Psychology Newsletter – Perfectionism

Perfectionism is a familiar word in the world of sports. The thought of being a perfectionist may sound like a great trait to have as an athlete, striving to be the best, striving to be the perfect goalkeeper, striving to achieve the perfect shooting technique, but alongside perfectionism, unfortunately comes a lot of unwanted challenges. This newsletter is going to outline in more detail exactly what perfectionism is, the impact perfectionism has on our performance, and the best ways for us to let go of perfectionism. 

Perfectionism is described as the need to be and appear perfect. Seeking the need to be perfect may feel like the right thing to do, showing everyone how much you care about your passion and your drive to be the best at something, however, this often has a detrimental effect on your performance mentally and physically. Unfortunately, perfectionism never ends, we think we’ll reach our goals, the thing we’re destined to be perfect at and then we’ll be happy, but once we get close we change our goal or we find faults in our progress, constantly looking for the areas that should be better, and this turns into a vicious ongoing cycle that never allows us to appreciate all that we have achieved.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing setting high expectations and demanding a lot of yourself is a positive thing to do, especially in sport, after all; who doesn’t want to be the best? Who doesn’t want to be perfect at their sport? But with this often comes the thought of not feeling good enough, not having confidence in your current ability, feeling like you’re still failing. Ultimately, this takes away the positives of being an athlete, it takes away the enjoyment of playing and performing, the enjoyment that comes with being a part of a team.

It’s important we find the balance between ‘holding ourselves to a high standard’ and ‘being a perfectionist’. Setting high standards for ourselves can be positive, but only when we congratulate ourselves on our successes. It’s important we recognize how far we have come, and what we have achieved, to motivate and push us positively onto bigger and better things, instead of constantly attempting to do more due to not feeling good enough, and fearing failure.

Motivational Quote:

“Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection” –  Kim Collins

Are you a Perfectionist?

1. Do you tend to perform better in practice than in a game?
2. Do you attempt to perform perfectly in a game?
3. Do you want to win so badly that you suffer from performance anxiety?
4. Do you worry about what other people will think about you?
5. Do you view your performance as either good or bad?
6. Do you become easily frustrated with your performance?
7. Do you have a hard time performing freely?

‘How to’ Guide:

 Now, if this sounds like something you may struggle with, you’re probably wondering “how do I stop this way of thinking?”.

Here in the how to guide, we’re going to provide some useful tools for you to focus on next time you feel yourself ‘being a perfectionist’.

One main reason behind perfectionism having a harmful impact on our performance is often because we’re purely focused on the negatives. We constantly look for areas of our game that should have been better, finding faults in our performance, stressing that we didn’t do good enough, instead of giving praise and congratulating ourselves for the areas of our game that we’ve been working hard to improve.

Before we jump into how we can change our thought process to let go of perfectionism, let’s first discuss thy main change we need to make, this being changing our habits. If you are a perfectionist, you’ll currently be in the habit, of coming away from practice or a game and instantly critiquing your performance, with very little intention of looking at the positives, changing this habit will help you with the steps below to let go of that way of thinking. 

• CHANGE YOUR HABITS

This is the first part of the process, instead of coming away from a game and finding faults in our performance, we must create a regular habit of searching for the positives first. A good start to creating a good habit, is when you get in the car with your parents are playing, firstly discuss the areas you both feel you did well, creating habits like this are tough to begin with and initially feel forced, especially if you’re so used to always thinking about what you should improve, however over time this becomes your natural instinct, and instead of not feeling like you done good enough, you can first appreciate the positives of your game and then highlight the areas you feel you can work on in future.

• FOCUS ON THE POSITIVES

We all play soccer for many reasons, one of which may be because we have a competitive desire to be a great soccer player, but first and foremost we got into soccer because we enjoyed playing the sport, right?

As a perfectionist, your first thought is to look for faults in your performance, now ask yourself… If all you ever do is look for the negatives in your performance, how will you ever feel good about yourself? At what point will you ever appreciate all that you’ve accomplished in the sport you used to enjoy so much?

Instead of constantly looking for things you need to improve, you first need to give some attention to the areas of our game that you HAVE improved. Reflect on the things you’ve worked hard on over the last season or two, and give yourself credit for how far you’ve come in the positive areas of your game. A big part of this step is altering your self-talk, training your brain not to instantly look at the negatives, but instead switch your focus to the areas you did well in, not only will this help you overcome perfectionism, but equally you’ll begin to feel more confident and more empowered in becoming the player you want to be.

• ENJOY YOUR SPORT

If you’re a regular to these newsletters, you’ll know an important part of being an athlete is – Enjoying the process!

If you can relate to this newsletter, and you feel like you share the traits of a perfectionist, you’ll know what it means to be asked ‘are you ever satisfied with your performance?’ and the answer is often no…

How can we be satisfied when we’re constantly expecting more of ourselves? Constantly focusing on an improved end result. We need to switch our focus to begin enjoying the process, recognizing the time and effort we’re putting in to improving in the process and the end result will take care of itself.

Advantages

• Highly motivated
• Highly committed
• Strong desire to be successful
• Strong work ethic 

Disadvantages

• Focused on the end result
• Creates anxiety and pressure
• Exceedingly high expectations
• Lack of confidence
• Increased self-doubt
• Care too much about what others think

Game Day Tips:

1. Set process goals

If you are familiar with these newsletters, you’ll know that process goals are the way to go!

These are the smaller, performance goals you set to achieve in the process to eventually reach your desired outcome. If your aim is to curb perfectionism, setting process goals on game day will help you focus on the small successes you achieve throughout the game, helping you recognize the positives of your performance.

2. Reflect on the positives first

As a perfectionist we often head straight for the negatives, after a game instantly asking ourselves: ‘Which area of my game wasn’t good enough?’ ‘What mistakes did I make?’. That needs to change!

When reflecting on game day, encourage your first thought to be a positive one, discuss with your teammates or parents after the game the things you did well and the things you worked hard to improve on, and as we said above, this may feel forced to begin with, and you may be forcing the negatives thoughts out of your head, but if we can create a better habit of reflecting first on the positives, eventually we can rewire our brain to think this way, to begin giving ourselves credit for things we’ve worked hard to achieve, ultimately allowing ourselves to feel a level of satisfaction with our performance.