“I want you to help me enjoy sports again,” said the athlete. “I used to, but I have no motivation to go. My coaches are really tough and yell a lot,” she said.
“Hmm, that sounds difficult. What do you do?” I asked.
“I feel numb…like I don’t care,” she said.
“Okay, then why do you keep going?”
“I think I can get a scholarship, so I just need to endure three more years.”
This teenager is correct, she has the talent to get a scholarship, but what could we do about the negative treatment? How could I help her? Well, every athlete needs to process their thoughts and feelings and be able to make decisions. I could help her reflect on her experience, validate it, find strategies to manage her challenges and look at all the options. Then she could make her own decision.
I asked her, “What is most important to you about staying with this team?”
“The location is close to my house. Other good teams are far away and it would be difficult to get there.” She seemed clear about the reason why she stays with her team.
Next, I asked her about the yelling. What kind of strategy could she use to focus on her training and not the yelling? She thought but didn’t have an idea, so I asked, “You said the coach calls you names. Can you give me an example?”
“He calls me an idiot,” she said.
“Okay, good one. You’re an idiot.” I smiled. “Now I’m going to be the coach, I’ll call you an idiot, and you’re going to respond like this…”
I got down on one knee, opened up my hands to her, and calmly said, “Thank you for having practices so close to my house.”
She was very surprised at what I did. I explained to her that gratitude is powerful. Connecting to her values and positive thoughts creates incredible clarity in her mind. She will shift from focusing on the negative to what’s important to her. The biggest point was that this is a
mental strategy.
She would not actually do it. Just imagine it.
So we practiced. I said, “What’s wrong with you, you’re an idiot!” Then she took a breath, got down on her knee and said, “Thank you for having practices so close to my house.”
In that moment, she did not feel like a victim or focus on the negativity. She felt her inner power connecting to the positive. She liked it.
A couple weeks later, she realized her highest priority had changed. It was no longer that the team was close to her house, but it was how she wanted to be treated.
Processing her thoughts and connecting to her values truly helped her feel clear. This young athlete, on her own, reflected and decided to seek a new environment where she would be treated with respect. She found it. And she is now super motivated, happy, and thriving.