Digging the position out of positive

This just may be the most reflective blog I'll ever write. It's about a male university student, aged 20, who has only just discovered the real benefits of self review. 15 odd years of improvement opportunity wasted, and it's left him thinking how much better could he be? He's played numerous sports, both team and individual, and whilst he's often thought about his previous performance, he's only ever truly considered the negative ones, the games or efforts where things just didn't happen for him. When considering this, lets imagine it's a 50-50 split of good games to bad games. Thats a lot of opportunity lost for this poor soul to make himself a little richer. He's only just considering his position surrounding positive performances. 

Whilst he listened to his coaches and absorbed any praise and positive acclamation he had worked his ass off to deserve, he simply left it at that. No further thought, lets just go again next weekend. If this had been a poorly executed game, it would have been harsh consideration for the remainder of the week, with chats and emails to try and find the root of this performance. But, whilst he was happy to simply soak praise and smile after a positive game, he really should have been giving the same depth of thought to a positive one. There is just as much there to learn, just in a slightly more sun drenched light. What did I do right? What was the process of this? Where was I better? How else can I apply this good work? 

The fish that really slapped him with this lightbulb thought occurred on Monday the 26th of March, 2012, at approximately 11:00am. He was driving home after a frustrating skills session, where things weren't going well for him. He thought, ok, what was I doing that made this work for me? And then it twigged. It had been there all along, he'd never just grasped it. A simple trick that made the skill work, consistently and under pressure. Whilst this did occur after a negative training session, it should have happened two weeks ago after a positive game. Two weeks can be the difference between participating in this 20 year olds dream, or missing out due to a singular skill not working week after week. 

He also now realises that this concept can be applied to all of life. Further, he realises some of his similarly aged counterparts may have thought of this long ago, but there isn't much he can do. Apart from try and dig the positives out from it, as this is considered a 'positive' performance.

He also realises that this can also applied to coaching. By planting the seed of this thought in others, it may just grow into a seedling form of revision tree. As it matures, the athlete can coach themselves, just with some further observation from the coach to lay the revision into a more concrete form. Not stone, but at least something malleable and able to be developed. 

The 20 year old was me. The skill was the 'throw in' that the Boundary Umpire must do to restart play in an AFL game. The dream is running throughout the finals series. Here's hoping that this small realisation may be one of the tools in the grey matter named the brain that can lead me to it. 

A pedagogic understands.