The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and at Amazon.com

Those bloody English cricket players threw me out of their club like a dog. I never complained. On the contrary, I vowed that I will never play again. Who suffered? Me? But I don't want Jessie to suffer. I don't want her to make the same mistakes that her father made of accepting life, accepting situations. I want her to fight, and I want her to win.

And I love that—that is from Bend It Like Beckham. And imagine a dad who made one choice, that when he failed, he just gave up, but he didn’t want his daughter to just give up. And how do we deal with setbacks? How do we deal with failure, especially in sports, whether it’s your kid who’s on a losing team—I know my son was on a losing soccer team growing up; they always lost. He had to learn how to deal with failure. What do you say to yourself? How do you move on, whether it's individually, if you're in a sport individually... The reason I'm saying sports is that it is my pleasure today to have as my guest Dr. Judy Van Raalte. That's spelled V-A-N, R-A-A-L-T-E. She is a psychology professor at Springfield College in Massachusetts, and she has worked with athletes, youth sports, athletes and kids, that’s kids, and with elite and professional athletes in the United States and around the world. She has written four books and is presented at conferences in 11 countries. Judy is a certified consultant and is listed on the United States Olympic Committee sports psychology registry. Welcome, Judy.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah. Many of us have a whole lot of time dealing with failure, dealing with setbacks. We lose a game, we lose a competition. We’ve worked so hard, invested so much energy, and what advice can you give us to help us deal with our own self-doubts that creep in during those failure experiences?

One of the great things about sport is you can experience failure, and for most of us who are not competing for Olympic medals or World Championships, we can learn how to deal with failure effectively. So, sport is a great place to use skills that we’ll need for our lives, because we won’t all be successful all the time and to overcome difficulties. But sport can also be a place where some pretty bad things happen when things go wrong. So, there’s no secret bullet to overcoming failure, but there are some things we can do to prepare to deal with difficulty better. Like, if you try really hard and you focus on doing your best, then if you lose, then the other guys were better, and that’s okay, or you can plan to play differently next time, or figure out what you were missing and maybe not wear your new shoes for the race next time, but make sure they’re broken in, right? So we can learn to learn from our bad experiences, if we bring that mindset to the situation.

Okay, so the mindset is the key. That's king. And what I’m hearing is that if you and I are competing, my guess is that you would beat me heads over here. Let’s pick a sport. You pick any sport.

Well, I like tennis a lot, so that might be a sport that I have some skill at.

Well, if you and I are competing in tennis, and I'm losing, and I'm losing very badly—I haven’t played tennis in decades, so I would lose very badly—and if I'm thinking, I’m a loser, I’m a loser, I’m not any good, I should remember this stuff and I don’t, and boy, I should have practiced, and I’m just not any good. And you’re saying to change the mindset to it’s just that Judy’s better. It’s not that you’re lousy, it’s not that you’re a complete failure, and you should just give up in life. That’s another problem, isn’t it? People just generalize to their whole life.

That’s another big problem. I guess that one of the things sports psychologists do is work with athletes on figuring out what they can control. So maybe you might think, Well, I’m not going to win today, but I’m going to hit my forehand as well as I can, or I’m going to have a lot of fun playing in this match, or maybe I’ll try to win one point in this game instead of trying to win the whole game, because that’s what’s realistic for me, and making goals that are appropriate, and having a mindset that keeps the sport activity exciting and fun is great. We know that we actually want challenges, and sport is tricky. You don’t always want to win, because if you wanted to win at tennis, you could—I have some two-year-olds you could take on, you’d win. Okay, so…

So basically, what you’re saying is that we have a whole wonderful menu of things we can think about when we're engaged in sports. And it’s not just “I have to win. I’m not a good person if I don’t win.” People put their identity on the line instead. If I can say what’s realistic for me, well, maybe I can hit that forehand a little better. Maybe I can score one point with Judy. Maybe, you know, you set a realistic goal for yourself, and then you end up feeling competent. And one of the goals can be to just have fun with her.

So, and that’s part of what can make sport fun. The difficulty with sport is that…

Hey, I gotta interrupt this because we’ve got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that’s it. A very quick break and we’ll be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where’s that ad I saw? Here it is: The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance—that is interesting.

The difficulty with sport is that there’s a lot of focus placed on winning, and if you focus on winning, that can motivate you to train hard and be a great competitor. But if you focus too much on winning, then it makes things not very much fun. If you’re a runner and you do road races, only one guy wins the whole thing, and everyone else loses, and if you’re focused on everyone else being a loser, then after a while, it’s not much fun.

That’s a very good example.

So, using the motivation you can find to try harder, train better is good. Using it as “If I don’t win, then I’m a loser, and second place is first loser” will take away your motivation and the fun of enjoying sport, for you and for kids, and really for everyone.

So working with yourself, working with your kids, and working with anybody who’s involved in sports, it’s trying to find that place of “What is my goal?” Asking yourself the question, “What’s my goal in this particular event, this sports event?” and making it realistic so that you can walk away with some goodies, some joy from it, whether it’s a learning experience, whether it’s learning how to deal with failure well.

Just saying, “Hey, you know what? I lost, and I’m a good sport about it, and I’m trying to figure out what I could do better next time.” That too can be a wonderful experience.

So…

I think there’s a misconception that psychologists think winning is a bad thing. And I completely disagree with that. Winning is fun, but focusing only on winning can take away a lot of the fun. And fun is part of the goodies of doing well in sport; it’s working on the process, getting better at things, learning slowly, seeing yourself improve—all of that is great stuff too. And you’re much more likely to win, both internally, psychologically, and externally in the game if you’re more relaxed and have the right attitude about it. And so it’s a pleasure to talk with you as a sports psychologist. This is Dr. Judy Van Raalte. That’s V-A-N, R-A-A-L-T-E. What is your website?

W, W, W, dot V B Video—that’s V for Virtual, B for Brands—Video.com.

Okay, and people can get in touch with you. You even have a book for kids in sports, which we’ll talk about another time. Thank you so much for joining us today, Judy.

Thank you.

And what I love about what Judy said is that you can apply these skills not just to sports, but anything in life. If you’re working on a book, or if you’re working in a career, you have a job—if you say to yourself, “I have to be perfect,” then you put so much undue stress on yourself. But if you say, “Hey, I want to learn this today. I want to learn a new technique, or I want to improve my organization a little bit today,” then you’re much more likely to succeed and enjoy the process. So you can do that at work or in your relationships, how to enjoy yourself more in life and to be more relaxed through life while still going for the gold, while still going for the goodies in life. I’m Dr. Ellen Kenner on The Rational Basis of Happiness.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Kenner:

Finding the right person is hard work. Expect that most individuals you meet will not be the right one. The rewards of finding your soulmate are worth your effort, even if you fear further rejection. Never lie about yourself or withhold important information when you believe that your relationship has a future, such as withholding that you have a disease, a criminal record, or children from a former relationship. Hiding relevant information from a potential soulmate is a significant breach of trust and damaging to your own self-respect. Even if you know you might be rejected, it’s better to get the rejection over with as soon as possible, since there would be no future in that relationship. The idea that “What they don’t know won’t hurt them” is wrong. It will hurt them—and you too.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.