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    How Athletes Learn To Fear Failure

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    locksley benjamin
    Organized sports can cause young athletes to fear failure for three main reasons: 1. The emphasis shifts from learning to performing, so mistakes are seen as failures rather than a natural part of learning. 2. Athletes set unrealistic goals by comparing themselves to more skilled peers, leading to a sense of failure when goals are not met. 3. Rewards become external rather than intrinsic, so athletes play for extrinsic rewards rather than personal goals and satisfaction, increasing pressure to avoid failure.

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    How Athletes Learn To Fear Failure

    Uploaded by

    locksley benjamin
    30 views2 pages
    Organized sports can cause young athletes to fear failure for three main reasons: 1. The emphasis shifts from learning to performing, so mistakes are seen as failures rather than a natural part of learning. 2. Athletes set unrealistic goals by comparing themselves to more skilled peers, leading to a sense of failure when goals are not met. 3. Rewards become external rather than intrinsic, so athletes play for extrinsic rewards rather than personal goals and satisfaction, increasing pressure to avoid failure.

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    How athletes learn to fear failure

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    Organized sports can cause young athletes to fear failure for three main reasons: 1. The emphasis shifts from learning to performing, so mistakes are seen as failures rather than a natural part of learning. 2. Athletes set unrealistic goals by comparing themselves to more skilled peers, leading to a sense of failure when goals are not met. 3. Rewards become external rather than intrinsic, so athletes play for extrinsic rewards rather than personal goals and satisfaction, increasing pressure to avoid failure.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    30 views2 pages

    How Athletes Learn To Fear Failure

    Uploaded by

    locksley benjamin
    Organized sports can cause young athletes to fear failure for three main reasons: 1. The emphasis shifts from learning to performing, so mistakes are seen as failures rather than a natural part of learning. 2. Athletes set unrealistic goals by comparing themselves to more skilled peers, leading to a sense of failure when goals are not met. 3. Rewards become external rather than intrinsic, so athletes play for extrinsic rewards rather than personal goals and satisfaction, increasing pressure to avoid failure.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    How athletes learn to fear failure

    Organized sports are very different than backyard or pick up games. Some
    differences are obvious; uniforms, regulation playing surface, rules and officials
    to enforce them, spectators, and you and the coach. But you should be aware
    of other subtler differences, which are the root causes for athletes learning to
    fear failure. Understanding these causes will help you appreciate some ideas to
    overcome motivational problems.

    Emphasis on performance, not learning

    When young people are left to themselves to learn sports skills – without
    coaches, peers, pressure, or spectators – they have an ingenious way of
    avoiding failure. Each time they do not obtain their goals, they simply lower
    them slightly, learn from their mistakes, and try again. A few practices and
    adjustments like these and success is virtually guaranteed. When young people
    do succeed, they naturally raise their goals a little to keep the activity
    challenging. The result is that athletes tend to keep their goals near the upper
    limits of their current abilities. Through this self-regulated learning process,
    athletes see mistakes not as failures, but as a natural part of the learning
    process.

    When young people begin playing organized sports, however, evaluation


    becomes public and official. The emphasis may shift from learning to
    performing. The mistakes and errors that are a natural part of the learning
    process may now be misinterpreted as a failure to perform.

    Unrealistic Goals

    Something else happens when young people begin playing organized sports.
    They quickly observe that coaches prefer superior performance and tend to give
    greater recognition to the athletes who excel. Envious of their superior skills
    and desirous of similar recognition, less-skilled players attempt to be like the
    more-skilled ones. In doing so, these young athletes may set goals too high for
    heir present levels of skills.

    As a result of competitive pressures, athletes set unrealistically high goals, that


    when not attained, lead them to conclude that they are failures. If not athletes
    themselves, the coaches or parents sometimes do.
    Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation

    A third reason athletes learn to fear failure once they start playing organized
    sports is that the skills they have been trying to master for the sheer
    satisfaction of doing so (intrinsic reward) become subject to an elaborate
    system of extrinsic rewards. Athletes begin to play for extrinsic rewards rather
    than to attain personal goals.

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