Brain Games Getting in the Way of Your Success
Young soccer players do a lot of work to train their bodies and hone their skills on the pitch. The mental game is another area that deserves attention. This article addresses avoiding cognitive biases that could get in the way of your success.
As humans we have a tendency to be pessimistic. We’ve been that way throughout human history. Our ancestors lived in a world in which trying to avoid lions or foods that could kill them was an ongoing trial. We are skilled at finding problems and scanning for danger, it’s how our race survived this long.
Today, though, we haven’t out-evolved the genetic predisposition to veer negative. In fact, our brains today are dealing with nearly 200 cognitive biases (think of these as assumptions we make without question). These shortcuts to our thinking help save us time or energy. Let’s consider a few of the basics:
Attentional — The tendency to see something through the lens of what’s come before, preventing us from considering alternatives.
Confirmation — We listen only to information that confirms what we already believe.
Uniqueness — Each of us believes, “I am the only person like me.”
Overconfidence — Because we want to be able to think, act, decide quickly we believe our skills or abilities to be greater than they really are.
Recency — Whatever we learned most recently has the greatest weight when we weigh it against older information.
So, what should we do about these biases that might get in the way of our thinking creatively or finding a new approach on the soccer field?
Listen better. Try harder to understand other people's points of view and embrace different perspectives. Active listening takes work. Fight the confirmation and attentional biases by trying to pay attention to what the other person is saying — rather than trying to make it conform with what you know already or anticipating what you will do with or say about that information.
Build a positivity circuit. Studies show that when we focus on positive thoughts, we can trigger the reward circuit areas of our brains. This also sets off the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps our body to rest and digest (both of which help with physical health).
If the negative focus helps us survive, the positive approach can help us thrive. Another approach is to embrace personal agency. This is you realizing that you can’t predict the payoff for your hard work, but recognizing that you are always in charge of the effort you do make.
Realistic expectations can also help override the survival instincts that we don’t need on a day-to-day basis. Sure, there are dangers in the world around us. But, reminding yourself that you are not actually threatened on a regular basis can help minimize your looking at everything from a do or die perspective. As Dr. Loretta Breuning, author of Habits of a Happy Brain, has noted, “most human achievement came from efforts that did not bring immediate visible rewards. When your results are disappointing, you can adjust your expectations and take another step.”
In soccer — whether it’s on the pitch or in practice — players can’t give up. When that voice in your head says “you’ll never make it,” or “it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’ll never learn this,” acknowledge that negativity bias is getting in your way. Then, reset and start again!
