Firing your coach
Why we may need to go a different direction
Mike Vrabel was fired from his head coaching job with the Tennessee Titans. Apparently, in the sports world, this was unexpected. A headline filled my feeds for a news cycle or two. Seen as one of the best present coaches, Vrabel’s ouster was criticized by many. It’s how it goes; in fact, six vacancies have been created lately. I have no idea what type of coach Vrabel was, but it got me thinking.
Our inner coach
What interested me is the way I continue with my coach and the way we all do. Didn’t know you had one? You do, and he may need to be let go.
We all have an inner coach. A sort of motivating narrator that’s evaluating, criticizing, and trying to perfect our efforts. He or she is often severely lambasting us for missteps and trying to get us on — or keep us on track.
Folks who struggle with worth can be particularly susceptible to keeping an inner coach on, even if it’s not helpful. We tend to motivate ourselves from the harshest and least humane point of view. It’s a voice that forgets that you and I are human and mistakes in performance are our M.O. This voice seems to say there’s success at the other end of beating ourselves up.
For example, this time of year goes like this: Look in the mirror, hate yourself, and then flog yourself in the gym with a joyless exercise plan. Rinse and repeat each January.
Who knows how this happens, but I suspect film depictions of drill sergeants or coaches partially inspire us. Maybe we had task-master parents. The uniform way of these cattle prod voices is that if you need improvement, you should criticize yourself for betterment. This is made worse if we have zero models for motivation other than this. It’s a reliable trope in film and movies, so I don’t expect it to go away.
We sometimes make a deal with the devil in making room for this type of inner drill sergeant. It goes like this: Angry outbursts and unhinged tantrums are allowed if the end goal is excellence. These taskmasters we have known have yelled because they care. And we can close the story with a kid whose life was turned around because he was yelled at playing a game. That coach believed in him; it only took a lifetime for him to see it.
We take this template and map it to all our efforts. We say (without saying) “I care about excellence therefore my inner dialog must do its best impression of a drill sergeant cliche”. And just like in the movies, we’ll someday look back on all those traumatic anxiety-creating screaming sessions and see them as the real source of our terrific work ethic. Never mind the immobilizing anxiety we’ve created; the ends justify the means. Sadly, we rarely make it to the end. There’s always a new reason to instigate change angrily.
Here’s the thing, the way of a football coach can get you and I through a quarter of a football game but life is longer. All that matters for a coach is the next 15 minutes or less. You and I will have about 80 years on earth; we are not doing the same kind of motivating. Yet we’re motivating the same way. I’m afraid tough love is more a short term story gimmick. Who doesn’t love a tender-hearted brow-beater who only wants the best for you?
Not to say there aren’t critical moments where a stern evaluation is needed. But it’s more an exception than a whole way of operating.
Back to our surprising coaching vacancy created in Tennessee. If a multi-million dollar organization that’s a part of a city’s identity (if not a state’s) can release a decent coach in a surprise move, I wonder why we’re so unwilling to let ours go? Maybe it’s time our upper management went in “a different direction.”
Why? Because science.
Would you believe data?
Dr. Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion for over 15 years has shown that being self-compassionate is actually a stronger motivator.
The number-one reason people give for why they aren’t more self-compassionate is the fear that they will be too easy on themselves. Without constant self-criticism to spur myself on, people worry, won’t I just skip work, eat three tubs of ice cream and watch Oprah reruns all day? In others words, isn’t self-compassion really the same thing as self-indulgence?
When we are ruthless with ourselves, Neff says our imagined field of options narrows. We only see putting our head down and driving through a linebacker (so to speak). Again this works for the last play of a drive, but 30 years of it can be crippling. It creates behavioral ruts that cause us to become defensive because, well, they work.
And that might be the most damning thing about all this. The tactic works but doesn’t help. We only care about short-term goals, so if something works in the moment, it must be the best thing.
Look into Neff’s work. She’s done TedTalks, has been on podcasts, and written helpful books.
I’m a tough whatever
I know this butts up against your Gen X instincts, we did things the right way, none of this weak self-love stuff. Here’s the thing. When I think back to the 8-9 boys who met regularly to play backyard football, baseball, and kickball in the ’80s, three are dead, two are morbidly obese, and one is a recovering alcoholic. There are a million possible reasons for some of these things, but if we want to point to how we’ve done things as being better, the inconvenient results aren’t helping me see it as accurate.
So, the next time your inner coach rants and throws a clipboard, tell him, thank you for your service, but we’re going a different direction.
Be well, Feral Souls.
Wow. This is really good.