“Be the Blanket”: Why Athletes Should Be Soft On Themselves

I can feel your visceral response to this title.

“Soft?!!”

“Where will it end? Participation prizes? Young people ending up work-shy, living off the state? Athletes more like models than models of resilience.”

Perhaps “soft” to you means someone being lazy, or being gifted success instead of working for it?

“Athletes should be hard on themselves, always fighting for more, beating themselves up to reach that next goal, determined to stick to the plan no matter what.” This is certainly what we hear from most TV sports commentators - who fail to realize that their captive audience would benefit far more from learning a softer, more skilful and more effective approach.

I’m going to explain why it’s critical for us to unlearn our notions of being “soft”. Why? Because softness is crucial to athletic development, to resilience, to wellbeing, and to sport’s role in changing the world...Yup, this is a big deal!

The Rock or the Blanket?

When I founded The True Athlete Project, one of the first people I sought the wisdom of was Dr. Zibin Guo, a medical anthropologist. I remember the story he told me standing in his third floor office of Brock Hall, at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.

In his sage-like way: “What is stronger - a wall or a blanket? You might think the wall. But look what happens when I throw this rock at that wall. The wall chips! Now, look at what happens when I throw this rock at a blanket. The blanket absorbs, changes shape; it’s fine. Hard is not always strong.”

I got the idea, but I didn’t understand the importance of the teaching.

Softening

We can all soften right now. We instinctively know how to do this in our bodies, and in our thinking. Just see if you can invite a bit of softness now… to your lips, to your breathing, to your shoulders, to your hands. Just rest in this softness for a moment or two, even if everything in you wants to skim forward. Softness in your belly, and through your legs.

Softness allows us to settle our minds and bodies and to experience what is happening right now. When we experience what is happening right now, and realize that this moment is not to be so feared, we can make a wiser decision about what to do next. A wiser thing to say when flustered. A wiser food to consume. This wisdom-training is the essence of how mindfulness practice can help us to create healthier lives and build more compassionate relationships with others, and with the world around us. It is in this wise decision-making that mindfulness comes to life beyond the person practicing, and overcomes the criticism that it is just a “neoliberal, individualistic intervention”. (We can take that one on in a different article).

Softness doesn’t mean sleepiness, it doesn’t mean to dull ourselves. It means taking time to absorb, embrace the moment fully, invite ease despite the pain we feel, and realize that our fears do not have to dictate our actions. Softness is not the easy way out. It can be so much easier to block things out - to be the wall.

A Counter-Cultural Idea

In all my work with children, athletes, coaches and leaders, I can't think of an example where softness leads to harm or vice. Rather over and over again this approach evidently leads to people feeling understood, calmer, and more powerful.

And yet...the dominant messaging on motivational posters, in fleeting guest speaker appearances, and on social media - is that “Life is about constantly pushing your limits and striving to be the best version of yourself”.?

Really? CONSTANTLY?! Imagine striving at all times to be your absolute best. A totally unrealistic aim that only serves to make people feel worse about their flaws, and even makes people feel bad for resting.

To my horror, I saw one well-meaning coach post on Instagram last week their impassioned speech to young athletes, saying: “Do you really think Kobe and Serena have to motivate themselves? No, of course not” before then mimicking the idea of someone trying to gear themselves up for practice. At once this coach mocked young people who struggle to feel motivated, and young people who try to motivate themselves despite that struggle! Amazing.

Unfortunately this hard, judging narrative dominates the status quo. And unfortunately for the proponents of that narrative, they’ve likely not had the opportunity to experience how strong, resilient, beautiful performance can emerge out of gratitude, and rest, mindfulness and softness.

Training Softness

This epidemic of hardness and judgment speaks to one of the first things we learn in mindfulness practice - that when we judge ourselves too harshly, we simply serve to fill our mind with stuff that’s taking us away from the deeply nourishing practice of being connected to the present moment.

Naturally, we will find ourselves distracted within a meditation, but if we judge ourselves for losing our attention then we only take ourselves further away from our goal of being present.

However, when we release the judgment, we come back to the present moment sooner, and we can stay present for longer, until the inevitable distractions and urges come again. With training, and over time, we can build our ability to catch our mind wandering into unhelpful patterns sooner, to let go, and to come back to the here and now.

We also learn that we do not ‘snap’ our attention back to our anchor, we “guide” our attention back. We escort our attention gently. The entire work of mindfulness speaks to the effectiveness of softness. And while this offers the practitioner a much subtler sensation of effort than say lifting weights, it’s no less difficult, and no less an important training for athletes who want to stay present for longer, and to stabilize sooner from the highs and lows of competition.

In tennis, we call this the “twenty-second weapon”. There are twenty seconds between points to 'let go' of what just happened (the bad umpire decision, the lucky net cord, the stupid shot choice), to calm our body, and to arrive fully in this moment with intention. If we can consistently use those twenty seconds better than our opponent, then over the course of a match we possess a huge weapon - just like having a big serve or great movement.

Softness IS for you

The beauty of this softness is that it helps you to work with any situation or challenge that comes your way.

As a case in point - one of my favorite ever projects was delivering mindfulness and deep listening practices to a group of 20 volunteers at a sports club in a socioeconomically deprived area of the U.K. When asked how the program had helped them, I received answers that went in 20 different directions - all very meaningful to that individual:

What does this mean? Not that mindfulness is the only solution to all your problems - certainly not. But rather that you can virtually guarantee that whatever the challenge, you will be helped by finding a little more softness, not less. Because soft can be strong.

So let’s value softness as a trainable and vital skill. Let's encourage athletes, coaches, and in fact anyone, to be soft on themselves, for the good of their wellbeing, their development, their performance, their relationships, and their ability to shape a more compassionate world, as we all have the power to do.

In short, let’s be the blanket.