The Mindset Proven To Improve Performance
Our brains are like our own personal PR people, spinning past events into a manner that suits us. If we make a mistake or fail at a task, our minds will apply a salve to make the situation better.
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With the baseball season in full tilt, here is a familiar scenario that is playing out in dugouts thousands of times across the country:
A hitter gets into a two-strike count, swings wildly over a breaking ball in the dirt, and comes back to the bench muttering about chasing that bad pitch.
Photo by Chris Chow on Unsplash
When the at bat is over, that player’s mind goes into action. Our brains are like our own personal PR people, spinning past events into a manner that suits us. If we make a mistake or fail at a task, our minds will apply a salve to make the situation better.
This everyday occurrence is actually a critical point in a player’s development.
If you had a bad day at the plate, chasing a few curveballs in the dirt, you might start thinking that, man, if only I didn’t swing at those, I would have had a much better game. While it may be true, this response creates blindspots for us that impede our ability to get better.
Our minds have the tendency to create counterfactual outcomes to those types of events. And there are two different ways that we typically look at it.
The first, represented above, is the subtractive counterfactual. It’s when you focus on removing an action that has happened: If only I didn’t chase that pitch, if only I didn’t throw the ball in the dirt to first, if only I didn’t fumble the grounder, if only I didn’t hang that curveball, et cetera.
There is a powerful pull for people to view events with a subtractive counterfactual slant. For one, it’s easy. The event happened and things might have been better had it not. It is that internal PR hype man is telling you what you want to hear: You are good, just don’t do that one thing next time. This mindset, however, prevents growth.
The second counterfactual is an additive counterfactual. This is where you look at that same scenario and build on what happened.
Instead of looking at it from the perspective of “if only I didn’t swing at that ball in the dirt,” you might think “if only I was aggressive early in the count” or “if only I looked for just fastballs in two-strike counts.”
A subtractive counterfactual usually expresses regret over a mistake or a failed strategy. An additive counterfactual sees new strategies and options -- it adds choices available if the situation happens again.
What happens when you start looking at failures through an additive counterfactual mindset, you start planning solutions with those options. You begin to develop an aggressive approach early in the count. You might work at pitch recognition to decipher pitch types better. You might focus on only swinging at pitches in your happy zone. These set you down a path to improvement while simply not swinging at that breaking ball the next time changes nothing.
As noted in the book, Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, University of California-Berkeley researchers have found that, over time, those who use the additive counterfactual techniques perform better at athletic tasks while those with the subtractive perform worse. By analyzing your performance through an additive counterfactual viewpoint, you are creating opportunities for growth and overcoming your own biases.
This line of thinking can benefit not just players and coaches on the field, but anyone looking to improve in all aspects of life. By implementing an additive counterfactual mindset, you change the context from solving one failure into potentially expanding multiple opportunities.
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