Footballers hang up their boots. Boxers hang up their gloves and cricket commentators hang up their microphones! It’s difficult to know when it’s the best time to quit and move on to something else. Knowing when to quit is never easy. Usually, there are two parts to quitting, or to use the more appropriate term to ‘transitioning’. First, our performance drops to a point where others are clearly better than us. So we drop out or get de-selected. Second, our enjoyment drops.
It’s understandable to want to keep going, doing what we love to do, for as long as possible. Being realistic and adaptable about how well we can perform as we get older is very important. Adaptable by positively changing our training, rest and recovery, nutrition, and mental attitude.
From the new science of applied positive psychology we find 8 key ideas that are the difference between quitting now and perhaps while you’re ahead and performing longer, optimally, and with joy. What connects them all is the need to adopt a positive mindset.
1. Savour the good times: Savouring is the process of not letting the good moments pass without celebrating them. It’s important to enjoy the positive emotions that you feel. Savour past achievements as these will be strengthening and uplifting.
2. Develop self-compassion: Most people who play sport can be overly self-critical. We are tough on ourselves. We listen too much to the negative voices within us. This leads to anxiety, self-blame, and depression. So it’s important to change the chatter in our heads.
3. Avoid losing sight of your strengths: What is critical to performing optimally and for as long as we can, is knowing what we are good at doing and playing to our strengths. This often requires some self reflection and ‘checking out’ with coaches and others you trust, to give you their honest opinion. As we become more experienced, with age, it’s perfectly natural that our strengths change also. For example, early in our career, we might have physical strengths of pace and agility. Later in our career, these might change into being able to read the game better and anticipate what the opposition might do
4. See the glass half full: It’s very important to be optimistic about the future and to focus on the positives when moving forward. There is something called ‘learned optimism’ which means that we can learn to see the future as opportunities and possibilities, rather than as problems to be solved, fixed, or got rid of in our lives.
5. Review the quality of your sleep: To perform well and for longer, requires some serious thinking about the quality of our sleep. Adequate sleep helps us feel well and perform at our best. Seven hours per night is the recommended minimum for optimal functioning.
6. Beware of imposter syndrome: Sometimes, although we know we are doing ok and even performing well, inside we don’t feel successful, or not successful enough. We feel a bit like a fraud, when in fact we’re not! This mental state can be really debilitating. Talking these feelings through with someone we trust, who can offer a perspective on things, is essential if we are to take control of imposter syndrome.
7. Prepare for the transition: There are many examples in sport, where careers end, and life, all of a sudden, becomes scary and uncertain. Preparation for life after competitive sport needs to happen early and there be no better place to start this than with some serious attention to the re-setting of goals. This is about being clear about what we really want and need in our lives after we ‘quit’. A conversation about new meaning and purpose of life is essential. 8. Undertake regular wellbeing check-ups: Thriving involves both success and development. It’s a blend of achievement and growth, accomplishment, and learning. It requires balancing the demands for success with the demands for wellness and personal development. If you are performing well and pushing yourself hard, but you’re perpetually stressed and not enjoying yourself, that is the success of a kind, but it’s not thriving. Thriving occurs when success, development, and fulfillment are in harmony. This needs to be a central part of your check-up.