Seton 3

A 12-year old quarterback and his dad came to my office to work with me to improve his performance.  He was barely holding back tears and I could hear in his voice a sense of giving up.  He told me his goal as a football player was to play quarterback for the University of Washington Huskies. 

It was his dream ever since he met Jake Locker who was the Husky quarterback at the time and went on to the NFL.  He showed me his signed cap by Locker.  He was a football player through and through.

I managed to gain his trust and then he finally opened the floodgates that were holding back his frustrations.
“My coach hates me” he told me and his eyes started getting watery.
“Everybody on the team knows that I’m the best quarterback on the team and I’m not getting as much playing time as the other guy.”

I asked him how he knows his coach hates him.

“He yells at me more. He makes me run more laps. I can just tell how he looks at me with that mean look he gives me. He hates me….”

Seton 2He went on and on with more examples and proof that his coach hated him and how he felt like nothing he ever did was good out there. He thought his dream of playing college football was slipping away by the day.

We must have spent 40 minutes on this when he finally ran out of problems to tell me about with his coach and team.  I listened intently the entire time and when he finished, I switched from serious mode to excitement when I said him:

“That’s so great! That is awesome that you have this coach!”
He thought I lost my mind and was in disbelief at my reaction to his problem.  My excitement did not match his mood at all and this was by design in order to shock him out of his dis-empowered state.

I continued on that having a difficult coach right now is the best thing that could ever happen to him if he really wanted to be a D1 college player.

131109-F-GZ967-944I explained to him:  “What if you never had this tough coach. What if you went the next 5 years of having nothing but wonderful and inspiring coaches…and then your senior year, you got this kind of difficult coach.

…and right before a big game with scouts in the stands, your difficult coach yells at you for something and you have the kind of melt down then that you’re having now….and your play suffers because of it and your big opportunity goes down the drain.

Thanks to this coach, it’s brought you here to learn Mental Toughness skills. By the time you are a senior in high school, you are going to be the most mentally tough quarterback in the state… and all thanks to this difficult coach.

He then said my favorite words: “I never thought of it that way.”

I went on to explain to him how sometimes the greatest difficulties you face in football can turn out to be blessings in disguise.  Football is a very rough and tumble sport to play – mentally and physically. 

In order to get all the benefits of the sport, you want to appreciate the difficulties.  The more you can embrace the hard work, the conditioning, the discipline and drills…the better player and person you will be.