Your Ego Is Limiting Your Potential
An overinflated ego, aka big or strong ego, lowers the potential for athletes because it keeps them focused on unproductive cues - like judgment from the crowd - which will always keep them from being their best on a consistent basis.
Ego has many different meanings, but in simple terms, the ego describes someone’s self-importance, pride, or sense of superiority. It’s often associated with a person’s tendency to prioritize their own needs and desires over others.
How does the ego undermine athletic potential? Let’s go back to the foundation of ego: a sense of importance, pride, or superiority.
Rather than striving to be as best as possible, people instead shy away from challenges that risk damage to their ego.
It’s the bedrock of fear of failure!
With this fear, you forgo numerous opportunities to challenge yourself, develop new skills, and maintain confidence when it’s difficult to.
Another way to describe this mindset revolves around extrinsic motivation.
When an athlete is extrinsically motivated, they look forward to rewards outside of themselves, like money, fame, power, or trophies. Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is all about personal growth and love for the game.
Everyone is extrinsically motivated to some degree, but some are more than others. These people might have intense motivation that looks productive, but it’s fragile. Once they run into adversity, they are more likely to experience excessive stress/anxiety, frustration, and burnout.
Let’s briefly go through more ways your ego might be limiting your potential. I’ll include ways to reframe each thought or mindset that limits the damage your ego causes.
Disclaimer: awareness is an essential skill to develop so you can catch your ego overtaking your thoughts. Without awareness, you can’t course correct your ego.
Resistance to Feedback
Athletes with a big ego are less receptive to feedback because it can hurt one’s sense of importance and superiority.
It’s important to understand that feedback is key to reaching your potential, as long as you trust the person giving feedback. Remind yourself of this when you sense yourself being resistant to feedback. Ask yourself, “how can this feedback make me a better athlete?”
Toxic Comparison
Every single human naturally compares themselves to others. Many people, especially due to social media, go overboard when comparing themselves to others. This leads to frustration, jealousy, and a lack of focus on their own development.
Instead, athletes should focus on comparing their present self to their past self. When you notice yourself excessively comparing yourself to others, flip the script back on yourself. Compare yourself to how you played last season, last game, or even during the last drill you just finished in practice.
External Validation
Athletes with a strong ego heavily rely on external validation, like praise from others or winning competitions (more extrinsic outcomes). This creates inconsistent athletes because their confidence relies on people and events out of their control. So, when things aren’t going well, it might turn into a catastrophe for athletes with strong egos.
Maintain steady confidence by valuing your own perspective more than others. When you find yourself longing for approval from others, instead ask if what you’re doing is enough for your approval. If it is, you can more readily move on from needing validation from others and focus on what’s important in the present. If not, then you can shift your focus to what needs to be done, getting to a point where you can feel strong, unshakeable confidence.
Lack of Adaptability
If you have an inflated ego, you might be tempted to think you have everything figured out. Or, you’ll tell yourself that you do despite knowing that you don’t. Athletes that go down this route can be unwilling to adapt to changing circumstances. They might think, “my way or the highway,” and shut down other options.
Being an athlete is all about constant problem-solving. How are you going to effectively problem solve if you’re not willing to consider alternatives to your method? When you find yourself resistant to change in this way, think about how adaptation is an essential skill of elite athletes. If elite athletes are willing to adapt, why shouldn’t you?
It’s important to remember that all of the thoughts and cues your ego wants to focus on - looking good in front of others and winning trophies - still come as a result of focusing on yourself and reducing your ego.
A balanced ego allows athletes to consider both their desires and needs equally. While the desire for looking good in front of the crowd is important to everyone, a balanced ego values your ability to improve as an athlete more than looking good in front of others.
When your ego is balanced, you think more neutrally, and less with your emotions – an excellent way to become more consistent, less afraid of failure, and feel more confident.
