3.
The Ugly Truth
The scene is an old hall in Sheffield, where four men are practising a dance routine with very little success to the sound of Donna Summer’s ‘Hot Stuff’ blaring out of the cassette player.
The ‘choreographer’ – a middle-aged man who looks more at home in the boardroom than on the dance floor – is becoming increasingly exasperated by the inability of the four dancers to finish the routine in a straight line with their arms aloft. He’s explained what he wants – and thought he’d made it very clear.
‘All I want to do is get you in a straight bloody line! What do I have to do?’ he cries.
‘Well, it’s the Arsenal offside trap,’ one of the dancers says.
‘You what?’
‘The Arsenal offside trap. Lomper here,’ he explains as he motions to one of the other dancers, ‘is Tony Adams, right? Any bugger looks like scoring, we all step forward and wave our arms around like a fairy.’
‘Oh, well that’s easy,’ another dancer, Dave, says.
‘OK,’ the choreographer concedes, turning to the young lad manning the cassette player and inviting him to press play again.
‘Hot Stuff’ starts up again and, after a ‘One, two, three, go!’ the four step forward with military precision and raise their right arms together while shouting, ‘Ref!’
The Arsenal offside trap.
The choreographer, shaking his head, concedes: ‘Perfect … perfect.’
‘Well, you should have said,’ says Dave, pouting and turning away in mild disgust.
The Meaning of the Message
The scene is from The Full Monty, a film about unemployed workers trying their hands at being professional male strippers – a pressured environment not many of us would feel comfortable entering into.
The choreographer in this scene is guilty of making the same mistake as so many coaches, teachers and managers. He is starting from his own version of reality rather than using that of those he is coaching. As one of the dancers points out, if he’d spoken to them in terms they could understand from the start, they’d have got it much sooner. It’s fair to say that the meaning of the message is in the response you get. If you don’t get the correct response then change the message.
As a coach, it is my responsibility to manage people’s learning so that they can perform at their best, and this invariably means learning to see things from their point of view so that I can use the tools that will best apply to them. During my PhD research, which involved working with elite kickers in rugby, I would give different messages – verbal keys – to each of the players, even though each message pertained to the same process: kicking from hand. Effectively I was reframing the process for each player. For one it would be ‘On the shelf, through the gate’, an instruction to hold the ball in both hands and imagine placing it on an imaginary shelf in front of their hips; once the ball had been ‘placed’ (i.e. released), the gate was the gap between the hands that now acted as a guide to swing the kicking leg through. Another player might prefer the prompt ‘Right foot, left hand’ to swing the (right) foot through the ball so it finished next to their left hand. There is no right and wrong; it’s about developing a range of different keys, then finding out what works best for each player. I doubt very much that the Arsenal offside trap is standard dance choreography.
A friend of mine recently enrolled for golf lessons. When I asked him how it was going after three sessions, he gave a non-committal ‘OK.’ When pushed, he relented and told me he had learned about the grip, the stance and the swing plane. Impressive. But when I asked him how his game was, he sheepishly replied, ‘I don’t know – we’re not allowed to hit balls yet.’
This is classic ‘instruction’, in which the theory – the comprehensive list of ‘what to do’ before you even play – is given too much weight right at the start, without any of the activity itself. How often have you been instructed on how to do something at work that doesn’t really register until you start doing it yourself? The overriding philosophy behind the Pressure Principle’s third strand – Managing Learning – is to start with where you are in your development. If you think about my friend and his golf lessons, how would the instructor even have known the level he was playing at, or where he needed most help? My friend eventually quit his lessons, saying it was too complicated and boring.
In 1993, a study led by Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson derived the ‘10,000 hour rule’, which maintains that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are necessary to become an expert performer, be it in sport, the arts or science. The key word here is deliberate, but what might be more worrying to those about to embark on a 10,000-hour odyssey is the language used by psychologist Christian Jarrett to describe this practice: ‘You don’t just repeat what you know, but instead constantly seek to stretch yourself [which involves] forensic self-criticism, repeated failure and a dogged ability to keep dusting yourself down and trying again – a process that is not particularly enjoyable.’ Sound appealing? If all this deliberate practice is going to be tough, demoralizing, frustrating and full of angst, then the likelihood of most people sticking with it and progressing is slim.
Does this mean we can’t enjoy learning if we want to get to a standard above where we currently are – that we shouldn’t get excited about the possibilities of what we can achieve? In the right environment, with effective language and emphasis on managing learning rather than instruction, developing new skills or improving existing ones can be immensely fun and satisfying – and this chapter will illustrate exactly why that is so important.
I’m not suggesting for a second that learning is easy – far from it. And, while it isn’t necessarily possible to always find hours of demanding practice enjoyable, there should be some sense of progression and satisfaction, otherwise it’s too easy to step away. Recognizing what you can do is the place to start and the philosophy that anyone can improve in any field they choose – it isn’t the exclusive preserve of the elite performer – is the mindset to adopt. However, anyone looking to improve must be prepared to go to a place I call the ugly zone.
The Ugly Zone
‘I messed up.’
‘I can’t play this piece properly.’
‘I hit the ball in the water again!’
When you are attempting to master a new skill or improve on an existing one, and you’re trying and failing to correct something you’ve done wrong, you’re in the ugly zone.
The ugly zone is the place where your execution does not match your intention. The ugly zone doesn’t discriminate among tasks – you could be learning a new dance routine, playing a piece of music or hitting a golf ball – and the ugly zone is no respecter of talent or ability: the very best find themselves in the ugly zone as well as complete novices. But the very best find their way out again with more success. The ugly zone is the place where you try and fail, try again and fail – and continue trying and failing. It’s the area just beyond your present ability.
A cricketer practising with the bowling machine set at a relatively sedate 65 mph would have plenty of time to see the ball and play the shot with the middle of the bat. If the machine increased to 75 mph, it would require more concentration with the reduced time to play the shot, but a top player shouldn’t miss often. Once the machine is cranked up to 85 mph, the player has lost the overriding sense of control they had before, and with so little time to prepare they edge or miss the ball quite frequently. Finally, the machine starts spewing out balls at 90 mph and the player is under siege, struggling to get any real control, failing to react effectively in time and playing and missing with alarming regularity. They’re in their ugly zone.
If you’re a keen runner, what would it take for you to get into your ugly zone? If you can run five kilometres in thirty minutes quite comfortably and you wanted to improve your time to under twenty-five minutes, you would need to commit to running the first half of the race in under twelve and a half minutes. This unfamiliar, more demanding pace would likely see you reach your ugly zone after halfway, with the last third particularly tough. It would demand more effort and determination and an ability to tolerate increasing levels of physical discomfort. You might feel a stitch coming on, or struggle to regulate your breathing. You might not make it under twenty-five minutes. You might give up.
The ugly zone can be a difficult place to be physically but, more importantly, it demands a great deal of mental energy – imagine the unhelpful thoughts the runner might experience, urging them to quit, or the mental energy required to do it again and again as they fail to reach their target. The ugly zone can be demoralizing in the extreme, but it is where true improvement can be achieved.
Many of us, if we’re honest, often find it difficult to break out of our comfort zone. You might go for a run round the park reasonably regularly, but a lap is quite enough, thank you. Or, if you’re musically inclined, you might have a tinkle on the ivories every so often, but you’ll play something familiar that you can play well. And what about at work – do you spend much time outside your comfort zone there?
Our brains can be pretty lazy. They naturally want to conserve energy and are happy to coast along in familiar territory. In Figure 2 you can see that the comfort zone requires very little cognitive energy.
In the comfort zone, our brains continue to do what they are already familiar with and it’s a very efficient state, energy wise, to be in, which is why it’s so easy to coast along there. However, in the ugly zone, where learning something new happens, the brain expends a great deal of energy as you attempt to do something you cannot already do.
When the brain learns something new, it creates new neural pathways which demand energy. Initially, these pathways are quite fragile, but with more practice they become stronger and more efficient. Imagine that your first attempt at learning a skill – hitting a cricket ball at 90 mph, learning a new piece of music, accessing a new system at work – is like hacking a path through a forest for the first time. Clearing the path would no doubt feel strange, awkward and difficult – and demand a great deal of energy. Subsequent journeys would be easier – but certainly not easy – and you’d probably have some setbacks on the way, but eventually you’ll start to travel faster, with each repetition requiring slightly less energy.
In the end, what was once a jungle path has become a motorway, with lots of traffic (brain signals) moving very fast along it. You can now execute the skill in your comfort zone.
This is all the result of continual practice, making it easier to perform the skill each time you try it. To give you a rough idea of how long it can take to master, it is an accepted convention that it takes at least forty days to change a golf swing, with the time period extended for every day that the new swing isn’t used.
The challenge most of us face is that our brains are essentially efficient organs – or lazy, depending on your point of view – and they want to stay in the comfort zone, where they can conserve energy. They don’t want to spend forty consecutive days practising a golf swing. The brain is wary of committing to the ugly zone. So how do we make it go there?
The Childlike Approach
John is five years old and, like many a child whiling away the time over the school summer holidays, he’s grown bored with kicking his football around outside now that the World Cup is over and he’s watching the golf on television with his dad, fascinated by the adulation and excitement that hitting a small ball through the air with a club seems to generate.
John watches the golfer on television, who takes some swings at nothing with his club, before standing very still over the ball, slowly bringing his club back and then – whoosh! He hits the ball skyward, flying away, before landing near a flag and the crowd goes wild, cheering and shouting (or at least offering some very polite applause – this is golf, after all). It’s almost like scoring a goal!
He watches every detail, taking in the player’s little salute in acknowledgement of the crowd and his brisk march to his next shot. Time for me to have a go, thinks John.
Armed with a plastic club and a sponge ball from his toy box, John heads outside to tee off in his inaugural garden championship. He puts the ball down, settles himself like the player on television, takes aim and then – nothing! He missed, but thinks nothing of it and simply tries again. This time, he scuffs the ball, nudging it a couple of feet forward in the grass. Still no reaction. John swings again and this time the ball nestles a few yards ahead on top of the grass.
With the image of the television player firmly in his mind, John approaches the ball once again. He takes a swing and then – whoosh! The ball is airborne and floats far down the garden fairway. The applause is ringing in his ears as he takes off his imaginary hat, saluting the crowd. With the excitement and joy full to bursting within him, John cannot wait to take his next shot.
He fluffs it, sending the ball trundling through the grass, before he remembers that his success came when the ball was perched on top of the grass. He tries again and – whoosh! This time he raises a modest hand to the warm applause from the crowd.
Let’s wind the clock forward twenty-four years. John is now nearly thirty and works in a bank. He did well at school, got a good degree at university and has kept up a keen interest in sport, playing cricket in the summer and football in the winter. Golf hasn’t entirely disappeared from his life – he’s a member of the local golf club, though, by his own admission, he is not a good golfer. ‘I find it too frustrating,’ he says. ‘It’s OK until I make a mistake, and then I fall apart.’
Today is his company’s annual golf day. John is anxious to perform well, but he certainly doesn’t see his anxiety as a positive thing. He watches his two playing partners tee off, both of them hitting shots that land in the middle of the fairway. John is up now.
Determined to hit the ball as hard as he possibly can, John swings with all his might – and the ball squirts through the grass and settles just past the ladies’ tee. ‘Damn, that happens every time I use this effing driver!’ he thunders, jamming the club back into his bag and slouching over to take his next shot. He doesn’t have to walk far before selecting a new club and, still fuming, he lashes his shot into the trees – taking a divot the size of a small garden with it.
‘I might as well give up this pigging game,’ he mutters as he begins his slow march towards the trees, his colleagues looking on in horror. But, to his surprise and only a slight degree of relief, he discovers that the ball has landed kindly, on a flat piece of grass in a clearing with the green in sight.
Convinced of his own capacity for disaster, John takes a seven iron and, stuck in a mental state somewhere between rage, surrender and suicide, he barely even takes aim – what would be the point? – before he swings and, to his total surprise, a wonderfully solid clink pierces the calm and his ball whistles through the air, fades away and lands softly, rolling to an enticing position of stillness a mere two and a half feet from the pin. His playing partners, no doubt having dreaded the thought of another seventeen holes of that, offer warm congratulations on a terrific shot. ‘About time I did something right,’ John mutters ungraciously.
Finally, John gets out his putter for the short putt to make par. Summoning a bit of the old Dunkirk spirit, he announces: ‘These putts are a lot more difficult than they look.’ He proceeds to push it wide and a couple of feet past the hole, following it up with a verbal tirade as amusing as it is biologically impossible. His playing partners attempt to calm him down – it was a great approach shot to the green and he’s only one over par, after all – but it’s all in vain.
What has happened to John during those twenty-four years? His entire approach to the game – a mindset of fun, enjoyment, performance, expectation and learning – has been completely reversed. His five-year-old self celebrated what he achieved. He relived his good shots and was desperate to repeat them, while the adult John’s so-called ‘childish’ outbursts simply reinforced the very behaviour he was so desperate to avoid.
The truth is that we can learn a good deal from our youthful approach to challenges. A twenty-nine-year-old man can learn much from a five-year-old in their ability to take on a task with enthusiasm and excitement. Young children get into the ugly zone very easily. They have an instinctive, relentless curiosity and hunger to learn new things and they have none of the fear of failure that inhibits an adult. They love the thrill of learning, and when it gets tough and they fail at it, well, they just try again … and again – attempting to work out what they need to do differently. How much more easily than an adult is a child able to learn to ride a bike, speak a new language or learn to swim?
One would hope that children receive nothing but encouragement from their parents as they try new things, so their self-esteem is high, there is no negative consequence of failure and, once they stop, they’re often mentally exhausted and go to sleep for an hour or so, before waking up and doing it all again with the same enthusiasm and commitment. What a great mindset to bring to learning to perform in a pressure environment!
Young children don’t suffer many of the consequences of pressure that an adult has to deal with. While we can never go back to our childlike selves, surely we can take something from our youthful approach to learning. We could slip straight into the ugly zone as children and we must look to providing the similar conditions of childhood to recreate this: continual encouragement, rewarding and reinforcing success, keeping self-esteem and energy levels high. Children throw themselves into their ugly zone while they’re practically drowning in excitement (to play) and have no fear of failure. While we’ve talked in Chapter 1 about turning our anxiety into a childlike excitement, our adult minds still present a testing challenge for us to get into the ugly zone.
Negative Bias
Learning is not limited to the challenge of creating neural pathways. The brain works in negatives and positives, like an internal balance sheet, and the problem for the learner is that the brain is negatively biased, so that negative influences and evaluations have a more powerful effect on the mind than positive information.
As Roy Baumeister, Francis Eppes Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, writes:
Perhaps the broadest manifestation of the greater power of bad events than good to elicit lasting reactions is contained in the psychology of trauma … Many kinds of traumas produce severe and lasting effects on behavior, but there is no corresponding concept of a positive event that can have similarly strong and lasting effects. In a sense, trauma has no true opposite concept.
Furthermore, the brain typically avoids situations that it perceives to have potentially negative outcomes. Baumeister goes on to say: ‘A given increase in possible loss therefore has a bigger impact on a decision than an objectively equal increase in possible gain.’
Our minds can be risk-averse organs if left unchecked, and the potential mental and physical anguish that could lie in store for someone entering their ugly zone is a risk.Table 3 outlines some of the negative thoughts that can prevent us making it to our ugly zone and how we might counter them.
Table 3 Leading our brains to the ugly zone
| Negatives: Why we want to stay in our comfort zone | Positives: Why we should progress to our ugly zone |
| Self-esteem: anything that has a potential failure is a threat to self-worth | Make explicit all elements of success; the level of commitment is the most important element to commend |
| Anything that is not immediately successful has a high risk of perceived failure and energy spend | Be realistic about the length of time required to master the skill and highlight marginal improvements in the process |
| Social: I have to be seen by my peers to be successful; the ugly zone with angst and frustration is not for me | Commend effort and the commitment to get in the ugly zone. Angst and frustration are by-products of commitment and desire – well done! |
| Put off before they start by seeing the outcome so far away from the intended outcome | Take away the outcome, concentrate on building the parts of the process, celebrate progress based on previous self (no limits) |
| Use of language: allowing what you want to avoid to get into the brain | Always focus on what you want to do – productive language |
| Past use of universal statements: ‘I always mess this up’ | Take apart these statements: ‘every time’ usually does not mean every single time; highlight when it has worked or when you have improved |
| Fatigue: it is tough to stay in the ugly zone | Work little and often: twenty minutes’ practice every day, rather than three hours once a week |
The strongest negatives are fear of potential failure and looking foolish in front of your peers. It’s rarely just a case of ‘I can’t be bothered’ (although this clearly is a factor for some). People will always find reasons why they can’t do something, or argue that they shouldn’t be doing it anyway. You’ve probably seen a similar reaction to a new protocol or training opportunity at work. You might think that top sports professionals, on their never-ending odyssey of improvement, would be immune to this. You’d be wrong.
What Will Other People Think?
To become a top sports star requires huge levels of self-belief, much as it would to get to the top of any industry; the top people in business or government are driven as a necessity by huge amounts of confidence in themselves. But in sport there aren’t many hiding places if that belief doesn’t have some justification. The best in sport have risen through intense amounts of competition in the school and youth levels and fought their way through the professional ranks to take their seats at the top table. While the very best usually have no problem at all with the idea that they’re continually improving (Cristiano Ronaldo; Jonny Wilkinson) there are some for whom, after rising to their position in the game, getting in the ugly zone – trying and failing, or, worse, being seen trying and failing – can be a real pinprick to their self-image and damaging to their confidence, the lifeblood of any elite performer. Self-esteem and self-worth can potentially be damaged by ‘failure’ and this can be a serious impediment to getting in the ugly zone.
To be seen to be failing in front of one’s peers is difficult in any walk of life. Pressure of this sort can be stressful and hard to manage, as no one wants to be seen to be holding a group back, or the one who can’t master a skill. We all learn different things at different speeds, and only through commitment to the process can we hope to safely navigate the ugly zone and master a task. But some people will go to great lengths not to have to subject themselves to the spectacle of failure and it’s an attitude that can be contagious.
I did some work at Watford Football Club for Aidy Boothroyd, their manager, in the 2006–07 season, when they had been promoted to the Premier League. Aidy was an extremely committed manager and they had a good squad, with the likes of Manchester United’s promising young goalkeeper Ben Foster on loan and the forward Ashley Young, who would transfer to Aston Villa later that season. My job was to work with small groups within the squad to improve their kicking, with the emphasis on getting the players to move from a C-shape kick to a J-shape (see Chapter 1).
Ben Foster had phenomenal power and we worked on tempering this and improving his control. With the defenders and midfielders we worked on hitting passes that could quickly turn defence into attack – with counterattacking a vital tactic for any newly promoted team likely to be battling relegation. These players were all a joy to work with. They found some of the practices demanding, but they stuck to them and started showing some real improvement. They were a real tribute to Aidy’s culture of continual improvement.
Then it came to working with the forwards. They certainly didn’t lack for skill, but their attitude was a different matter. I worked with them on their running half-volleys when shooting at goal, with a target in the netting for them to hit. Like the other players before them, they struggled a bit with this, particularly with their posture and timing. I encouraged them as I’d done before, explaining that, while it was difficult, it would make a big difference to their shooting in the long run. The players seemed to buy into it, except for one striker.
He really struggled with the task and his timing, so he started deflecting this by joking and messing around. It was as though he felt it was OK for him to give up because it demanded effort. What was of even more concern was the impact his behaviour had on the other players. They too pulled back from giving their all and the session ended, to my mind at least, a shambles.
In the next session I showed the forwards a video of Cristiano Ronaldo executing the skill I was attempting to get them to master, asking them to pay particular attention to his posture as he struck the ball. A few of the players sheepishly agreed and admitted that, when they got their body position right, the ball really flew. Sadly, once on the training field the session deteriorated as before, with the same player ducking out of the challenge of mastering the running half-volley. When I had a word, he told me he was only taking part because the manager had told him to. I responded that his influence was detrimental to the group and he was affecting the others. Another mistake, as he seemed to relish his influential status.
It’s a cliché in sport to say that you’d never wish injury on another professional and it’s a cliché I happen to subscribe to. But I can’t pretend that fortune wasn’t smiling kindly on me when the disruptive player was injured the following weekend and put out of action for a while. The next session was fantastic, with the players beginning to enjoy and benefit from the work we were doing. Ashley Young really developed his shooting and crossing, and it came as no surprise to see him eventually play for Manchester United.
I hadn’t appreciated until then just how deep the influence of peer-group pressure can be, and it showed how important the attitude of influential people in any organization can be in shaping working culture for better or worse. I can’t help but think how different the England Rugby World Cup squad of 2003 were, where the senior pros, led by Martin Johnson, supported the culture Clive Woodward implemented.
In the average yoga class it is not uncommon to see people in their sixties practising alongside those in their twenties, and a gravity-defying yogi alongside a stiff-as-a-board beginner – all with the common aim of improving themselves. In this kind of environment people seem eager to get into their ugly zones – stretching further, adopting ever-deeper poses – and work at their own pace and bodily limitations without fear of recrimination.
We need to foster similar environments at work, at home and in our sporting pursuits, where it is OK to improve upon ourselves and only ourselves, to work hard and within our own limitations. A place for learning where success is in achievable margins, so that it’s just around the corner, not miles away, and where there is no negativity to be seen in failing at something in the quest for improvement – where it’s OK to get ugly and try and fail and try again …
But there’s something else we need to be clear about too: success and improvement won’t happen overnight.
No Quick Fixes
We live in ‘instant’ times. We only have to reach into our pockets for our smartphones to find out the answer to a question. With music we flick through the tracks, give it a minute and move on. And this means that investment, of both time and effort, can be lacking when it comes to improving ourselves.
Without ‘instant’ results, many of us are inclined to give up. We try once, maybe twice, and if we’re not successful we’ve had enough. Perseverance is a difficult concept for some of us, but if you look at a child learning, they simply don’t understand the word ‘can’t’: they’ll play until they’ve tired themselves out.
If we’re not successful straight away, our internal balance sheet, giving extra weight to the negatives, comes into play: I can’t do this right now; I don’t want to be a failure; this could take up a lot of energy. Before we’re even conscious of it, we’ve given up.
This lack of immediate results is perhaps the biggest obstacle of all. How many times have you started at the gym or an exercise class, gone a couple of times and, in the absence of instant improvement, stopped, leaving costly memberships unused? It’s likely you’re not even aware that you’ve quit: ‘I’ll start properly next week/month, when I have more time …’ But make no mistake, that is what has happened – and continuing to pay won’t change it.
Simply signing up or starting to do something almost always isn’t enough. It’s necessary to make a full investment, so that the first time there is an obstacle you don’t walk away. Getting in the ugly zone requires a commitment: going to the gym a couple of times isn’t going to show results – it’s madness to expect it to. Going at least three times a week over a period of months and gradually pushing at your margins – that will certainly improve your fitness. A couple of piano lessons aren’t going to make you a pianist: weeks of lessons and practice gradually will.
When coaching, managing or teaching anyone making such a commitment, it is vital continually to reinforce their successful progress. I might say, ‘Most people would have given up an hour ago, but you’re better than that,’ to someone in their ugly zone to keep up their motivation. And it’s important to point out the bits that someone is doing correctly, to give some positives to that internal balance sheet.
Such continual motivation is essential to keep yourself going into the ugly zone. If, like the running example we mentioned earlier, you’re training by yourself and trying to improve your time, you need to deliver these in a self-talk, so that you can look at what you’ve achieved. That will reinforce the balance sheet and show it’s worth persevering. Even if you’re making slow progress you might say: ‘I’m achieving success – I’m a few seconds faster than I was last week and I’m not as sore the day after. If I keep going I can chip away at that time.’
Of course, many people choose to join clubs to have that encouragement come from others – when peer pressure can be positive. Personal trainers are another useful resource. It’s much easier to quit on yourself than it is when you have someone you’re paying by the hour pushing you and encouraging you when you’re getting ugly.
From a coach’s perspective, it’s also important to get the ‘how to’ for the next step in there too. For example, when teaching someone to putt in golf it’s very common for the body to sway with the stroke, which compromises control of the putter. The first step is to make the learner aware of what they are doing and then address it by, say, balancing a club against their backside – anything to make them conscious of holding their body still from the waist down and only moving their arms and shoulders. Of course, it’s a natural reaction at having to keep one part of the body still to stiffen up altogether, which can leave them losing the ‘feel’ of rolling the putt. Usually, that makes them hit the ball too hard, well past the hole – and produces even worse results than their initial, body-swaying attempts.
The obvious response is, ‘You hit it too hard – try to hit more softly,’ but stating the obvious can be unhelpful when someone getting ugly is thinking: ‘I did what you told me and my shot went twenty feet past the hole!’ Better to say something like: ‘Don’t worry about that – your stability was perfect from the waist down. Well done. Now, see if you can keep your bottom half stable as before, but keep your shoulders loose so you can control the ball. This will take time, but you’ve nailed the hardest part already.’
Say to yourself: I have been successful [brain, take note] and I know it’s going to take some time [I have been told so]. If I have already been successful, it’s worth me carrying on as the mental energy spent has created a higher chance of future success.
Any organization, whether a running club or a business, should instil a culture of ‘busy getting better’, in which people can be constantly improving at the margins of their own performance. It’s down to you to respond.
When I started working with fly-half George Ford at Leicester back in 2010, he wasn’t getting much game time. For a young man itching to play, watching from the sidelines can be frustrating and, quite naturally, he was finding it tough to keep practising and get ugly, particularly on his weaker left foot. We would talk about his progress and about how at that age he had his whole career in front of him, and that time spent not playing should be seen as an opportunity to get ‘busy getting better’ for when the call came. George showed a maturity beyond his years with his outstanding mindset, always willing to get ugly during this period even though the short-term benefits weren’t clear. After moving to Bath in 2013, he broke into the England squad the following season, four years after we had started working together.
A good approach to encourage people (or yourself) into the ugly zone is to identify and commend what has been done well, no matter the outcome. Break the task down into parts, with step-by-step outcomes to target (like reaching certain points of a piece of music, breaking each thirty-second barrier when running, keeping the bottom half of your body still when putting), and use productive language. Most important is that working in the ugly zone should be done ‘little and often’.
Little and Often
Learning requires both mental and physical energy – consistently being in the ugly zone is demanding and tiring. To beat the fatigue, the most effective approach to learning any skill is to do it little and often rather than keeping on until you get it right.
Energy is a limited resource, so it is better to learn only when you are fresh. One familiar argument is that you’ll have to perform when you’re tired and under pressure, so you should train in the same circumstances. I agree that it is useful to practise acquired skills under these conditions, but pressure isn’t helpful when you’re learning the skills for the first time.
Regular progress on a daily basis – still challenging, but harnessing all your energy each time to make an efficient effort – will produce far better results than compressing a month’s worth of practice into a week, with your energy diminishing and the work you do becoming less and less effective. You might begin the next day still fatigued – or you might be so fed up you just want to quit.
Our brains will make the new neurological pathways in the ugly zone as long as there is the requisite mental commitment and energy, even working on them during our sleep, but when the energy depletes, so does the efficiency of our improvement. The mind is looking for the more heavily weighted negatives, and overdoing it without the corresponding level of improvement is yet another black mark in the internal balance sheet. Think about it: if you were revising for a test next week, which approach would you imagine to be more effective – an hour’s revision each day or five hours’ cramming the night before? As psychologist Professor John Dunlosky writes:
Although cramming is better than not studying at all in the short term, given the same amount of time for study, would students be better off spreading out their study of content? The answer to this question is a resounding ‘yes’.
When I am working with rugby kickers, I like to have indoor facilities, particularly when getting a player to learn or develop a new skill. I am regularly greeted with the riposte: ‘But they kick in the wind!’
Yes, they do, but the players should learn the skill in an environment where the flight of the ball is a direct consequence of their kick, without any external factors. Get the learning done and then practise in the wind once the basics have been mastered. In reality, it would be ideal to have indoor sessions to refine and establish technique, coupled with regular practice outdoors. The bedrock of the progress of Stuart Barnes and Jonathan Webb – England rugby players with whom I worked at the start of the nineties – was regular early morning sessions at Bristol Grammar School’s indoor cricket nets in their sports hall. A crucial part of Jonny Wilkinson’s practice during his time at Newcastle Falcons involved using the indoor facilities at both Middlesbrough and Newcastle United football clubs. To give you an idea of just how highly we valued these sessions, it took up to an hour and a half to drive to Middlesbrough’s indoor training facility from the Falcons’ training ground.
Little and often should be your mantra so that you can immerse yourself in the ugly zone repeatedly. During the 2003 Rugby World Cup campaign with England, the backs would do a ten- to fifteen-minute kicking and catching practice at the end of each training session, which could be twice a day. These short, sharp and intense bouts of practice, in which the players would be pushed to the margins of their ability, are the kind of blueprint you could take into your own life. Many people have extremely busy work and family lives, but if you could fit in just half an hour at the end of your working day, every day, be it to practise on the piano or work on that 5k run, then, provided it is an intense session, you can reap the benefits from even a small amount of regular time in the ugly zone.
Another rationale for little and often is the process of physically and mentally resetting for the task at hand. Take free shots in basketball. Your first few attempts are likely to be all over the place as you find your range and home in on the correct trajectory. You might hit the backboard; you might drop short: each shot gives you more information to fine tune the next attempt. After a while, you will become more consistent, but if you were playing in a match, how many attempts would you get? So the key is to be successful first time, without any practice. If you put pauses into your practice, where you take a break and reset, you’ll experience the feeling of that first shot more often. This is also why the pre-shot routine is so important to many skills that are executed under pressure: you only get one shot at it.
Eureka!
When we’re working in the ugly zone, often after a lot of angst and frustration and trying and failing, we suddenly have a ‘eureka’ moment: the basketball shot sails perfectly through the hoop; we play a tricky bit of the piece we’re learning beautifully on the piano; our putt drops with a satisfying ‘plop!’ into the hole. We’ve done it! And then we try to repeat our success and we fail. What’s gone wrong? We can do this, can’t we?
This happens when, instead of resetting our minds, getting back to the mental state in which we approached the first successful attempt, we get excited and rush straight into it again, taking it for granted that we’ll succeed … and suddenly we’re back in the ugly zone.
I’ve also seen rugby goal kickers and golfers who, after working in the ugly zone on their posture and sequencing, were able to kick the ball or strike it from the tee with great distance and little conscious effort. But then they think: ‘If I’m hitting it this well with this amount of effort, what can I do if I really smash it?’ This is what I call ‘letting your horns grow’. The rugby player then starts to send his kicks astray, the golfer watches his balls sail off course into the rough. All the work that they have done is compromised by this desire to really smash it, causing an energy leak in their overreaching, inefficient sequence. The controlled focus on the process has gone out the window.
Resetting our minds, much like our posture, is therefore essential to get these consistent results – and, while our first success should certainly be acknowledged and celebrated, it’s vital not to get too carried away by it. There’s still a way to go before mastery is achieved.
I am all too aware of how easy and natural it is to want to stay in the comfort zone. It simply isn’t possible to master something new without getting ugly, but I want to go back to the child’s attitude to learning I touched upon earlier. If you can rekindle that youthful enthusiasm for knowledge and overcome the brain’s natural resistance, then it is possible to create a sense of excitement about adding a new string to your bow, in much the same way that it is possible to turn your feelings of anxiety into excitement. Little and often means that you won’t view your learning as an insurmountable challenge. You won’t sit at the piano for hours on end trying to get it right and then quit when you can’t. You’ll do little chunks, note by note, pushing yourself each time and eventually putting it all together into a perfect whole. You’ll have regular feedback and the continual improvement will boost your self-esteem. Instead of waiting a week between mammoth sessions, giving you time to dwell on what might or did go wrong, the little-and-often approach lets you focus on the building blocks of the task, gradually assembling them day by day without becoming intimidated by the looming objective on the horizon.
Outcome Avoidance
When learning a new skill, particularly one where the final outcome is clear to see, there is often a conflict between working on the small process you’re getting ugly with and the overall big picture. If you’re learning a piece of music, it’s easier to break it into sections and work on each one without worrying too much about the final outcome (playing the piece as a whole); however, if you’re working on your golf shot off the tee and you’re addressing a specific area of your stroke or posture, it’s impossible to avoid seeing the outcome (where the ball goes) and difficult not to be distracted; the brain is trying to avoid the negative – the bad shot. When working on a new aspect in a process, it’s common for the outcome to suffer in the short term. But when you watch your shot slice far off course, it’s difficult not to become more concerned about this than the adjustment you’re making to your swing.
I commonly experience this in my work with rugby kickers. It’s a real advantage in the game to be able to kick with both feet, so I often work with kickers on their weaker foot. When I start coaching a player I will always ask them to take the kick bearing in mind the technical advice I have to offer – and be clear that I don’t care where it goes. But it doesn’t matter what I say; if the eyes see it, the brain registers it – and it’s impossible to remove this from a player’s mind.
So I like to remove the outcome from their sight altogether. It’s a practice I used years ago with Stuart Barnes and Jonathan Webb, when I’d get them to practise kicking balls into soccer nets in the park the morning before a game; these days I have players kick into special nets about three yards in front of them. This takes away the outcome and ensures all thoughts are on the process – the only feedback the players have is sound and feel. With Stuart and Jonathan, experienced players who knew what a good kick felt like, the last thing we wanted to do was get their critical brain in gear with thoughts about outcome on the morning of a game – they just needed to feel confident and ready to play.
The player learning to kick with their weaker foot will make quicker progress if they start with the kicking net. They will be able to focus on adopting the correct posture – right-footed players often naturally take up a right-footed posture even when kicking with their left, which is something that needs adjusting – and getting other processes right before worrying about bisecting the posts with their kicks.
Of course, it’s not just for the weaker foot that removing the outcome can be a useful tool. When players are low on confidence or need to work on a specific part of their kick, it’s useful to use the net. Players low on confidence have often become completely focused on their (negative) outcome and are no longer fully committing to their process. When the pressure is on and there is anxiety about the outcome (the ball going between the posts), it often becomes difficult to commit to the process (kicking through the ball). Introducing the net and removing the outcome allows them to recapture that solid thump on impact that marks a sweet strike and re-establish the trust in their process.
I remember a particular session with Jonny Wilkinson on the Twickenham turf of a Test week. He wasn’t happy with his strike and was struggling to feel an inevitability about the outcome; my concern was that he’d allowed his thoughts about the outcome to distract him from the process. I lined up the ball for him to go for a forty-five-yard kick and then brought out the kicking net and put it three yards in front of the tee. After a few kicks the sound of the contact changed to a satisfying deep thud and occasionally he smashed the net at the top of the frame and toppled the whole thing over – which takes some doing.
Using the net, he was totally committed to kicking through the ball and absorbing the little adjustments in posture I suggested, so that when I took away the net, looked him in his good eye (the other was black from the previous game) and said, ‘I don’t care where this ball goes but I want you to commit to kicking through the ball,’ he fired it straight through the posts – and well beyond them. His total commitment to the process ensured that the outcome – as well as his ear-to-ear grin afterwards – took care of itself.
Practice nets at cricket clubs and golf courses are perfect for this kind of outcome-avoiding practice. Stay clear of the driving range, where the outcome will be all too clear, and use these nets where the only feedback will be the feel of the shot. Golf is an extremely mentally demanding sport, especially for the part-time amateur. There is a tendency to start steering shots and manipulating your swing as soon as a couple of shots go astray, and working in the nets can allow you to focus entirely on your process – without watching another shot head dispiritingly for the rough.
Children are often helped to avoid an unwelcome outcome. While learning to swim, armbands and flotation aids are widely used to avoid sinking, while stabilizers prevent those learning to ride a bicycle from crashing straight to earth. Such aids allow us to practise the necessary individual components of an activity, so that when the armbands are deflated and the stabilizers unbolted, we are better equipped to deal with the outcome, whether that’s a smooth swim across the pool and a seamless glide along the street, or sinking like a stone and wiping out by the kerb.
It sounds counterintuitive not to worry about the result of your action. But on a piano you wouldn’t attempt to play a whole piece of music through, demoralizing yourself in the process, if you weren’t ready, just as you wouldn’t attempt to master a new piece of computer software in one go at work. And when working on a golf swing, or learning to swim or to ride a bicycle, or anything where the outcome is right in front of you, it’s important to find ways to mask the outcome from your mind. It should be all about the process.
Matching Intentions
Golf day. Your ball has landed 130 yards from the green. The pin is four yards from the left side, guarded by a bunker next to a large tree. You have decided to aim a couple of yards right of the pin. You visualize your shot, see it landing on the green next to the flag. You set yourself, bring back the club and swing fluidly – a lovely solid clunk as you strike the ball, which goes flying in the air and lands within a couple of feet of where you aimed. Great shot! Unfortunately, you didn’t allow for the slope. The ball starts rolling to the right, picking up speed as it goes and eventually travelling some twenty yards before it comes to a halt a good few feet into the rough.
It’s easy to simply write something like that off as a bad attempt and conjure up some ever-elaborate invective with which to berate yourself, but don’t forget that you made a 130-yard shot and landed it within a couple of feet of where you aimed. You matched your intention, albeit that your intention was misguided.
Suppose you had overhit it instead, shanking it horribly to the left, but it had somehow struck the tree, bounced clear of the rough and settled only a few yards from the pin. Would that have been better?
All too often we simply look at the result of something without considering whether we have matched our intention. It is in our interests to give ourselves credit and ingrain it in our brains when we have done something well and want to repeat it. The more often you match your intention, the more control you will have over whatever it is you are doing – and, as in the previous section, not become demoralized by a poor outcome, particularly when the outcome is beyond your control. Life throws up so many unforeseen obstacles and problems that it is beneficial at times to look at the result of an action and whether it matched its intention quite separately. Accuracy is not automatically rewarded, just as sloppiness is not always punished, but you should always try to make your actions match your intentions.
In cricket, so long as you’re bowling at a good pace and you’re bowling at the length you intended, then you have matched your intention. Just because a big hitter wallops it out of the ground doesn’t make it a bad ball, and it is vital for the bowler to acknowledge this.
Shane Warne, the legendary Australian spin bowler, had, among the arsenal of both psychological and bowling weapons at his disposal, an ability to match his intention and recognize when he was doing so, regardless of what the batsman did. Such was his audacity, Warne would give the impression that even a bad ball was intentional, all part of a cunning plan, but for spin bowlers especially, it is a reality that they’ll be smashed out of the park here and there. Warne wouldn’t allow this to distract him – he’d keep probing and bowling, continuing to ask questions of the batsman.
This, of course, is where things get interesting in a game of cricket. If the bowler is matching their intention and bowling well and the batsman is equal to it, it’s time to decide whether to change tactics. Pressure influences our decision-making and it takes a great deal of mental resolve to be able to judge objectively whether the intention is being matched and then separate this from the result. Bowlers change tactics all the time when trying to get the batsman out, but it is important to recognize when you are performing well under pressure and to realize that sometimes it might be worth persisting with the same tactics regardless of what the batsman is doing. If you do change tactics it is important that you are still able to match your intention now that you are approaching it differently.
It’s tough to accept that sometimes doing the right thing produces the wrong outcome, I know, but when you adopt the no limits mindset you are, in truth, only in competition with yourself when it comes to learning and improving. It’s true, if clichéd, that there’s no shame in giving your all and being beaten by a better opponent; however, there is shame in not performing to the best of your abilities.
Empathy
Those who dare to teach must never cease to learn. That is the inscription on a wooden plaque that sits on the desk of Mark ‘Gibbo’ Gibson, chairman of the Australian PGA and a golf teacher – an appellation he prefers to ‘instructor’ – and, as his motto makes clear, a self-confessed student.
Learning, the ability to repeatedly get in the ugly zone and develop mastery of something, is a skill in itself and, equally, for any teacher, manager or coach, overseeing that learning is also a skill. While some technical expertise in your chosen field is obviously a prerequisite for any instructor, most teaching literature also emphasizes the importance of empathy with the person being instructed. And what better form of empathy is there than learning something new yourself?
Empathy with the learner should mean understanding what it takes to get ugly and master a new skill. It means experiencing all that angst and frustration and trying and failing and trying again. How can any coach, manager or teacher have empathy otherwise? It’s easy to forget this – indeed, it was something I only discovered myself in 2007.
That year, I found myself wondering why some top rugby players couldn’t perform basic kicking skills. It seemed so easy to me! I’d had the same experience during 2005–06 with England, when there was a high turnover of players in the squad. I’d start a training session with the mindset that it should be a straightforward morning and then, when it wasn’t, I’d become increasingly impatient. What on earth was the matter with these so-called internationals?
There was nothing wrong with them – they were the best in the country. The problem lay with me: I had lost my empathy with the learning process.
It was then that I turned to Gibbo. I had always been interested in golf, both in its unique pressure environment for professional players and as a player myself; whenever an opportunity had arisen to play a round while on a rugby tour I had jumped at the chance and had become a pretty effective hacker in the process. But I did think to myself that I would love to learn to play this beautiful game properly.
Under Gibbo’s tutelage, I started rediscovering my empathy with the learning process and I began to see the obvious similarities golf shared with kicking in rugby and penalty taking in football. Most importantly, I reacquainted myself with real angst and frustration, the pain of thinking I’d mastered a particular technique only to find it had slipped from my grasp when next called upon – of getting in the ugly zone. And, boy, was it ugly!
My experience in golf has made me an infinitely more effective coach in all sports. Sadly, such an empathetic outlook isn’t universal among those whose job it is to develop others. A few years ago I delivered a ‘No Limits’ presentation to almost forty elite academy managers of a major national sports governing body in the UK. When I asked the room if anyone was learning anything new themselves, be it a musical instrument, a foreign language or a sport, I was greeted by silence. ‘How can you empathize with the learner if you have no recent recollection of learning anything yourself?’ I asked, to more silence.
Remember, it’s never too late to pick something new up and start progressing.
The Silo Trap
In my experience, the organization of elite-level rugby is excellent in terms of delivery of information to players, but often fails to prepare them properly for the game. One of the reasons might be familiar to anyone working in business or education: a lack of joint planning, with individual departments too busy competing for time rather than working together.
The week of a Test match with an international rugby squad can be a fraught period. The specialist coaches all compete for player time and are then jointly in competition with the strength and conditioning coaches. The more time spent on strength and conditioning, the less is spent working on the game. During the World Cup 2011 campaign, particularly in the latter stages, I felt that there was too much time being spent on physical conditioning and not enough on working on skills under pressure. When it came to playing France in the quarter-final, England’s play was littered with uncharacteristic mistakes, which eventually cost the team a place in the semi-final.
Perhaps you have experienced a similar conflict of interest between various departments yourself. It’s a bit like allocating resources in a secondary school. Every teacher wants the best for the students in their own particular subject, which is not necessarily the same as the best for the students generally.
Before I started coaching full-time, I was a secondary school teacher at a large inner-city comprehensive, where I taught Commerce (a mixture of Economics and Business Studies). The pupils were not as highly motivated as I would have liked – a common complaint among many teachers – and they exhibited many of the factors that prevent people getting in the ugly zone that we’ve already discussed, not least self-esteem and peer influence.
One of the projects I devised for my students as part of their coursework was to put together a business plan to secure a bank loan. They had to explain how they would manage the business, give a forecast of future profits with justification for their accuracy – typical business-plan stuff. Many of the reports the pupils submitted made sound economic sense, but the English and presentation were sorely lacking. When challenged on this, the students would respond with a line many teachers will be familiar with: ‘This is Commerce, not English, so what does it matter?’ They had a point, in terms of their Commerce GCSE qualification, but as preparation for life after school they did not; in the real world a bank manager is likely to be put off by spelling mistakes and poor grammar and punctuation.
The GCSE English qualification was based in the main on coursework, with one of the pieces a project report with a reasoned rationale, so, after I approached an English teacher, together we constructed a project that would satisfy the marking criteria for both English and Commerce. This joint effort produced a piece of work much more relevant to life after school and, as a result, a much more efficient use of the students’ time. It was a much more match-relevant piece of work, and the students were more motivated by doing something that spanned two subjects. Unfortunately, while the marks were much better than predicted, the English teacher and I were warned by the examination board not to do anything like that again in the future. They wanted the subjects to remain separate, each confined to its own silo.
Fast forward to my career in sport and this silo mentality becomes all too clear. Because of the influx of specialists, particularly in strength and conditioning, there is tension between the coaches and the specialists. I am certainly not against new and improving expertise – far from it – but I am concerned that more new elements foster and increase the pressures on each component, and consequently the silo mentality becomes stronger. A solution is not straightforward, but surely integrated planning and execution – be it in subjects at school or in the backroom staff at a rugby club – has to be part of it. But you can imagine the sticking points: who is in charge? Who do we blame if it all goes wrong? The irony is that, while we coach a team game in which we try to foster a culture of joint responsibility, as a group of teachers and coaches we are unable to do the same.
I see no reason why strength and conditioning work can’t integrate with the preparation for other parts of the game. Why, when players are running up a hill ten times for fitness and power, can’t they do it holding a ball? Why, each time they run down, ever-more fatigued, can’t they do it while passing the ball along the line – practising a match-day skill while improving their endurance.
At one club side, I tried to get the players kicking into a crash mat against a wall between sets of heavy weights in the gym to improve their ball-striking skills. I don’t think it lasted a week before the strength and conditioning team dumped the idea. Despite my protests that an environment in which the players were allowed to practise skills under the force of extreme fatigue, just as in a match, would be of great benefit, they didn’t agree. Jonny Wilkinson, when he was in Cardiff on 24 May 2014, spent the morning kicking balls into a crash mat to get a feel and concentrate on the process – and then, in the afternoon, he led Toulon out to a resounding victory in the European Cup final in the Millennium Stadium, without missing a kick.
In sport, the more we can integrate our approach to training and preparation, the more we can replicate match conditions. In the same way I believe that a more integrated approach to education, such as merging some aspects of an English and Commerce course, will prepare young people for the match conditions after school – real life. As coaches and teachers, we have a responsibility to see the needs of our own discipline within the landscape of the bigger picture – to put our egos to one side – so that the people we are coaching and the children we are teaching can perform at their best when the pressure comes on match day – or after school’s out for ever.
Nothing to Fear but Fear (of Failure) Itself
As the final section in a chapter about managing learning, it seems fitting to return to our childlike selves. The first time we experience learning is with our parents, and how they support our performance is crucial. The way we see disappointment or failure is the litmus test of the ‘mental environment’ in which we develop, when the learning culture is set. Parents naturally want their children to be successful and happy. When, as children, we start playing, we are learning, and parents desperately want the learning to continue with enthusiasm and excitement.
If a group of children are playing kickabout in the park, perhaps the dads might join in. For the fathers this is playing with their children, to the youngsters it is learning: they mimic and explore. They’d likely get competitive as their game develops; they might even join a junior football club. It is the attitude at home – the culture being fostered – that is important: what is considered important about the football? Is it the social aspect, the enjoyment, the improvement, the physical activity? Or is it being selected for the team? If they’re successful in this, what is the reaction? Is it: ‘Well done for getting in the team’? Or ‘Isn’t it great that you have the opportunity to play in the team’? Is it: ‘We really think you are improving and are pleased you’re enjoying it’?
What is the reaction if the child doesn’t make the team? If making the team isn’t the be all and end all for the parents, if it’s more about enjoyment and being excited about improving, it could go some way to leavening the disappointment. But if the child thinks their parents are likely to be disappointed, this could be a formative experience of outcome-related pressure for the youngster.
Most youth football teams, in the very early stages, are more about making sure all the children are playing and enjoying it, and efforts are made to include every child. Sooner or later – and in many cases too soon – the pressure and expectation will be that the better players get in the team and the rest don’t. Not only this, but the nature of the game – learning new skills, playing without a definitive outcome (winners and losers) – all too often becomes submerged in the competitive brunt that encapsulates the adult game. The fun of the game, in children who are still developing their skills, becomes a burden of expectation: to get in the team and to win.
This approach to youth football in England is often compared unfavourably with that in other countries, particularly in the Netherlands, where youngsters are coached with an emphasis on fun and skill development on smaller pitches, before they play eleven against eleven on full-size pitches as they get older. Some progress is being made, with the English FA’s Youth Development Review producing changes that are, according to their website, ‘about a modern, child-friendly approach to youth football, challenging the win-at-all-costs mentality that is stifling development and enjoyment for young people. Working together with a proactive attitude, adults can help develop a better learning environment for young people, that puts their needs at the centre of the process.’ But the sad fact is that many young players are squeezed out of participating in sports by a competitive, outcome-based culture too early.
Children develop and grow at different rates. An under-11 team would include a wide range of physical shapes, abilities, sizes and maturities – and that same group of players at the age of seventeen would be a completely different set of players physically. They would all have developed and matured at different rates, with their abilities and skills also progressing at different speeds. I have witnessed too many cases of children specializing too early in a sport and as a result giving up on all sorts of other opportunities. I have seen a ten-year-old signed, via his parents, for a professional club. When he was in the under-10s he was top scorer and a regular man-of-the-match, but by the time he was fifteen he was struggling to have anything like that kind of influence. He’d been prevented from playing rugby, cricket or athletics under pressure from his parents and the club – the kind of pressure that is extremely difficult for a teenager to deal with. At the age of seventeen he was discarded by the club after having left school at sixteen with nothing.
The challenge, then, is to keep a range of activities accessible and to find ways for youngsters to enjoy whatever interests them. No matter how promising they are at a particular sport or subject, a general approach to all available sports and activities should be maintained. People develop at different rates and, while few of us are destined to become world champions, the one thing we can all support is the enthusiasm towards continual learning, exploring and improving – whether it’s in a sport or natural history or astronomy. Can you remember the exuberance with which you first approached these subjects?
It’s up to us to allow young people to continue a childlike approach to learning. And it’s an attitude we all need to recapture if we’re to better ourselves – and improve our performance under pressure.