The 10 Essentials: Essential #1
The first Essential is learning to Distinguish between Controllables and Uncontrollables. This is the foundation of all teachings with Athlete’s Academy. You must know what aspects of yourself and your sport are controllable and uncontrollable. Being clear on this difference enables you to put your time, energy, and focus on those aspects that can actually have an impact. Your energy is valuable. Be sure it’s not wasted on something that you have no control over.
Controllables are the things that you have 100% control over. There is no one else in the world that can make these things happen. Think through your life and sport to identify your controllables. You will only be able to name a handful of aspects over which you have complete control. A great example of a controllable is EFFORT. You are the only one that can control how much effort you put forth. No matter how much a coach may yell or what type of reward may be available, you are the one that will give partial effort or full effort. What else is a controllable for you?
Uncontrollables are those things that you may care about and may have an impact on your sport, but ultimately are not things you have control over. The biggest one is outcomes. You actually have little to no control over the outcome in your sport. There are just too many variables. Think about a time that you have played amazingly, but still come up short. You can also probably think about a time that you’ve played far below your best, but still managed to win. Think about all of the components that you actually cannot impact and list those as your uncontrollables. If you are thinking it through, you can probably create a very long list of uncontrollables.
We also include a little space for those things that aren’t completely uncontrollable, but also aren’t 100% within our control. These are known as Influencers. These influence components are things that we can influence to some extent, but still aren’t able to control the end result. One influencer is health. There are a lot of things you can do to influence your health: drink plenty of water, engage in physical recovery strategies after workouts, eat decently, and get adequate sleep. This will obviously influence your physical status and limit your chances of getting sick or injured. However, it’s not a perfect solution and things can still happen. Therefore, it’s not 100% under your control (even if you do all of those components really well).
List out your controllables, uncontrollables, and influencers. Use this list to begin shifting your focus from the uncontrollables to your controllables. Stop wasting your insanely valuable energy on uncontrollables. The more time and energy you put into ensuring that you are the best you can be at your controllables, the better position you put yourself in to have the outcome and success you want. And even if the outcome isn’t what you wanted, you’ll know you did everything you possibly could to try to make it happen.