon you may overlook points for improvement (after a successful race) or over-emphasise the negative (after a disappointing race).
Select the Highlights
One of the important functions of a competition review is to get into the habit of giving yourself credit for the things that you did well and thinking positively about your performances.
I would not suggest that you delude yourself into thinking that you did brilliantly when you know that you did not, but often we are better at criticising ourselves than we are at giving ourselves praise.
Our real-life experiences of successful performance are our most potent resource for building confidence so, if you can honestly pick out the highlights from your performance on a regular basis, it will have a tremendous impact on your confidence
Try answering some of the following questions?
1) What was the one thing that you did best at the competition under review?
2) When did you overcome a potentially unhelpful or negative influence on your
performance?
Review and goals
The role of goals in performance is important. If you combine process and performance goals - making the outcome only one of many equally important goals - you are less likely to make a rash, inaccurate appraisal of performance.
Imagine you come off the field of play after yet another defeat. If you look at the score, there is no other way of reading this result except as a confirmation of your team’s failure to perform. You might, however, have set goals for effort, successful passes, opportunities to score, communication, successful tackles, tactical positioning, or any other number of performance indicators. At the end of the match, you may have lost because of one slip-up, a piece of individual ‘magic’, or bad luck.
If you set measurable goals beforehand, such a result does not have to beat down your confidence. Instead you can take heart that you are on the right track and, if you keep playing that way then the results will come.
On the other had, measuring your performance using goals helps you to avoid falling into the trap of creating a fantasy, that you deserved to win when really you didn’t, It also provides clear learning points.
Finally, ensure that you refine your goals or set new ones to enable you to put your learning points into place (in training and competition), then put any negative thoughts behind you. It is important to learn from mistakes, but dwelling on them takes valuable time and energy away from the task at hand.
Reviewing your physical preparation
Review is also a chance for you to assess and refine your competition preparation and planning.
Try asking yourself these questions, in relation to your physical preparation (e.g. fitness, rest, warm ups, food and fluid intake).
1) How well prepared was I for this competition? Were you able to approach the competition knowing that you could not have been in better shape, or did you have doubts about your physical readiness to perform?
2) Overall, how did my race performance compare to my recent training performance? If you train better than you perform, often it is a sign of competition anxiety. Bear in mind what stage of the season you are in – are you supposed to be training hard and using competition as practice, or do you expect to be at your peak?
3) Did I stick to my plan? If your plan is new, it can take a while to get used to following it. You will only know if your plan worked well if you stick to it. If you try out and refine your plan early in the season you will be able to trust it when you need it most.
4) What worked particularly well? In other words, which parts of your plan really worked? What helped you to feel more ready or confident to perform?
5) What would I do differently next time? Did anything you did in preparation hinder your performance?
6) What can I do, starting now, to change? Make sure that you do not tinker on the day of an important competition. Ensure that you try out new things in training and, if possible, in a less important competition.
It is worth getting the viewpoints of others to validate your own assessments to these questions as sometimes we can be either too hard or too soft on ourselves.
Reviewing your mental preparation
Your mental preparation is another important factor in performance, and it will affect things such as your motivation, confidence and emotional state (e.g. anxious versus excited.
How well did your mental preparation go for this competition?
You can ask yourself most of the same questions as for physical preparation but also:
1) Did I build any mental preparation into your plan? If you can look ahead at what you might need to cope with, it can be of enormous help on the day.
2) What did I do to handle any unexpected or new emotions leading up to the race? If you found yourself in a new situation, you might not have known what to do, but at least you can learn from it. If you did handle the situation, you can take that into future planning and preparation.
Again, if you are unsure of how to answer these questions, who can you turn to for help and advice?Summary
Performance starts well before the kick off, tip-off, tee-off or starting gun. When reviewing your performance, ensure that you take into account the effectiveness of your competition preparation. Ensure that you have an objective, measurable way of assessing your performance, and goals will help you with this. Turn any potential negatives into learning points and put these into practice at the first available opportunity. Remember, though, to give yourself credit for a job well done. Finally, ensure that you review your performance in the ‘cold light of day’.
Remember it is not defeat that matters it is how you react to defeat that really counts. A post performance review will help you to respond in the best way possible.
Do you want to improve your mental skills? Try Ken Ravizza's DVD "Mental Skills for Competitive Athletes" or Daniel Gould's DVD "Five Essential Mental Skills for Sport"The Importance of Dreams: The Resonance Performance Model
IntroductionDreams (or daydreams, if you prefer) play an important role in sport and life, providing a vision of the future to inspire, motivate and even plan. Indeed, sport psychologists have long stressed this point. As Bob Rotella, who has worked with some of the world’s leading golfer’s says “a person with great dreams can achieve great things”.
Isn’t this obvious? Well, on one hand it is. Many of the greatest athletes have expressed having a strong vision of what they wanted to achieve, and stuck to the task of achieving it. This implies that if you don’t dare to dream, you probably won’t achieve great things.
On the other hand, us Brits are so often discouraged from dreaming as we often value logic and rationality above spirituality and creativity. Our common language, for example, describes a dreamer as someone that has big ideas but never delivers. Other parts of our culture discourage having big dreams too – you can see from the newspapers how we don’t like winners and take pleasure from knocking them down. Tell others about your dreams of Olympic success, or of winning the World Cup, and it won’t take long before someone criticises you for having ideas ‘above your station’.
It is not surprising, therefore, that most of the recent movement towards ‘positive psychology’ has come from the United States and, specifically, some American psychologists that been working on a consulting method that aims to improve the quality of experiences and performances by taking dreams and turning them into a way of living from day to day, in the real world, experiencing the feelings that they want to feel. I have yet to fully test out the Resonance Performance Model (RPM; Newburg et al, 2002) in my work but in my mind it has clarified some unanswered questions and provided a great deal of food for thought. On that basis, I thought that I might share it with you.
Dreams versus Goals
In the past I have been a little unsure, when presenting to athletes, where long-term goals and dreams differ, but I always felt that there was a difference. That difference is that dreams inspire and provide the ‘raison d’être’ for a sports person, whereas goals are an expression of a more logical way of breaking down a major achievement into more manageable steps that can be measured against to show progress.
The RPM
This distinction is important in the RPM because dreams are both a starting point and a central component in the model. The RPM is also a circular model, because the dream is being constantly updated as part of the process.
1) Dreams
In Resonance, the dream “represents the feelings that individuals seek when they engage in a particular activity”. If an athlete has the goal of winning an Olympic gold medal, for example, their dream might include the way in which they handle the pressure of being in such a major event, the commitment to pushing themselves in training and the desire to overcome opponents in the race – in other words the emotional experience of the journey that ends in winning the medal. This is important because by identifying the emotional experience you can identify how you want to feel as you embark on that journey and set about the daily activities that will help you to get there. If you can do this, then you will have lived your dream even if you didn’t, in the end, achieve your goal. Your dream is also closely related to your values, and getting in touch with those will help you to clarify your dream.
2) Preparation
As the last paragraph implied, the next stage is getting out and living the dream by taking part in the activities needed to achieve the desired feelings on a daily basis. This might include practising skills, doing physical or mental training, for example, and going about it in a way that is not just a means to an end but very much part of the performance. In this way, hitting thousands of golf balls or putting in the miles are rewarding, even joyful experiences. This is just as well, given that the best sport people tend to have accumulated around 10,000 hours or 10 years of deliberate practice (Ericsson et al, 1993). To the untrained eye all of this looks like drudgery, but that’s because the untrained eye does not see the dream.
3) Obstacles
It is inevitable that there will be obstacles to experiencing resonance – both external (e.g. injury, financial constraints, politics) and internal (e.g. doubts, fear, anger). Often it is easier to see and understand the external obstacles, but it is especially important to recognise internal obstacles (or emotions that contradict the dream), particularly as there is a danger of attributing difficulties to external obstacles when they really do lie within.
By having a clear dream, we provide an opportunity to overcome obstacles in a way that is consistent with how we want to feel. Our attempts to overcome obstacles have a direction. Our decisions are made on a clear basis – what solution will help me to live my dream?
4) Revisiting the dream
Every obstacle becomes an opportunity to grow if, after overcoming an obstacle, you engage in a period of reflection – revisiting the dream. This is an important stage in the process.
By revisiting the dream you can gain a fresh perspective as your experience adds to the clarity of the dream, or it can provide fresh motivation for you to enter again into preparation – i.e. living the dream.
Revisiting the dream could be built into the review process, but can be done through any number of activities that enourage reflection, such as keeping a log book or diary, using imagery resting, or even watching or listening to an inspirational film or song. After a major obstacle or event, a period out of the sport may be an appropriate way of revisiting the dream.
Final Points
The more you allow yourself to dream, the stronger, clearer and more helpful
your dream can become in guiding you through the challenges faced in competitive
sport and life beyond it. If you engage in the whole process – not just
dreaming but preparation (living the dream), identifying and dealing with obstacles,
and revisiting the dream you are more likely to experience positive feelings
of control, confidence and enjoyment as you progress from day-to-day.
References
Ericsson, A., Krampe, R., & Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363-406.
Newburg, D., Kimiciek, J., Durand-Bush, N. & Doell, K. (2002). The role of resonance in performance excellence and life engagement. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 14; 249-267.
Do you want to improve your mental skills? Try Ken Ravizza's DVD "Mental Skills for Competitive Athletes" or Daniel Gould's DVD "Five Essential Mental Skills for Sport"Improve your focus and motivation or sports confidence with handy strategy cards from Mindsport Ltd's Sam Kotadia.
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Motivational Styles, Anxiety and Sports Performance: A Case Study from Youth Football (Soccer)
When I met Stephen (a pseudonym) he was 12, and had been playing organised football (soccer) for 6 years. A regular ‘man of the match’, he was playing for a team at the top of the ‘A’ league in his district and he was watched regularly by academy scouts. His father had contacted me because Stephen had been feeling (but not being) ‘sick’ before and during games and experiencing tightness in his throat. His father thought that he wasn’t ‘worried’ about playing, but it sounded like competition anxiety to me.
According to Reversal Theory (Apter) athletes that are in a ‘serious’ motivational state (focused on goals or consequences) are likely to experience physiological arousal as anxiety. Athletes in a ‘playful’ state (focused on immediate enjoyment, or ‘in-the-moment’), on the other hand, are more likely to experience high levels of arousal as excitement, which is pleasant. So, the question on my mind was “why is a 12 year old not out there having fun?”.
Reversal Theory is a general theory of human experience that maps motivational states with emotional experience.
The 8 states are organised into four pairs (domains). At any point in time, only one state from each pair can be ‘in play’, which means that our experience is influenced by four states, although one or two will be more influential than others.
Each state is also associated with a particular ‘value’. These are:
Achievement (Serious), Enjoyment (Playful), Fitting In (Conforming), Freedom (Rebellious, Power & Control (Mastery), Care & Affection (Sympathy), Individualism (Self), Collectivism (Other).
Assessment
Assessment took place over the course of two meetings, plus phone calls and emails and focused on his motivations and experiences around playing football, paying particular attention to the timeline leading into games.
Stephen was a talented all-rounder when who regarded club football as “more important” than other sports, or playing football for his school. It was only when playing for his club that he felt sick. This is a clear clue to his state of mind. He also came across as being very modest, which would prove important.
Stephen said he wished that he could enjoy his football more. He wanted to play football in more of a ‘playful’ state but didn’t feel able to. Although he was playing OK he felt a little constrained, not terribly creative in his play (again a pointer to anxiety). He loved to be in the thick of the action in midfield, but also felt responsibility for the performance of the team. He described feeling nervous as he tried to emulate his club’s tradition of success. He described a strong desire to play professionally and was aware of the need to work hard and continually improve. He had not yet been picked up by professional club for their academy – his dad felt that this was due to his lack of physical stature rather than his ability.
At this stage a number of options were available:
1) Help Stephen to manage his arousal levels;
2) Help Stephen to access the playful state when he is feeling anxious (switch to excitement);
3) Help Stephen to find another focus that would bring a different ‘domain’ into play (i.e. another state from a different pair).
To make the best choice of intervention, however, required some digging to find the cause of the anxiety. If that was known, any intervention would be more effective.
I was curious to find out more about his experience of the ‘other’ state or in other words, playing football for his team-mates and identifying with their needs rather than his – his modesty was a clear sign of other-orientation. After more digging came the real ‘nugget’: Stephen felt a need to repay his parents for the effort and sacrifice that they made for him to play football, by playing better. He would dream of the day when he would buy their house, for example. As he focused more and more on the consequences of his performance, he became more anxious. It became clear that this was central to his experience.
Intervention
1) ‘Coping’ with the anxiety
With my help, Stephen worked out a plan that would involve focusing on things other than football for most of the journey, for which his father’s help was required, and then as he got closer to the ground he would refer to a list of process-related thoughts (which would bring the mastery state into play, and stop him from focusing on outcomes thereby moving the serious state out of focus and possibly even ‘reversing’ into the playful state). This list included trying to make an early tackle, talking to team-mates, looking for the ball from the kick-off, and passing well.
2) Breaking out of the ‘other’ state
This involved taking Stephen through a process of recognising and breaking down irrational beliefs (for example that he ‘owed’ his parents a performance, that he was responsible for people’s disappointment) before encouraging Stephen to find other ways of interpreting his experience of events.
We spent two sessions focusing on this approach and I was delighted when I had an email from Stephen saying that he had been felling sick as usual when he stopped himself and told himself that he didn’t need this, his parents weren’t worried about whether he won or lost, but wanted him to enjoy himself. He went through the rest of the game without feeling sick and, in subsequent games, the symptoms were significantly reduced or did not appear at all. The important thing was, in the end, that he believed the things he told himself that day. Stephen had taken on the principles of the intervention and really run with them!
At the end of the season Stephen was voted ‘player of the year’ by his team mates, and ‘player of the tournament’ in a prestigious competition that his team won. Who says you can’t enjoy yourself and be successful? All that was left was to keep in touch from time to time and check that he was still happy – and after a full season with nothing other than normal ‘nerves’ from time to time contact was finally terminated.
Useful Reading
Kerr, J.H. (2001). Counselling Athletes: Applying Reversal Theory. London: Routledge.
Apter, M.J. (2001). Motivational Styles in Everyday Life: A Guide to Reversal Theory. Washington: APA.
Do you want to improve your mental skills? Try Ken Ravizza's DVD "Mental Skills for Competitive Athletes" or Daniel Gould's DVD "Five Essential Mental Skills for Sport"
For younger athletes, in Dan Gould's DVD "Mental Skills for Young Athletes"
