Developing Young Leaders: Identifying Your Fears & Frustrations
Mike Collette • November 15, 2024
Identifying Your Fears & Frustrations
Identifying Your Fears & Frustrations
Last week, we explored self-drive and how it is a trainable skill. This week, we started to scratch the surface of how fear and frustration affect how we think and how we take action. When we make decisions from a place of fear or frustration, those decisions are often poor. So, how do we get out of that mindset and allow ourselves to think more creatively and make better choices? It’s a skill that requires practice, but the first step is to take a step back and identify what our default tendencies are when we feel frustrated or fearful.
In this week's LTAD sessions, we did some CDC (Cross-Domain Coaching). We created a simple game designed to generate low levels of frustration, and we tracked when and how that frustration emerged. This exercise helps build awareness of their default tendencies and hopefully helps them recognize similar behaviors in other areas of their lives.
Here are some quotes that came up during the game:
- After getting 0 points on the first 2 turns:
"I hate this game."
- After scoring 6 points on the next turn: "Only goal is not to come in last."
- After scoring 0 points on the first 3 turns: "I'm not trying."
- After scoring 7 points on the last turn: "If I did this every round, I would have won."
These comments aren’t groundbreaking, but they show how, when faced with early struggles or failure, the kids can quickly shift into frustration and blame the environment.
You might be wondering, how does all of this tie back into the self-drive work we did last week? One thing we’re seeing is that, in areas where we have self-drive, we tend to reduce fear and frustration more quickly. It doesn’t stop us from taking action, and we can make better decisions as a result. Understanding our tendencies when fear and frustration appear—and recognizing how they differ in areas where we feel driven—is key to making progress.
In today’s class, we’re experimenting with adding video games into the workout to see how we can dial up competitiveness and observe how frustration affects performance.
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