IN THIS ISSUE
01 Why the emotion after a bad game is pointing you somewhere
02 The car analogy that settled everything for me
03 What I protect in the 24 hours after a hard one
Hey club!
Three nights ago I had one of those games. Turnovers. Wrong reads. I knew it the whole time and could not fix it. Sat in the car after and did not turn the music on for a few minutes. Not sulking. Just noticing. Here is what I have learned to do in that moment after 10 years of playing professional basketball.
Let's go.
Takeaway #1: The emotion is not the problem. The unsettled identity is.
Do not suppress what you feel after a bad game. Emotion is energy and that energy is pointing at something. When you play bad and feel frustrated, it is because you want to play well. That part is right. But the next question matters: why do you want to play well? If you trace it all the way back and the honest answer is that your ego wants to be satisfied, that you want to look good, that is the real issue. You cannot chase that high and be locked in at the same time. Notice the emotion. Trace it back. Then match the feeling of what playing well actually feels like right now. Not when the result comes in. Right now. In order to have it, you have to be it first.
Takeaway #2: Act like you already know the end result.
If you knew, with total certainty, that you were going to make it home safely. Not hoping. Knowing. Would you react to the person who cuts you off in traffic? No. Because you are already certain of the outcome. You are settled. That car does not change where you are going or who you are. That is how you need to carry yourself in games. Both the good ones and the bad ones. When I play already matched to the feeling of what playing well looks like, a bad quarter is just the car that cut me off. I notice it. I let it pass. And I keep driving. In order to have it, you have to be it first.
Takeaway #3: What I protect in the 24 hours after a hard game.
Three things I do not touch after a bad one. Film (not that night, watch the next morning when the emotion is gone). Talking about it with people not in it (keeps the emotion active). Sleep (the nervous system actually resets while sleeping, the mental decision to move on matters, but the physical reset happens during sleep). The goal is not to feel better about the game. The goal is to walk into the next practice from a settled place. Not because the last game was good. Because you already know who you are.
Am I frustrated because I care about the game, or because I care about how I look?
Faith + Consistency,
Elijah
I built the full version of this process. 4 steps I run after every game, win or lose, to download the data and reset before the next one. It’s called The Pro Reset. Grab it here.
P.S. Next week I'm taking you inside the 3 hours before tip-off. What I actually do in that window, what most players waste it on, and the one thing I cut from my pregame that changed how sharp I feel at the opening whistle.
