Positive Thinking or Dealing in Delusions?

I was reminded the other day of an athlete (a grown man, but young) I once met. He'd contacted me looking for some mental skills training, and claimed to be a part-time professional footballer.

It turned out that he was indeed training with a part-time professional club, at his own request, and wasn't playing for the team. Indeed, he'd never played a competitive game of football.

Despite this, he believed that he had the perfect game and was contacting Premier Leage clubs for trials. Unfortunately, the perfect game was only in his head. We used performance profiling to bring out the attributes of this 'vision' that he had of how he would play the game, and it turned out that the most important attribute was pace. By his own assessment, he wasn't quick - I think he gave himself 3/10 for pace. Of course by this stage I had long recognised that something wasn't right and was thinking how to let this guy down gently, and also how I should advise him. He was clearly delusional, but how much of a problem was it? Should I suggest that he should talk to his doctor, or find a clinical psychologist?

In the end after we talked about the possibility that his lack of pace and inexperience of competitive football might prove to be barriers to him being the complete professional footballer, I suggested that he should have his current coach assess him very honestly on the attributes we'd put into the performance profile. I then suggested that unless his coach thought otherwise, he would be best served by finding a level of football where he could play regularly and enjoy it, even if that was just playing 5-a-sides with friends.

Anyway, I worried about whether I'd done the right thing or not but a week or so later got an email from him. In it he thanked my for my honesty, and saying that no-one had ever forced him to confront how realistic he was being. Any time in the past that he'd shared his 'vision' with others they had encouraged him. Other professionals (fitness trainers) had taken his money (I didn't take anything for our single meeting), taking advantage of this guy's unrealistic hopes and dreams.

I don't think I'll ever forget him. But on a more serious note, is there a tendency in society, perhaps fuelled by some kind of 'Oprah' mentality that if you believe it enough it will happen, for us only to look at the positives, and has some realism gone out of the window? I see thousands of people queuing up for auditions for X Factor and the like, and many of them seem to be deluding themselves that they have any kind of a talent. Is this a growing problem or is it that programmes like this seem to bring them out of the woodwork?

Rob Robson

Sport and Business Psychologist, Warwickshire