Blogs : Hugh Murphy

The Psychology of Shame Levels

It is important to set lofty goals, but your top-end goal should not be farther from your P.R. than your shame level is from your P.R. For example: My P.R. is 68.5m. My goal is 73.5m. Therefore, my shame level should not be any higher than 63.5m (62m might be better).

I talk to so many people who feel devastated after a meet because they didn’t hit a p.r. or they missed their p.r. by a few feet. Disappointment and self-pity can ruin a week of training. You should expect yourself to train hard, but you should not expect everything to come together for you meet after meet. Lowering your shame level does not suggest complacency with poor performance - it does suggest that you are willing to put your emotions aside in order to ensure high quality training, thus improving your capacity to perform well at meets.

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Why feel shame at all?

1:54 AM, May 8, 2007 .. Posted by Anonymous

Hugh, you raise a good point and take a step in the right direction. But why not go all the way, and eliminate shame entirely from the equation? Why not acknowledge the inherent variability in performance, and be accepting of yourself for those things that you can control, and letting go of those you can't?

I'm not advocating that "you" (general you, not Hugh-you) be an emotionless drone moving from meet to meet without joy or sorrow. But rather that "you" when you experience the bitter sting of disappointment, hold your head high and be proud that you are brave enough to experience great disappointment. Be proud that you care enough to be hurt by failure. Be proud of the effort that got you where you are today. When you do that, you can truly experience the joys of success without fear of future failure. Because it is coming. No matter how hard you work, how much time and effort you put in, someday at the least the decline of age will come for you, and the prowess of youth will fade into to gray twilight.

interesting point from Anonymous

8:32 PM, May 20, 2007 .. Posted by hmurphy

I think you raise an interesting point. Why should we feel any shame after a poor performance?

I've been thinking about my last entry and wondering if a certain amount of shame/disappointment is necessary. While I do feel that shame can be a hinderance in training, I think a little bit is necessary to avoid complacency. A person with something to lose may focus more on the task at hand. However, I think that many people go to far with this- creating a false sense of failure.

When it comes down to it I guess there is really no single answer to this question (surprise, surprise). Everything is dependent on the athlete at hand. I would point to two of my former teammates as examples, both 180' discus throwers. One fed off emotion, variet and constant movement. His workouts were short and fast. Poor meets would drain him for a few days, but good meets would pump him up and put him in a great zone. The othere thrower was very collected, rational and methodical. He was a very organized person and his mood was pretty stable whether he threw far or not.

If these two throwers switched training regiments I believe their distances would suffer. This is exactly what happened when they experimented with each other's workouts. It just goes to show, there's more than one way to skin a cat.