Dealing with disappointment in sport

Whether you fail to reach a goal or experience a setback such as an injury, it can be a struggle to get back into the swing of things. Motivating yourself after a big competition can take some time, but especially when there’s disappointment involved. In order to motivate yourself following a setback, it might be useful to look at how you are motivated. Psychology has many theories of motivation, but when it comes to sport one of the most important is Achievement Goal Theory. The theory studies how each of us define competence, and this has important implications for improving in your sport. In other words, how individuals perceive their own ability is what motivates their achievements.

There are two different approaches that people can take when evaluating their success or failure in achievement situations, these are task goals and ego goals. Consider for a moment how you measure your own success, whether it is based on a recent performance or on your overall improvement. If you evaluate your competency by comparing your own past performances and your focus is on improving in your sport, then you are task-orientated. Those who evaluate competence using a task approach believe that hard work leads to success. Put simply, task-orientated individuals are motivated by mastering their sport.

Whereas, if you’re on the more competitive side and evaluate your competency based on comparing yourself to others, it is likely that you are ego-orientated. You are motivated by winning. People who take an ego-orientated approach to achievement believe that having a strong ability and impressing the right people is the route to success. The effort that has been put into training is often overlooked and the competition performance is the sole measure of achievement. As you may have guessed, this is not a reliable measure of achievement as it can lead to disappointment and lower self-esteem when somebody is better than you or if you have had a sub-par performance in front of others. In fact, people who are ego-orientated in their sport may purposefully choose easier tasks in order to appear competent which leads to stagnation in their sport.

This can help to explain how it is difficult to recover from set-backs and you may notice a period of little improvement following a disappointing day. Therefore the task, or mastery, approach to evaluating your ability produces a more positive experience where improvement is more likely to occur. Being task-orientated is associated with greater enjoyment in sport, commitment and motivation. Task-orientated people are better at picking themselves up after setbacks. They also tend to be more satisfied with performance and therefore this is the more adaptive of the goal orientations.

Practical considerations

So how do you put this into practice? The TARGET model is an excellent tool for creating more task-orientated motivation.

Task: Focus strongly on learning and avoid social comparison.

Authority: Make some decisions about your own training and take confidence in your ability to do this.

Reward: Acknowledge and appreciate improvement and effort.

Grouping: Rather than competing with others, work together. This is straight-forward if you are part of a team. However, if you compete individually it may mean taking it in turns to break the wind in a competition.

Evaluation: Self-evaluate your progress often, a journal is a great way to do this.

Timing: Give yourself enough time to improve, and self-evaluate as soon as possible after a performance.

Take-home notes

1.  If you often find yourself disappointed after a performance based on comparison to others or standards of competence, it might be time to try a different approach.
2.  Focus on training efforts and personal improvements rather than competition performance.
3.  Race against yourself, seek to improve on your personal performance rather than measuring up to others.
4. Self-evaluate your training and give yourself feedback regularly to foster a task-orientated environment for your training.

References

Dweck, C.S., & Leggett, E.L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95, 256-273.

Epstein, J. (1989). Family structures and student motivation: A developmental perspective. In C. Ames & R. Ames (Eds), Research on motivation in education (Vol. 3, pp. 259-295). New York: Academic Press.

Harwood, C., Spray, M.C. & Keegan, R.J. (2015). Achievement goal theories in sport. In T.S. Horn. (2006). Advances in Sport and Exercise Psychology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. 

Heggebo, F. (n.d.). Creating a mastery-orientated performance climate - The role of a coach. Believe Perform. Retrieved March 9th, 2020, from https://believeperform.com/creating-a-mastery-oriented-performance-climate-the-role-of-a-coach/.

Roberts, G.C., Treasure, D.C., & Conroy, D.E. (2007). Understanding the dynamics of motivation in sport and physical activity: An achievement goal interpretation. In G. Tenenbaum & R.C. Eklund (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (p. 3–30). John Wiley & Sons Inc.