Allow Criticism to Make You Better

When people criticize you - coaches, other players, parents, etc - you can let it hurt your feelings or you can let it motivate you to get better and prove them wrong.

It's not healthy to let everything that everyone says about you affect you, and you don't have to try to prove yourself to everyone, but always find ways to motivate yourself and to improve.

The Girl At The Gym
I was at a gym and I saw this girl and her dad going through basketball drills.  She was obviously very skilled for her age, but these boys (who I assume go to school with her) were giving her a hard time about not using the correct hand on left-hand layups.  I saw her put her head down, and she didn't have the same energy the rest of the workout.

After their workout, I overheard their dad say, 'You can't get down about what people say to you.  There will always be people who criticize you.  You have to decide for yourself if that criticism is real.  If the criticism is real, use it to get better so that next time they see you, you can finish better with your left hand.  If the criticism isn't real or valid, just ignore it.  Either way, don't let it affect your workouts anymore.'  

The funniest part of this whole experience was that I stayed around and watched the boys practice and it was obvious that her skill level was so much more advanced than the boys.  Don't let people occupy your mind that has no reason to be there.

The Soccer Player

I knew this high school girls soccer player.  He was talented and had the potential to play at a lower level in college.  He and his parents wanted to work for a Division 1 scholarship, so they joined one of the best teams in her area.  The jump in competition, expectations, and intensity was a lot for him (and his parents) to handle.  The coach of this new team was honest and demanding.  It got to the point where he couldn't take it anymore, lost his confidence, and lost his love for the game.  

His parents' approach was to blame the loss of confidence on the coach.  Throughout the process, the coach was telling him what he needed to work on to get better and tried pushing him to do so.  The coach was tough on him, as he is on all of his athletes because he knows how hard you have to work to make the gains that he wanted to make.  When the coach would push him, instead of encouraging him, the parents would talk negatively about the coach.  In the end, the athlete stopped working because he thought the coach was just mean and unfair, and the family claimed that the lack of progress was because the coach didn't like him when in reality, the coach was trying to do everything he could to help him.

If the parents could see that the coach was showing him what he needed to do to reach the dreams that he had, they could have helped their son use his coaching and criticism as motivation to get better, and he would have had a realistic chance to play Division 1 soccer.

How we approach criticism and adversity will go a long way in determining how successful we can be.  If we use it to motivate us, we will continue to get better and better.  If we let it bring us down, it can stop us before we reach our full potential.

As the saying goes, 'Pressure can burst pipes or build diamonds.'  Let the pressure turn you into the player that we all know that you can be.