One thing that works for me - and I realize the second half of this isn't on the menu for everyone - is a two-part recipe: 1) Make the best moves you can make on the board all day, and 2) Trust God. I don't know if this necessarily boosts success, but it does bring a calm sense of purpose to the day, and an ability to start each day relatively fresh. There are definitely days where it feels like the best moves on the board are in those last lines up at the top of a Tetris game, with new obstacles raining down. But even on those days, thinking of it as a game board does create a helpful amount of psychological distance. You play the hand you're dealt. It's a bad hand and you still win, there are experienced players who can recognize what it took to achieve that. And if you lose, you made the best moves on the board that you could, and the next step is to find the best insight from the wisest people about what moves were great and what moves, given what you knew at the time, could've been better and how. So if you want to play the game again, you can play it better (hopefully with a better hand). Or: you can choose to play a different game.
What's BS and unhelpful, as Wil points out, is talking to every athlete like they have the options of a heavily recruited star. Because most people aren't that draft pick, for all kinds of reasons that may not correlate to their ability or potential. But everyone has to run their race, take their shots, be grateful for the good breaks and be accept that things are going to go sideways a lot.
As for the second part - it's a massive benefit for a person to have faith that they are where they're meant to be, and that even if it's incredibly uncomfortable, what's happening now unlocks what's important that comes next. It might be a relationship - the battle buddy who is the silver lining of an otherwise disastrous endeavor - or an insight that 97% of what you were doing wasn't valuable, but that other 3% is an uncut diamond. You can achieve this without capital-F faith. But if you're so stressed out that perspective is almost impossible, that's less likely.
JC Herz
One thing that works for me - and I realize the second half of this isn't on the menu for everyone - is a two-part recipe: 1) Make the best moves you can make on the board all day, and 2) Trust God. I don't know if this necessarily boosts success, but it does bring a calm sense of purpose to the day, and an ability to start each day relatively fresh. There are definitely days where it feels like the best moves on the board are in those last lines up at the top of a Tetris game, with new obstacles raining down. But even on those days, thinking of it as a game board does create a helpful amount of psychological distance. You play the hand you're dealt. It's a bad hand and you still win, there are experienced players who can recognize what it took to achieve that. And if you lose, you made the best moves on the board that you could, and the next step is to find the best insight from the wisest people about what moves were great and what moves, given what you knew at the time, could've been better and how. So if you want to play the game again, you can play it better (hopefully with a better hand). Or: you can choose to play a different game.
What's BS and unhelpful, as Wil points out, is talking to every athlete like they have the options of a heavily recruited star. Because most people aren't that draft pick, for all kinds of reasons that may not correlate to their ability or potential. But everyone has to run their race, take their shots, be grateful for the good breaks and be accept that things are going to go sideways a lot.
As for the second part - it's a massive benefit for a person to have faith that they are where they're meant to be, and that even if it's incredibly uncomfortable, what's happening now unlocks what's important that comes next. It might be a relationship - the battle buddy who is the silver lining of an otherwise disastrous endeavor - or an insight that 97% of what you were doing wasn't valuable, but that other 3% is an uncut diamond. You can achieve this without capital-F faith. But if you're so stressed out that perspective is almost impossible, that's less likely.
For what it's worth,
JC