Sports Ethics: Focus on What you can Control—Yourself

Marcus Smart, an Oklahoma State All American was just suspended for three days after hitting fan who yelled an expletive at him in a game. His suspension will hurt his team badly and highlights an ever-present challenge in athletics and life--individuals have to focus upon what they can control-themselves. When they move beyond it like Marcus, they damage themselves and their team. Smart gets it in acknowledge his harm to his teammates and fans and does not duck the issue, “It’s something I’ll have to learn from, a lesson I’ll have to learn from. The consequences that are coming with it — I’m taking full responsibility. No fingers pointing — this is all upon me.”

Every competition produces a stream of stress, mistakes, accidents, and intentional and unintentional impacts, bad referee calls. The chaotic complexity of competition creates bad luck, good luck, and unanticipated and pathological consequences for even perfectly executed perfect execution. These endless challenges pound on the psychological integrity of athletes and professionals and make self-conscious self-mastery the ethical foundation of achievement.

Every young and old athlete has heard it from coaches and players a thousand times—focus on what you can control—yourself.

The moral bedlam of competition can lead athletes and professionals to become confused, angry, frustrated even lost. The confusion of competition can invite explosions and erratic behavior and deformed judgment all of which hurt the person and the person’s team. Good and successful professionals drive themselves to master skills and execute under pressure. This success depends upon developing self-mastery to control oneself. Good athletes and professionals cultivate a zone of control that integrates emotions, perception, mind, attitudes, body and intent.

Every successful athletes and professional faces this constant exhortation—control what you can control—yourself. It is the foundation upon which all other skills and the ability to succeed under stress and competition depend. It is also one of the hardest lessons for people to master; it also anchors personal responsibility of the athlete and professional.

The zone of control depends upon the athlete’s ability to master internal psychological control. Persons can educate their emotions. They can train themselves what to be angry about and what to ignore. They can channel intruding emotions into other actions or offset erupting emotions with prepared and integrated programs of integrated memory, emotions, perceptions and intention that enable them to counter program anger or frustration. Losing it is not preordained but a failure of internal self-mastery.

This means developing a form of full-bodied wisdom that lead the ancient Greeks to value sports so highly. One’s emotions become a form of pattern recognition that instantaneously recognize the rightness or wrongness of actions. They provide internal armor against loss of control and weakness of will by supporting disciplined intentional action under conditions that the emotional augments perception sees as appropriate. This pattern recognition embodies not just the knowledge of trained athletes and professionals but also the amalgamation of emotion and cognition.

This form of embodied wisdom and training takes time and effort. It requires constant self-effort by the young athlete encouraged by coaches and fellow teammates. Players working with coaches and fellow players can educate their emotions and train themselves about what to be angry about and how to channel that anger rather than either get angry over things they cannot control or let the anger control them and drive them to irrational or hurtful actions.

This self-mastery remains the key to building physical and emotional resilience in action. This resilience enables players to face failure and bad luck and intentional goading but rebound and continue forward. 

The emphasis upon controlling what you can control can focus inward--players cultivate their own deep values. A player can grow into a deeper commitment to their team and to winning and enduring rather than expressing their own individuality or paying back an slight. Self-control involves growing into an awareness of deep and abiding values and buttressing these values with the emotional coding to sustain them under stress.

Losing it is one of the great enemies of performance for any athlete or professional.

Young athletes often explode in frustration. It often is directed at themselves for failing to achieve their ideal outcome. But too often, especially with young male athletes, they explode at and blame referees, rancorous fans or opponents who showed them up, got in a hit or succeeded. They aim their anger and vexation to blame anyone but themselves.

Their past anger and acting out primes referees and other players to expect the worse. Players do not get the benefit of the doubt and will get called for fouls even if they did not commit them. Other teams target such players and goad them. They take cheap shots and talk trash and push and shove trying to goad the player into “losing it.” If the goading pulls a player of his or her game, this degrades his or her performance but also hurts the entire team.

This loss of control usually reflects a failure to take responsibility or remember the obligation to the team. The individual blames a failure on someone else. This often occurs in games when a foul is called and the player takes off on the referee. They yell and scream and get so caught up in blaming the referee that again their attention diffuses and they cannot collect themselves to be present and focused to what is going on. They play distracted and opponents take advantage of their distraction and lingering anger to provoke more distraction and anger. The same might occur when they are fouled or believe an opponent has fouled them or attempted to hurt them. 

Opponents take advantage of individuals who do not have self-mastery. A goaded player will get angry and yell and jaw and may even attempt to physically contact the opponent, which would simply elicit a foul against them. How many times have players who were hit gotten called for a foul for their retaliation while the initial “foul” is missed?

Losing control becomes a habit. People default to established patterns that reinforce future action. The longer an individual allows themselves to get angry and lose focus and act out, the more this becomes imbedded as a default action—they start to react that way out of habit and it takes conscious reflection and practice to break the habit. That habit can be exploited by opponents and distrusted by teammates and allies. Individuals excuse themselves as just being me or expressing myself or see it as an isolated incident when the reality grows into habitual responses that undermine their attention, discipline and expertise.

When a player loses self-control, she or he loses focus and s judgment. Their actions disrupt the scheme of their team, often draws penalties from referees. Angry and frustrated individuals try to do too much, free lance or seek revenge for a perceived slight.

The loss of control and focus can be contagious and infect other teammates. Fellow players are familiar with a player’s lack of responsibility and self-control. Referees are primed to look for them and penalize them. A player’s inability to stay focused and keep self-control throws off the fine tuned trust and reliance of the team. If fellow teammates expect someone to lose it, they will alter their behavior and undermine schemes because they do not trust the responsibility and maturity of a teammate.

Some players even internalize their own lack of self-control as a badge of honor. They prime themselves and become familiar with their own expected responses; sometimes making their own “explosiveness” a decoration rather than a sign of the selfish immaturity and selfishness. These actions reflect a form of egocentrism and ultra-individualism—individualism without responsibility.

The domain of self-control involves a person’s mind, perception, attitudes, emotions and body. Professional and sport excellence begins and ends with internal self-awareness and mastery. An individual must come to the moment of realization that “losing it” losing control, getting angry or blaming it on everybody else undermines effective performance and focus. This is the Archimedean point of sports ethics—the obligation to accept responsibility and control oneself. The individual learns to “let go” and get on with the game and their mission.

At the same time it requires the player to learn that they can educate their own emotions. The capacity to endure pain, the capacity to endure practice and loss and bounce back all require educating emotions to support intent and obligation to others. Players and professionals learn that emotions mark obligation but can be woven into sustained effort, endurance and resistance to mistakes and baiting. It takes emotional discipline and almost counter emotional constructs to deal with rancorous audiences, baiting players and mistakes or bad calls by referees.

The upside means that players can keep their focus upon the situational awareness around them. They do not get distracted and their focus and concentration do not stay anchored on the play before or anger at a referee or trying to make up for an unseen foul by the player earlier in the game. All of these diffuse concentration from being present to the situation before them. It distracts judgment and leads to slower decisions or decisions informed by ego driven needs rather than the requirements of the team and the play unfolding.  

The other upside means that a player then develops a reputation of self-control and focus. This reputation not only anchors performance by other team members but referees defer more to their actions—they can get the benefit of the doubt when they do slip because this is not the expected norm.

Players who internalize their ethics of self-control and focus upon what they can control—their own values, emotions, trained memories, trained perceptions and intent—model responsibility for themselves. It becomes self-reinforcing in life.

The player no longer externalizes their anger and frustration, but turns inward not in a destructive way but instructive way. He or she learns. This stance primes other teammates and models for other teammates how to go about their business. This control and learning drives them to get better. Individuals stop blaming others during the game and after the let go and focus upon getting better, improving their own self mastery, their own perception and pattern recognition through tape and their own technique through practice. Self-master leads to self-improvement and learning.

Remembering, “I can only control myself” depends upon self-aware responsibility. Like its opposite, it can be trained as a virtue and habit of response and action. This means retraining emotions to simply pause when the explosive adrenalin and cortisol unleash in the system.

This capacity to pause and conjure up counter emotions to offset the anger are critical to balance in the game At the same time the capacity to maintain a center of calm to understand that “I am losing it” and respond by reasserting control. This involves cognitive awareness and self-discipline to reign in anger but also pulling up alternative 

emotional/physical internal model to guide behavior. This alternative model resides in memory and practice and can become a practice and internalized response. The slow and steady extension of self-mastery to controlling emotions under stress permits individuals to intentionally channel self-expression rather than assume every action and emotions possesses legitimacy.

This habit of self-mastery helps professional address another reality of life--aging. In athletics the body reaches a peak in mid twenties to early thirties at the latest. As it ages capacity declines in certain areas and younger players with greater innate capacity enter as competitors. Players who understand what they can control adapt to their own physical changes. They do not give up, but develop technique to compensate or knowledge such as greater study of tendencies or even develop new approaches such as a pitcher developing new pitchers or strong armed quarterback learning to be more precise in midrange and short passes. 

Team cultures and coach modeling build up the social capital that supports young and old players achieving and sustaining self-mastery under stress and facing stress. Team leaders reinforce an ethic of keeping calm. Team members share a supportive ethics of not giving opponents an edge by handing them easy fouls or unfocused action. Teammates rush to each other to calm down and defuse anger and conflicts before they flare.

 Coaches model this and team leaders practice it. Too many coaches scream and yell and lose it on the sidelines and then wonder why their players play out of control and get unnecessary fouls. Show me an out of control coach on the sideline and I’ll show you an undisciplined team.

At the end of playoff game a Seahawk player put it best. Their opponents had spent a lot of time “taking cheap shots” to throw the players off. He got it right, “they tried to get me out of my zone, but we stayed in the zone.”

Sports Ethics: Taking Care of Business

When Rick Pitino the coach of Louisville was asked how his team will prepare for the NCAA tournament, he responded, “Nothing to see here. We’re just taking care of business.” Most great coaches would respond in the same way. Besides being the name of a great Bachman Turner Overdrive song Takin Care of Business articulates a powerful way to approach challenges and high performance.

The concept links performance and business. I think of business as a group of people committed to a common task or mission. These can range from making a great product, providing a service, or achieving a goal like winning. The metaphor creates ethical obligations upon the person who has the job to master the skills of the job. It also evokes a mindset about how to approach work. In the song self-employed musicians

And start your slaving job to get your pay

If you ever get annoyed

Look at me I'm self-employed

I love to work at nothing all day

Most of us don’t have that luxury, but sports teams and high performing professionals develop a remarkable capacity to link satisfaction to performance and even connect “fun” to high performance as in the song. (other blog) The capacity for fulfillment and fun align with high performing professionals across huge ranges of jobs. The reasons lie in a way of thinking about business

First, business involves having a job or a task. That job or task is imbedded in a project to achieve a goal. Second, having a job revolves around having a role in the goal driven process. The role covers responsibilities, obligations and skills that a person is expected to master and perform with competence and consistency day in and day out. To master a job or rule requires consistent practice, learning and discipline to maintain constant performance and improve where needed. Third, businesses mean working with others. People know they are interdependent and rely upon each other—to achieve team members learn to trust and respect each other as they work together.

Taking care of business involves a mind set and character set for individuals. Successful business and successful jobs require strong work ethic. This work ethic grows from an attitude that the worker or player or professional gradually learns. Some people may bring a natural work ethic where they throw themselves passionately into work. Others may have to be cajoled, trained, motivated or even commanded into a strong work ethic.

The work ethics has to be learned but also tempered. Just having enthusiasm and throwing oneself into work is not enough in any successful enterprise. First, a player has to temper their effort to match the endurance of the task. They often have to build up endurance and conditioning both physically and mentally. Second, the cognitive and skill dimensions matter deeply. Just contributing effort and hard work does little unless the person masters the cognitive and skill and formal dimensions of a task.

This craft knowledge unites cognitive, physical and emotional dimensions. Third, the work ethic plus cognitive dimensions require the ability to learn and adapt. Many jobs seem not change, but all the best production processes work when workers constantly contribute to improving the process even in little ways. In sports and professional life innovation is the norm as well as competition. Players and professionals must be open to learn. They need a quality of mind and character that does not lock them into only one way of doing things when the environment or conditions or opponents change. Consistency is one thing, stubborn futility another.

The simple words “take care of business” involve complex challenges to individuals. The work ethic, mastery of skills and learning need to be packaged with a particular type of commitment and endurance.

To take care of business entails a process of preparation, training, testing and learning that builds a team culture and character as well as style of learning and adapting. It narrows the focus and training for the persons to give them the space to practice, perfect and achieve despite distractions and surprises. This permits teams to keep an even keel amid stresses of different environments. Alabama football coach Nick Saban links this approach to business,

“Eliminate the clutter and all the things that are going on outside and focus on the things that you can control with how you sort of go about and take care of your business. That’s something that’s ongoing, and it can never change.”

Fine players and professionals show up for work each day. They bring it each day. Taking care of business means men and women have gained a mature and durable emotional, cognitive and physical solution to the emotional roller coasters of competition as well as the nagging costs and thrills of winning and losing. Most professional life and sports combines deep capacity to prepare and husband energy for a marathon. But this deep reservoir is not enough.

Competitive and professional life also resembles a series of sprints under intense competitive pressure. The sprint requires total commitment for a period of time, then time to recoup, renew and then give maximum effort again. Football probably resembles this most, but most sports carry this rhythm, so having a workmanlike attitude.

This approach also permits players to approach high stakes games with focus and intensity and not get overwrought or panicked—they keep balance. At the same time to take care of business also means players and professionals never take things for granted. They understand there are no “gimmes” and that upsets can occur. Players show up for what may feel like lesser games and still play with focus, skill and appropriate intensity.

Player’s don’t “lose it” either under stress of high stakes or temptations of low stakes. Business-like teams possess a steady keel and durability across different levels of competition and different intensities of experience and challenge. They possess the preparation, work ethic, skill and willingness to learn and adapt.

And I'll be...

Taking care of business, every day

Taking care of business, every way

I've been taking care of business, it's all mine

Taking care of business and working overtime

Sports Ethics: Finish It

Last year I watched both the Seattle Seahawks and the Washington Huskies take strong leads into fourth quarter of their football games. The games felt" in the bag" so  I could switch channels. In both games, however, the teams lost the games in the final minutes. I listened to the Husky coaches and players repeat the mantra “we have to finish.” Commenting on the Seahawks game Leon Washington who had a fantastic kickoff return for a touchdown stated, “finish, finish, finish. That’s what we have to do, that’s what the coaches had reminded us.” After the Seahawks came from behind to win their first road playoff game in 25+ years, Redskins half back Alfred Morris reminded everyone, "it's not how you start, it's how you finish."

The words sound so simple—finish it. The concept is fundamental to the ethics of high achievement in life and sports, and its execution very hard.

It sounds so easy but really demands more than any of us think. Any writer trying to finish a manuscript; any lawyer trying to finish a case; any salesman trying to finish a sale; they all understand the discipline of finishing. The context does not matter, the concept of finishing it highlights how results overshadow effort or excellence.

Finishing as an Accomplishment:           Finish it hints at how just finishing the game can be an achievement. I think this can be true in both a good and bad sense. If a team reaches a moment where they are only playing to finish the game, period, and they are going through the motions and just want it over; that team has failed in its purpose and betrayed itself and its integrity. Playing to finish in this way insults sports integrity.

On the other hand, playing to finish can involve a team or person that might be outmatched, but the athletes play on with intensity, focus and at their highest skill. They do not give up; they may lose but they finish the game, even a loss, with heads held high. They kept in the game and finishing this way even though outgunned involves a form of honor.

In life we often face these challenges that tempt us to quit. In an iconic example any runner knows he or she can quit at any step, at any time. Their legs hurt, their breath shudders out, their body screams quit and their mind mutters that this is stupid. An individual runner can finish their first marathon or even their first mile or in my case their first block and feel great pride at the accomplishment of finishing the race and above all of not quitting. To finish in these terms of not giving up, keeping up intensity and focus and finishing despite pain and obstacles bring honor and a true sense of accomplishment. The reality and metaphor of a "finish line' solidifies  the power and importance of getting across the line, of finishing what we started. It implies a level of responsibility and self-discipline that accompanies finishing what we start. 

Sometimes just finishing, period, displays integrity and moxie and should be recognized. An injured player who plays to the finish elicits the same admiration. There is a reason coaches and trainers and friends all urge us to "finish strong" at that moment when we most want to quit. 

Finishing as Focus at the End:      When Leon Washington repeats the mantra “finish,” he means something different that deserves attention. He describes a team that does not manifest the intensity, mental focus and physical prowess at the end of a game in a way that allows them to hold a win. The expression refers in a good way to teams that “finish off” teams they should beat. But more often it indicts teams or athletes that that lose games they should win or to teams that are ahead and cannot finish. The once winning team loses at the end of the game and lets the other team back in because they do not play at their highest level at the end of the competition.

Competition means human beings opposed to us will be trying, thinking, training and developing new ideas to surprise us or win over us. It never ends. During games opponents adapt and if they do not lose heart, they strive to come back and change to gain a victory. Athletics exposes this archetypical core that rivalry in life or sport never stands still. 

To focus upon the finish reminds athletes and professionals that they are always on the clock. The game is never over until is is over or at least until the fat lady sings. Until the court closes, the surgery ends, the time clock runs out, a person must be present, focused, skilled and attuned to what is going on around them.

Athletes can lose in a number of ways. Sometimes adversaries just erupt and blow a team out of the water fast. Athletes finds themselves so far down so fast, they literally go into shock and underperform and stumble forward just playing out the clock. Sometimes, the game seesaws back and forth, and every play counts. Every player knows they are locked in a tight hard contest and must be fully engaged; people who play or witness such games know either team could have won. People remember such great competitions.  But sometimes a team is winning, and the other team claws back from being down and snatches the victory away. The athletes fail to finish it.

Finishing as a Mind Set:     Every game or series has built in attrition. To finish involves not just a point or play or even a game, but a rhythm where a team can start off winning and then faces the opponent's come back. Sometimes mental and physical attrition can distract or wear down intensity and focus. A team might relax when it gets ahead. Finishing involves a mind set and discipline. A team that knows how to finish does not relent but keeps its attention and resilience intact when runs and surprises occurs. It involves a form of focused emotional discipline coupled with the suppleness to bounce back when stress erupts.

Good finishers exploit their advantages and keep pressing to the end. But a failed finisher lets the opponent just “hang around.” An opponent keeps competing and gains confidence and energy rather than give up. The winning team cannot “put them away.” The other team stays within striking distance.  The failed finisher  should finish them off but does not have the energy, intensity or skill to up their performance and “pull away” or “put the game out of reach."

Sports contest have a winner. They end with a victor, and that requires someone must finish the game. High performers, athletes and professionals have the ability to envision the end and to let that vision discipline their training and attention before and during the competition. Life throws curves and just having the capacity to envision the end game and focus upon it is not enough. Getting ahead, facing a run from the other side, making mistakes all can tumble quickly into downward spirals and games get out of hand quickly.  A finisher must have the resilience to adapt and bounce back within the course of a completion to address these surprises and keep focused amid the ebb and flow of a competition.

The language of finishing can migrate into predatory language. To “finish someone off” resembles the language of hunting to kill. I had a student who left her sport because her coaches demanded that she display a “killer instinct.” She possessed superb skills and court sense as well as a balanced presence during the game, and won regularly. But her coaches wanted some type of zeal or emotional delight in beating the other person. They believed this emotional motivation to destroy the opponent would permit her to heighten her game and move in for the kill. I am not sure the structure of being a finisher requires having a killer-instinct. Too many coaches who see competition as war fall into that trap, but most good soldiers never do. They master discipline, focus and tempered ability to draw on emotional reserves when required. The involves the capacity to step up a person’s game. Here the person  unites skill, effort and judgement under stress  in order to finish off the competitor.

Focussing on finish it creates an imperative to stay present and focused upon the task at hand.  The ethics implied by finish reminds us that we cannot take anything for granted, and we can never rest on our laurels. Even when things are smooth sailing, things can go wrong. It requires a situational awareness of when to press an advantage and above all when not to let down one’s intensity that permits the other side get back into the game.

Finishers compete to the end; they cross the finish line with strength and attention intact. They compete fully with effort, attention and physical effort. Know the finish line and pressing forward involves responsibility plus resilience to hold on against the temptations of attrition, quitting or letting the other team steal a game.