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> I experienced this when I was climbing in competitive games. The first step was to get over the 'not my fault' mentality and transition to an 'I need to improve' mentality. I began by analyzing everything that I understood, and becoming more conscious and aware of the current situation, the available information and my mistakes and every game I was aiming to improve my play instead of winning. This is what I've done recently with my approach to playing music. I'd always have described myself as very 'self-critical' of my musical skills, but this criticism was never more than "Ugh, this sucks. Try harder!" What I've realized fairly recently (and wish someone had told me when I was much younger) is that my self-criticism wasn't constructive criticism. I was aware that I was unhappy with my performance, but I wasn't aware of why. Now when I'm not happy with my playing, I try to stop and think about exactly what it is that's bothering me about it. If it's multiple things, I'll just pick one to focus on and try to improve that. I'm still self-critical, but it's constructive criticism now, and that's something I can improve from. The "not my fault" mentality you mentioned feels safe, because if someone believes there's nothing that could have done to change the outcome, then there's nothing that might make them feel bad[1]. Of course, sometimes things really aren't your fault, and believing there's something you could have done when there's in fact nothing is also a problem. There's a balance to be struck between the two perspectives. [1] I'm not saying they ought to feel bad, just that I think it's common experience to feel bad when we don't achieve our goals, and worse when we think of something we could have done differently. |