One of my favorite things about soccer is all the lessons you can learn. There are so many great things like team work, goal setting, hard work, etc. that you can take away from the game. These lessons are great life lessons that can help you your entire life.
One sneaky life lesson that we all could use a good refresher on is about Expectations. I think expectations are an important key to success and something that our kids desperately need now more than ever. Expectations are more than just wanting something, wishing, or feeling you “deserve” or are “entitled” to it (which is a very scary and real trend with lots of kids these days). Expectations go further to force you to think.
If I said, “do you want to be a great player?” Or, “do you want to be successful?” It would be easy to hear back a “Yes” response. Saying what you want is easy and a good leading question like that doesn’t require a lot of thinking. But if you follow that with the question, “Do you EXPECT to be successful?” that takes on a whole different thought process. Or at least it should…
This might not seem very clear at first but let me explain. Your expectations to achieve something must mean that you thought through cause and effect. Just think about it for a second. I am not talking about what you want. I am not talking about what you would wish for. I am talking about making this real for the kids by asking powerful questions like – Why?
Please understand exactly what expectations are. The definition of expectation is basically a strong belief that something is going to happen. But this belief must be grounded in reality. Why would you expect to be a great player? Especially if you have done nothing. Expectations are not wishes or fantasy.
They are a real life evaluation of your actions – a projection of simple cause and effect. Expectations should force you to project into the future and determine a result you want, plan a course to get there, and then start immediately today to earn that result.
True expectations can only come from evaluating your actions.
So, based on what you are doing today AND what you did yesterday – what results do you expect for tomorrow?
I believe we need to change the way we think and start making things real for our kids. Stop asking them what they want and start helping them to understand what to expect.
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