Skill of the Week- Attitude (What I've learnt from the best)

I love watching finals at Nationals. The superior skill, fitness, and structure is superb to watch, but one of the things I love watching is the attitude of the players.  Watching these games always reminds me that top players still make the same mistakes I do: they get broken, they get beaten, they throw it away, they drop it.

The big difference between me and these players (apart from the skill and fitness) is what they do after any of these things.  Where I get frustrated, down on myself and ruminate, these players do not.  Where I feel like a failure, these players have more resilience.  They use any lapse as immediate motivation and have a faster transition/reaction.

In the open final at nationals, one Colony player was wearing his heart on his sleeve, almost to the point of histrionics.  Some of his reactions were unpleasant to watch, and had a visibly negative effect on his teammates.  The effect of our attitude on our team is something we should never discount.  To be the best players we can be, we need to use any frustration from errors as motivation to do better next time, rather than self-indulgently wallowing.

The most important thing I have learnt from watching the best is about attitude.  Every player gets beaten and broken, throws away and drops the disc.  The best players approach any game with the attitude of acknowledging and minimsing this, and only ever responding to disappointment with improvement.  This is the attitude that I plan to emulate.