Mentality
The other day, while playing volleyball, I noticed something kind of strange. To be completely honest, my team isn't the greatest, and the team we were going up against was very, very strong. Going into the game, the general mindset of our team was negative.
For those of you that don't know, volleyball is played in "sets". For this game, it was best of 3. To win a set, you have to reach 25 points before your opponent. Whoever wins 2 sets first, wins the game.
As I was saying, we weren't expecting to win. For the first set, nobody on my team was having fun. We played bad volleyball and lost badly. The score? 25-8.
This is where it gets interesting. Going into the next set, our mindset changed. Instead of playing to win, we all decided that, if we're going to lose, might as well make it fun. So we played with confidence, even if we knew we were going to lose.
Strangely, the opposing team wasn't scoring as much as before, and we were somehow keeping up with them. We played some great volleyball and had fun doing it. Sure, we still lost in the second set. This time though, the score was 22-25.
Even though we ended that night with a loss, it still felt great. None of the usual deflated spirits usually felt after a hard "L".
I guess my main point of this post is to show how much your mentality has an effect on your training. When you're training, just for the point of training, not to better yourself, odds are it's going to be a pretty bad training session. However, no matter how bad you think it might turn out, as long as you put your heart into it, success will come. With anything, your mindset is everything. And in my opinion, going all in, even when you feel like the odds are against you, is the only way to flourish.
For those of you that don't know, volleyball is played in "sets". For this game, it was best of 3. To win a set, you have to reach 25 points before your opponent. Whoever wins 2 sets first, wins the game.
As I was saying, we weren't expecting to win. For the first set, nobody on my team was having fun. We played bad volleyball and lost badly. The score? 25-8.
This is where it gets interesting. Going into the next set, our mindset changed. Instead of playing to win, we all decided that, if we're going to lose, might as well make it fun. So we played with confidence, even if we knew we were going to lose.
Strangely, the opposing team wasn't scoring as much as before, and we were somehow keeping up with them. We played some great volleyball and had fun doing it. Sure, we still lost in the second set. This time though, the score was 22-25.
Even though we ended that night with a loss, it still felt great. None of the usual deflated spirits usually felt after a hard "L".
I guess my main point of this post is to show how much your mentality has an effect on your training. When you're training, just for the point of training, not to better yourself, odds are it's going to be a pretty bad training session. However, no matter how bad you think it might turn out, as long as you put your heart into it, success will come. With anything, your mindset is everything. And in my opinion, going all in, even when you feel like the odds are against you, is the only way to flourish.
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