room at the Petro-Canada Sport Leadership Sportif in Ottawa and made a great decision. The decision was to stay in a session that I did not originally sign up for, I left that one a few minutes earlier after my “spidey sense” told me to take a walk and find another one of the ten sessions being offered at the time. The presentation I wandered into was called “The WIN is Within” by Jason Dorland, a former Olympic, Commonwealth Games, and World Championship rower.
As I listened to Jason’s story, I found
myself re-visiting my own past sport experience as a player and coach
and was
deeply moved. Jason shared stories of
being brought up in the “old school” ways of what defined a winner.
By the end of his story, Jason had evolved
into a coach that shed his earlier definition of winning and how that
led to
impressive results in the win category and even more powerful success in
the
other areas of sport.
I won’t try to re-tell Jason’s story, but
the key take-away of his presentation is to re-evaluate your definition
of
winning and you will experience a greater and more satisfying success.
He moved from a strict gold medal or nothing
approach to a shift in motivation that he calls the three “P’s” of
success –
perspective, process, & performance.
Through perspective, you look within the
athlete for personal best performances.
You are not competing against another team, player, or clock (ex.
your
best % in a 200 shot workout). With
process, you focus on what you can control.
The process is what you will do in order to reach your goal (ex.
take
200 game situation free throws a day and use visualization techniques).
With performance, you focus on your goal (ex.
shooting 92% from the free throw line this season).
Jason also gave a “process goal” checklist
of what the goal should look like;
- Challenging and achievable
- Tangible
- Self Assessable
- Self Monitoring
- Create a sense of “team”
- Generate “buy in”
If you focus on your own personal best
effort and put in the work, you will exceed your goals. The
sport experience is truly about the
journey, not the end result.
If you ever get a chance to see Jason’s
presentation I would recommend taking the time to hear his message.