What it takes for Argentina team to overcome pressure

Argentina football team is suffering. Emotions always impact how you perform in sports, or school or even in business. What it takes for Argentina to overcome peer pressure?

Argentina team looks defeated. They are great players, why is it being so had for them? Even though they are in great physical condition, they are not emotionally ready to win. Pressure is too much for them to allow them to do their best. Is it possible to win after Argentina-Croacia match?

Entrepreneurs and business owners also go through situations like this all the time. One day we are heroes because we got so many accounts, the next day we develop a product that is a total loss for the company. Managing Emotional Intelligence usually is the answer to solve problems that we cannot understand, that doesn’t make logical sense. Emotions ultimately determine the success of a team.

• Put problems in perspective

Messi’s frustration even before starting the game shows that he was worried, he has been worried the whole week, even not attending to informal team events. And he was not the only one. The players were more worried about what could happen if they would fail or win, instead of trying to live the moment. So once they started to lose the game, they just made the nightmare come true. That is the so-called self-fulfilling prophecy(a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true). In a football match, you don’t have much time to recover or to stop to meditate. YOU have to prepare in advance to avoid letting these thoughts capture your mind negatively. You need to learn to clear your mind, and if the thought ever comes back, try to diminish it “This was just a mistake, is not the end of the world, we can still win”. Read more about it from Zoe Henry

• Manage mistakes

During the game, even though the first goal was a mistake, it shouldn’t have affected the whole game, there was still plenty of time to win. What happened is that every player took that goal as a message of defeat, and keep on playing it on their minds during the whole match. That’s what happens with depression. People keep ruminating thoughts that are not useful for them, making it more difficult to move on and think of how to win with the next move. Your emotions and behavior come from you—they don’t come from anyone else—therefore, you’re the one who’s responsible for them. Your reaction is your responsibility.

Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson once said: “No matter how many times you fall, you need to wipe yourself clean, turn your mind off and start over.”

• Recover your passion

Go back to the basics of why you are playing, why choose this sport (or this business) in the first place. They should be enjoying what they are doing, not just think about how they are doing. It happened to me several times when I was doing roller skating performances or even now while speaking in public. If while you are performing you think how you are doing, you mess it up. While you perform, you just need to work as planned, there is no time to think, you just need to act by instinct following the different strategies that you have been practicing (yes, practice is key). You are dead if you try something new at that moment, don’t let your emotions control your actions. Just follow your routine and enjoy it without thinking about the result.

• Work as a team and share the leadership

If you are too weak right now to recover your inner passion, get with your team and recover it together. You can even overcome problems with the leaders (Messi as captain or Sampaoli as coach). Instead of getting rid of the leaders, you can just share the leadership and open decisions to the whole team, or to some of the team members that may be better ready emotionally to deal with the specific situation. I always mention orchestras as a great example of a team. No matter if you have great players, if they don’t work together as a team, that’s not music. Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony would say “Old-school conductors liked to hold the lead in their hands at all times. I do not. Sometimes I lead. Other times I’ll say, “Violas, I’m giving you the lead. Listen to one another, and find your way with this phrase.” I’m not trying to drill people, military style, to play music exactly together. I’m trying to encourage them to play as one, which is a different thing. I’m guiding the performance, but I’m aware that they’re executing it. If this works for music, why would not work in sports? Great leaders are the ones that develop other leaders that could help them when needed.

• Create a positive culture:

We should all stop talking about mistakes. Since the rise of social media, we have been punishing players so hard. If we all could just support them and create a positive environment to release the pressure they have to win, they could play “free of charge”. “Memes” should be used for motivational no punishment purposes. Is not about winning the next game, or even the World Cup, is about building a winning culture. Argentinian culture has always to do with suffering and blaming others. We can work harder to support the team rather than blaming them for holding back our dream.

We are all part of a team, sometimes we lose, sometimes we win. But the only we can stick together is a sharing culture that values trust over peer pressure.