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G List the tangible achievements you identified in Time-Out 5.3 and then think about what they provide evidence of.

G Now list your non-tangible achievements identified in Time-Outs 5.3 and 5.4 and think about what they are underpinned by. If you find yourself struggling with this, then think about what it is about you that has enabled this achievement.

Overcoming perfectionism requires a fundamental shift in your attitude towards yourself and how you approach life in general. The following strategies and guidelines provide a starting point for this shift.

Celebrating your achievements

I knew one performer who had achieved some impressive things in his career, but told me that he was ‘disgusted at his lack of achievement’ when he compared them with a very small number of extremely high achievers. The important message from this anecdote is that it is important that you learn to celebrate your achievements, and focus in particular on those that are non-tangible, since these are the achievements that are not gauged against society’s expectations, and are underpinned by attributes and values that are at the core of you. These are the source of being able to feel good about yourself as a human being, if only you allow yourself to recog- nise, accept and place value in them.

Accepting fallibility

Nobody is perfect so why should you expect to be? You will never achieve

this goal. The problem with performers with perfectionist tendencies is that they appear almost compelled to focus on the smallest flaws and mistakes and to ‘beat themselves up’ over them. The best performers accept that they will mess up from time to time. Indeed, learning from making mistakes is an important part of their development. The crucial element is to dwell on mistakes for only as long as it takes to draw out the important learning points, and then to move on and to focus on the here-and-now.

Focusing on process as well as outcome

It would be unrealistic of me to suggest that you should not focus on out- comes such as winning and promotions. However, there can only ever be one winner and not everyone can be promoted. This means that focusing on the processes that underpin outcomes is important, and for two rea- sons. Firstly, you may not win or get promoted, but you can still perform well at the processes and derive some satisfaction from that. Secondly, focusing solely on outcomes only adds to the pressure that you are under as a result of your strong need to achieve. Focusing on processes can alle- viate the pressure to some extent.

Setting realistic goals

This is a lot easier said than done when you have perfectionist tenden- cies. Perfectionists’ goals are rarely met since they are so high, but they struggle to accept that their goals should be set any lower. You will need to identify any constraints on you, such as time and lack of control over some important factors in the environment, and also personal limita- tions. This may need the help of someone you respect and trust, in order to be able to set expectations that are attainable.

Recognising and overcoming perfectionist thinking styles

There are essentially three types of perfectionist thinking styles20_: 1 Should/must thinking: ‘I should be able to do this right’

‘I must not mess up’ 2 All-or-nothing thinking: ‘I can’t do this at all’

‘This is completely wrong’ 3 Overgeneralisation thinking: ‘I’ll never be able to do this’

‘I’ll always get things wrong’ Recognising when you are engaging in such thoughts and self-talk is the starting point. This is particularly important when you are under pres- sure because such self-talk only serves to exacerbate the pressure. Recognise your use of ‘should’, ‘must’, ‘never’, ‘have to’ and ‘always’ when you are under pressure and learn to develop counter-statements that are more rational and positive. The process of changing self-talk is described later in this chapter.

20_{Edmund J. Bourne, The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook, New Harbinger Publications,} Oakland, California, 1995.

Where do you start?

You have probably ‘lived’ with your current level of self-esteem for quite a while. So if you want to improve it, you will need to be patient and work on it gradually. The strategies and techniques described in this sec- tion provide a framework within which you can start to enhance your self-esteem. The framework essentially involves three processes that you may wish to follow:

1 Recognising how you typically attribute success and failure and how this impacts upon your self-esteem.

Over to Adrian . . .

I was quite a shy and introverted child. I was happy in my own space, but seemed to find it hard to become part of the ‘in-crowd’ at school. My academic achievements were also, in the main, average. It appeared that I was just about average at most sports. I had learned to swim, as every child does, to save my own life should I fall in to the water. But it wasn’t until the age of 8 that I had my first swimming race.

Not only did this feed the need for personal endeavour, but I also seemed to be above average. I started to feel good about myself. Winning the Airedale and Wharfedale one-length backstroke for under 9s was the best thing that had happened to me in my short life. Looking back on it now, I know that building on this

achievement with other swimming-related success was the key to me building a strong self-worth. In fact, I am sure that the main reason that I dedicated myself wholeheartedly to swimming was because it was practically the only way I was building self-esteem. It gave me something to feel good about.

I remember telling my coach when I was 14 about my dreams to win the Olympics, and quite cleverly he had me hold on to this dream, but break it down to more achievable targets. At such a young age, I had been coached to set short and medium-term targets. In parallel with this, I learned the other golden rule about goal setting, and that was that all achievements are made at the process level. Our entire daily swimming training sessions focused solely on the various kicking and pulling techniques, drills and stroke work, as well as dives and turns. I spent four months trying to spin round the wall faster!

2 Getting to the abilities, beliefs and values that lie at the core of you via careful consideration of both your tangible and non-tangible achievements.

3 Recognising and letting go of any perfectionist tendencies.

There will be times when you neither have time, nor is it appropriate, to reflect on your worth as a human being and you need to be able to tweak or significantly raise your confidence to meet the demands of specific sit- uations. As I stated earlier in this chapter, even the very best performers have self-doubts from time to time when in highly pressured situations. They have therefore developed strategies for quickly regaining and enhancing confidence levels. These strategies are best understood within the context of a framework of situation-specific self-confidence21 _in which confidence is a function of four factors:

G focusing on recent performance accomplishments; G drawing on own and others’ experiences;

G managing self-talk;

G interpreting your readiness to perform in a positive way.

Research has consistently shown these factors to be important predictors of success in skilled performers. In addition, research findings show that they aid performers’ commitment to highly challenging goals, as well as increasing persistence and effort that enables them to bounce back after setbacks. Importantly in the context of dealing with pressure, self-confi- dence also appears to protect performers against the negative effects of anxiety.22_{The strategies and techniques described below are therefore} based on the framework of self-confidence described above.

21_{Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioural Change,} Psychological Review, 84, 191–215, 1977.

22_{Graham Jones & Lew Hardy (Eds), Stress and Performance in Sport, Wiley, 1995, p. 273.}