Hello, and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches, and parents who are out there looking to do their sport that little bit smarter. Brain in the Game is a shift in coaching philosophy. A new and innovative way of approaching coaching and competing. I'm your host, Dave Diggle. In this episode 42, we're going to look at the age-old question, What do I do when nothing's working? Now, when I first started coaching as a gymnastics instructor, one of the things that I was very conscious of was I needed to get the athletes involved in their own development. It was okay for me to know what I was coaching, but I wanted the athlete to get involved with their progress, take ownership of their progression, take ownership of their strategies, and also take ownership of their successes. However, one of the things that was really common was athletes would often come to me and say, Nothing's working. I'm doing all these things. I'm working really hard, but nothing's working. As a professional mind coach, some 20 years later, I have exactly the same conversations with a lot of my new clients.
They'll come to me and they'll say, Nothing is working. I'm trying really hard to do this. I'm working extra hours in the gym. I'm working extra hours out in the running or whatever I'm doing, conditioning, strengthen, conditioning, stretching. They say, Nothing's working. As a mind coach, I have a different philosophy than I did as a physical coach, because when I was a physical coach, I would look at the mechanics and I'd say, Okay, what's not working here? How can we break this down? How can we change the strategies? As a mind coach, the first thing my mind shifts to is, Where is this coming from? What's the emotion that's telling you that nothing is working? When I get an athlete come to me and they'll say, Dave, help me. Nothing's working. Everything's broken. The first question I'll ask them is, Really? Everything? And I'll watch them stop. Mentally, I'll see the cogs will start to turn and they'll say, Well, obviously not everything. Some things are working, but I'm still not getting traction or I'm still not moving forward. Okay, so from a mental, emotional, and cognitive perspective, the first thing we need to recognise here is not everything is broken.
Not everything is at the end of the world. It's not going to fall off its axes. The world's not going to stop spinning. Everything isn't broken. There's obviously some key things that are not working for you, but Let's first of all recognise what is working. We don't want to get in there with our mental spanners and start undoing nuts and bolts of things that are already working for you. That's just crazy. There's no benefit to us to actually go in there and reinvent bent the wheel. We got to take out the parts, first of all, that are working and put them to the side. The first exercise, when I get working with an athlete who's at this frustration point, who is blindly seeing that everything is broken in their progression, in their development, in their competition approach, is let's take out the bits that actually are working for you. Put them in a box, leave them to the side. We'll come back to those. The next question I'll ask them is, what specifically isn't working? We've established that not everything is broken. So what specifically for you isn't working? Again, I'll watch the cognitive cogs spinning around for the athlete, and they'll go, Actually, look, when I do this, this isn't working.
Or when I do that, I'm not getting the outcome I wanted. Or I have fears, or I have strategies that arise when I go to competition that are not there in my training. Okay, so we can start to get specific and get that specificity about, This isn't working for me. Then why? Why isn't it working? Is it because the strategy is broken? Is it because it's not the right strategy for you? Or is it purely and simply, you're not applying the strategy to its most effective outcome. Understanding what's not specifically working for you and why it's not working for you gives you a clearer and concise perspective. Something that clearly wasn't there five minutes before when everything was broken and the world was falling off its axes. The next question I'll ask is, what specifically do you want? How do you want this to work? What do you want as an outcome? We need to get specific about where we're going so we can get specific about the tools that we need to use to get there. It's pointless taking a Mini off road and going forward driving. It's not going to get there. We need to use the right vehicle to get to where we want to get to.
Similarly, we don't want to take a four-wheel drive on a racetrack. It's going to tip over. We want a racing car. We got to have the right tools, the right vehicle to get where we want to get to. The next question I'll ask the athlete is, what specifically have you done? Let's eliminate all the things that you've already tried and then understand specifically why they didn't work for you. If you've gone out and you said, I'm not getting this outcome, and I've tried this, and I've tried this, and I've tried this, and they've not worked for me. Okay, cool. They may not be the right thing for you. We can, again, eliminate those, have a more effective and efficient return on our investment of time, so we're not redoing something that we already know isn't going to work for you. Then I'll ask, What haven't you tried? Normally, I'll get, I've tried everything. Well, clearly not, because there isn't anything that we cannot fix. There must be a strategy. There must be an approach, there must be a technique that you haven't tried. When we understand that sequence of event, that sequence of questioning that we go through, first of all, it gives us a deeper, more honest appraisal of where we're at.
The first question is, Really? Is everything broken? Do we not need to recognise, first of all, what's not broken and keep it to the side? Leave it as it is. If it's working, don't tinker with it. What specifically isn't working for you? Then, what specifically do you want? What have you done and what have you not done? That sequence of questioning will give view perspective. Now, human beings are, as I've said this so many times, we're pack animals, and we have this propensity to assimilate and follow the path for other people who are doing. Because it's that comfort that I'm not out there on my own. I'm not trying to reinvent everything on my own. Other people are doing similar things, so I might gravitate to what they're doing. What that does for us is what, yes, absolutely, it makes you feel comfortable. It makes you feel that you're not isolated. You're not excluded from the pack. You're part and parcel of what everybody else is seeing as normal and okay to do. However, what that doesn't give you is that edge, that I'm doing this, you're doing that, so mine's working better, I'm going to get more approach.
Because of that, we have this almost surface tension. I don't know if you've ever sucked the fuel out of a car trying to the fuel off. The minute you get that flow, it sucks the rest of the tank out without you having to get involved. As long as you've got the tube in the right place and you've created that flow, the surface tension will do the rest. Now, that's a positive. If we're getting the right approach and we've got a system that's got traction and momentum, it will drag the rest of your training, the rest of your progress along with it. However, the same can be said if things are not working working for you. If you're already getting into that mindset of, Well, everything's broken and everybody else is doing this, or I should be doing that with them, there's a surface tension that will drag you in that direction. It's not going to give you your answers or your results. Because all you're going to end up doing is having exactly the same issues, but with the pack. We need to make sure that we don't have that dragging effect. The first step we need to do once we've got that clarity is stop that downward spiral.
How do we stop the downward spiral? Well, the only way to do that is to take action to actively do something different. If we keep doing the same thing, we're going to keep getting the same outcomes. We've got to change our approach. We've got to do something to break that cycle, break that surface tension that's pulling you along in that downward spiral. Once we've recognised the things that we want, the things the things that we've done, the things that we haven't done, and then we put in there a strategy of, I'm going to attempt to do this next. This is my next strategy to try and get over this hurdle and get back into the path that I want. We need to actively do that. We need to take that action. We need to break the cycle. And we need to do that overtly, making sure that we know, our coach knows, everybody knows, You know what? I'm going to dive in here and this is what I'm going to do different. Because we then have some commitment and some accountability, and then we have to give it our 100% shot at it. It's not a half-hardy, This might work.
I might just try this. If we don't have that, I'm going to do this, this is going to make the difference. We're going to have that conviction about what we're going to attempt to do here, then the likelihood of it stopping that momentum it already has that's going downward in the spiral is minimal. Got to shove that wedge in there, bang, stop it. It's not going to go down any further. That's the hardest part. Stopping the downward spiral is the hardest part. Once we've stopped that downward spiral, then we can start to build forward. It's hard to build forward if we're all continually going down here. We continually have that mindset of everything's broken. I've tried everything and nothing's working. What's wrong with me? We need to stop the downward spiral first before we start to move forward again. Otherwise, it's like trying to swim against the tide. I don't know if you've ever been in the sea. I live here in Australia, and there's a huge thing about swimming between the flags so you don't get caught in rips. Then you got to swim across a rip, not against a rip. It's the same mentally.
If something's going against you, trying to swim against it, it's just going to tyre you mentally, emotionally, and physically. You're going to get that fatigue and you're going to start giving up, which is why you think everything is broken. We've got to be more strategic about it. We've got to cross it and get out of it before we can start to swim in the right direction. I'm going to ask you a question. If you were a rock climber, what would you see? Would you see the big daunting cliff face that you're trying to climb, or would you see the hand and footholds that you're going to take? I Understanding how you would see that wall gives you a better understanding of how you approach any development. Do you see the big, scary wall, or do you see the opportunities? Once you understand what you've chosen to look for, you can understand the outcomes you're getting. If you've chosen to look at the big, scary wall, then the likelihood of being able to see those hand holes or those footholes is minimal. If you've chosen to look for all those hand and footholes, all those opportunities to move forward, then they're what you're going to see.
You're not going to see the big, scary wall. So it doesn't matter what sport you're in. It doesn't matter whether you're a coach, whether you're an athlete, whether you're a parent or a support specialist. Looking for the opportunities to keep moving forward will give you a greater opportunity and a greater chance of getting what you want, going where you want to be, getting to the top of that big cliff. So when you think everything's broken, when you think that, You know what? I've tried really hard, I've trained really hard, and nothing is working for me, you're choosing to look at the big, scary wall, the big, scary cliff face. At you standing at the bottom and looking up and not seeing any path to follow, no wonder you feel as though there's no options for you. There's no way out of this. It is what it is, and it's It's too big for me to climb. Maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I don't have the skillset. Maybe I don't have the talent. You start to look for the reasoning and the excuses why you can't climb that wall. That is a hard place to come back from unless you stop that downward spiral.
Change your perspective. Look at it from a different angle. Simply taking a different perspective will give you different vantage points. Now, I was working with a gymnast once, and it was before a major competition, and they were working on the pommel horse. And a coach called me up and said, Can you come and work with this athlete? Because we know he can do the routine, but he keeps falling off the pommel horse. I turned up and I watched this athlete work the pommel, do the routine, and I watched him do three routines, and he fell off in exactly the same point every single time. I said to him, Okay, can you do that skill? I watched him stand there and he was really disheartened. His shoulders were down, his head was down. He was walking along and shuffling his feet. And I said, Can you do that single skill? And he's gone, Yes, yes, I can. I said, Show me. So he jumped on the pommels and did the single skill. I said, Okay, so you know you can do the skill? He goes, Yes, I know I can do the skill. I just can't put it in the routine.
I said, Okay, cool. When you do your routine, do you always start Start facing that way? He goes, Well, yeah, it's the way the gym's laid out, and I always start this side of the pommel horse. I said, Okay, cool. So you know you can do the skill? He goes, Yes, I can do the skill. So come around the other side. So you walked around the pommel horse and he faced the pommel horse on the other side. I said, Okay, cool. Do the routine. And he looked at me and he said, Am I going to fall off? I said, I don't know. You tell me. Are you going to fall off? Are you going to fall off in exactly the same spot? And he goes, I don't know. Just try for me. All I want you to do is do the routine. You know you can do all the individual skills. You know you can put the whole routine together. You were previously just falling off on the one spot in the one place. Just humour me and try the routine. He jumped up, did the routine, and he came to the part that would normally he would have fallen off, and he went straight through, bang, finished the routine.
He looked at me and the coach looked at me and I've gone, All it was was a different perspective. You'd created a habit of getting to that point and falling off. You knew that when you got to that point, facing that direction, it was completely a systemised habitual behaviour. You got there, and this is where I fall off. Because you fell off, you became emotionally entangled in that. It became an emotional block for you. Therefore, when you got to that point, you became anxious. The raised anxiety, the habitual behaviour, it just fed itself. All I asked you to do was stand on the other side and see it from a different perspective. Break that habitual behaviour. When you come up and you say, Everything's broken, let's look at it from a different angle. What haven't you seen? What have you learned to just, this is what's broken all the time because I can't do this every single time? And what is a reality that actually you can do it, you just don't see the options to do it. Ask yourself. Think back. Think back to the last time that you hit a block, whether it be a skill, whether it be a fitness block, whether it be a learning block, whatever it is.
Think back to then. Was it the skill or was it the way that you looked at the skill? Was it the environment? Had you created a downward spiral, it didn't matter what you did, you were going to continue to keep going down. You saw it as a scary wall. A hazard of guess is what you saw was the big scary wall, and it just became all encompassing. Everything that went along with that was broken. But it wasn't. Did you get over it? Did you move past it? If you did, what did you do? If you didn't, did it end your career? Did it end you thinking about doing that skill? How did it affect you? How did you allow it to affect you? Did it restrict you or did it drive you? These are important questions. Whenever you think that everything is broken, that nothing's working for you, first step, change perspective. Ask yourself those questions. Really, is everything broken? Of course not. Take out all the bits that are working. What specifically is not working for you? What do you want to do? What have you done? And what haven't you done? We don't want that mob mentality.
We don't want to fall into that surface tension that just keeps dragging you in that direction, and you're fighting against the current. We want to break that. Think about the rock climber. Do you see the big, scary wall, or do you see the opportunities? Where else can we use this skill set? We can use this if we're learning an individual skill. Or if we're approaching a routine or we're approaching a competition and we've gotten the mentality if everybody gets nervous. When we get nervous coming up to a competition, are we then stuck in that surface tension, pulling us towards being nervous and being anxious about competitions because that's what everybody else is doing? Or are we seeing it from our perspective or their perspective? It's a choice. How you approach it. Do you approach it being empowered Good or do you approach it being disempowered? It's a choice and perspective. Work out what works for you. How do you approach it? If you hit a block, what What's your first step? How do you sidestep that and look at it from a different angle and go, What is it really? What is causing that? Is it because I'm anxious?
Is it because I don't feel that I've got the skillset? Is it because I haven't done the preparation? Is it because somebody told me I should be nervous? What is it? The next time, before you go run into your coach and say, Everything's broken. I can't do this. Stop and think. What can you do to stop that downward spiral? Do not get sucked into that surface tension, pulling you along. Break the downward spiral. Do something different. Take action. That's the key. It's just interesting stuff unless you take action with it. Hope you've enjoyed this episode of Brain in the Game. Until the next episode, train smart, enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle, and I'm the mind coach.
