WORK. Work to adults is how we overcome our challenges in life. When spend enough time working at something we eventually start to see results. To many adults, the idea of themselves “playing” is seen as meaningless in the grand scheme of life. How can you “play” when you have stress in your life to deal with. Why “play” when there’s no cash prize. Why “play” and risk public embarrassment? Some of the most successful people have gotten to where they are because at some point, they spent more time working at a particular skill/plan/performance than the general population. Stay with me here.... What if the most important determinant of our success isn’t the actual skills being taught, or the person teaching them, but is instead the number of times that an individual is allowed to perform a task, fail, re-evaluate, re-perform the task, fail, re-evaluate, re-perform and so on. In theory, we are set apart from animals because we are able to make mistakes that go against our intuition. In nature, animals are hard-wired to act definitively in certain situations and when they make mistakes they are often met with serious consequence. A bird tries to build a nest somewhere other than high-up in the air, and it’s eggs get eaten. A mouse waits around to see what the rustling noise is behind him. Eaten.
‘FAIL, RE-EVALUATE, RE-PERFORM THE TASK, FAIL, RE-EVALUATE, REPERFORM THE TASK, AND SO ON.’ There is evidence that PLAY is an integral part of how children develop/improve game-intelligence, anticipation, decision-making, and creative tactical responses. We humans...we don’t get eaten when we make mistakes. Yes, the worst of our mistakes run the real risk of putting us in some form of danger but, for the most part, even though we make dozens of mistakes per day we still manage to manage to gather food and find shelter. We can fall back to the support and comfort of family, friends. When the worst happens we’re still able to rely on religion and government. Being able to make a mistake and not end up being eaten/injured increases the likelihood that we will be prepared for a similar situation in the future. We simply adapt our initial plans to compensate for our previous errors in judgment. If you’re a coach, and you are allowing your players a high number of opportunities to make harmless mistakes then I would like to congratulate you. You are teaching them how to take initiative for their own learning and how to trust their own intuition, instead of teaching them self-doubt and indecision. 22 | 11 Players | www.11players.ca