Psychology & Failure
July 15, 2018 12:08 PM   Subscribe

You learn better from failure than from winning. [guardian] Learning from the team psychologist for England's football team. Alternately, just enjoy seeing the team in a pool on unicorn floats. posted by Margalo Epps (7 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
On a perdu pendant 16 ans et aujourd'hui on a gagné !!!!

Allez les Bleus ! :)
posted by fraula at 12:21 PM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]


Unicorn floats for all the teams would have made this World Cup even better.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:35 PM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


This is a really interesting article and thanks Margalo Epps for sharing. It was no surprise to me that Pippa Grange had previous working experience with New Zealand rugby teams. New Zealand rugby teams in the 1960's and 1970's, when I was growing up and watching them play, wouldn't have know how to spell 'psychologist' or even pronounce it correctly. And it wasn't until the 1990's that players such as the wonderful Sir John Kirwin start to talk about mental illness and its impact on players. Sport has come such a long way in recognising the value of psychology. And yay for that!

It would have been interesting to hear from the English football players after their loss to Croatia. Much of what the article talks about is the value of failure and how players deal with its aftermath. You can argue that England reaching the semi-finals was in fact a success but you do wonder about how individual players are now dealing with what many will see as failure.
posted by vac2003 at 2:03 PM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


I love those unicorns. What article?

(priorities, man)
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:51 PM on July 15, 2018


The greatest teacher, failure is.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:18 AM on July 16, 2018


I'd prefer to win rather than learn.
posted by josher71 at 12:51 PM on July 16, 2018


In sports, sure that's probably true. But the parameters are very narrow, and if you won that means your plan worked. What do you do with a plan that worked? Throw it out the window and rethink everything, or just make small tweaks? Then your small tweaks are tested often (again, since it's sports and the same scenarios come up week after week).

But if it really were true, you'd think there'd be more parity, and not less and less, and that a team like the Cleveland Browns for example would basically know everything there is to conceptually know about football by now...knowing is half the battle of course. But apparently the lesser half.

What I'm saying in all this rambling is that failure is a great teacher in sports, but less so in life, partially because the talent gulf is wider but mostly because the 'success' parameters are so much more unknown and regularly changing. So don't take this to mean more than it does....
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on July 17, 2018


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