"Too Hard"

I recently wrote an essay extolling the virtues of embracing the painfully difficult and the failure it can produce. I received a comment that suggested that being “too hard” on oneself can cause negative personal feelings and thus become detrimental to progress. This perspective caused me to question if in my life I had been too hard on myself and more importantly on others in my charge? This contrary view of hardship and the question it inspired brought to mind an experience I had while coaching children. It was a time similar to now in that I was being asked to explain away the notion of being “too hard”.

Years ago, I was approached by a group of parents who were interested in upgrading the coaching of their children in the sport of soccer. I took the job and a very different journey began for all concerned. I brought with me to the job some experience in coaching and a long history of playing the game. I played sports for most of my young life and I encountered quite a few coaches who were in fact “too hard”. I toiled under the thumb of tyrants who seemed to relish the idea of having control over players and used their position to inflict random hardship on the team to showcase their power. As a coach I was determined to be the antithesis of that which I had experienced as a player. This meant that I would be highlighting values like discipline, sacrifice, and accountability in an effort to achieve success without focusing on winning a particular game. These values would be held in the highest regard for the players and for myself. I would not waiver from them nor pretend that they were accomplished for the sake of alleviating embarrassment or negative thoughts. To that end I would hold each player and myself equally accountable to a set of never changing standards. All evaluations would be measured in terms of singular events such as a play, a game, or a practice.

In my opinion, the job of coaching children was essentially to use the vehicle of sports to impact the character of the young boys and girls. One of the essential elements I employed in the pursuit of that goal was a debriefing session after each game. In these sessions I would critique individual players, the team, and my coaching performance during the contest. Every person who was involved in the game would be measured and evaluated. In these sessions, I would focus almost entirely on effort and attention to the game plan. For the record, I called out myself on several occasions for failed strategies and moments of lack of focus due to anger at officiating. Some of my unflattering critiques undoubtably filtered their way back to the parents. Coupled with a lack of understanding of my motivations and with a desire to protect their children from anything negative, the parents decided to take a survey amongst themselves to evaluate me as a coach. This produced a feeling that perhaps I was too “old-school” which was really their way of saying I was being “too hard” on the children. A meeting was called to discuss and as I soon discovered, to change my approach to coaching their children.

It was not lost on me that the fact that there was a meeting called by the parents to discuss my methods portended that the team’s path forward might not include me. I was not concerned with defending myself to avoid dismissal because I was completely confident in the purity of my approach. So I sat in front of twenty or so parents and was peppered with questions regarding playing time, length of practice, methods of preparation, and overall approach and strategy. I calmly answered each question with detailed reasons for every decision I made and action I took in regard to coaching the team. The parents did not seem overly impressed with my answers and I soon became acutely aware that they simply wanted me to say I was going to go easier on the kids. I did not give that answer and after realizing that my explanations were falling on deaf ears, I stopped trying to reveal the interworking of my approach. I was satisfied with the knowledge that the children completely understood my method and embraced the challenges I laid before them. When I left I thought that there was a very good chance that I might not be coaching anymore but to my surprise nothing really came of the meeting and I was able to go on coaching the team and teaching the players about character.

Sure this is just a little story about coaching a group of kids but it does give insight into my beliefs about being “hard”. The concept of being “hard” is a condition which must be utilized to achieve progress. It will produce times of failure but those are moments of challenge that create opportunity for future success. It is a view of process that defines failure as a singular event not the indictment of the totality of a person; in that regard it is never an attack on the character of the individual. Things become “too hard” when the demands of self are unrealistic or driven by the insecurities of a person of power. I am sure there are those that at some points in time thought I was being too hard but that is because they had never faced something difficult and it tested their physical strength and mental resolve. In those moments and those which followed, most would find that they had underestimated what they could endure and achieve. They would also understand retrospectively that I was asking them to do something that was difficult, not being “too hard”. If we keep ourselves and everyone in our charge away from all things deemed too hard, how will we learn to deal with the inevitable hardship life has in store for all of us? If we refuse to allow negatives to be faced because we believe that they are scarring, then how we will ever be able to overcome the pain of life and our inevitable failures? There is a stark difference between the pure honesty and character building of “hard” and the arbitrary meanness and destructive power of “too hard”.

Close to the end of my coaching the same group children whose parents thought me to be too “old School” we were faced with a daunting task one Saturday morning. Because of circumstances out of our control we were forced to play the game with only six players. It was a seven-on-seven league so that meant we would be playing the entire game one player short. I gave the six a strategy which was more like a dream and they took the field. The other team was relentless and able to send wave after wave of fresh players into the game while my six boys struggled against the onslaught. We lost the game badly and in the end the boys walked towards me exhausted with heads hanging low. They gathered around me on the sideline in the usual post-game fashion and I leaned forward and asked them to follow me to the center of the field. I told them that we had to move because I was going to cry, and their parents had not earned the right to see me in that way. Once in the center of the field I looked down at the little guys with tears rolling down my cheeks and said, “I do not care one little bit about the score. Sure we lost this fight but we are still standing here. I have been the member of many great teams. I have loved my teammates and cherish my time with them, but I have never been  more proud to be part of a team than I am right now. You never showed the other team a single moment of quit or lack of effort in the face of certain defeat. I am absolutely humbled by your effort”. Standing there with the six boys I felt the euphoria that all teachers and coaches feel in that rare moment when they know that a lesson or concept has been universally understood by all those in their care. It was some time later when I was revisiting the memory of that day that it became clear to me why I had such a dysfunctional relationship with their parents. The children understood the reasoning and embraced the concept of “hard”; their parents saw everything which challenged their children to the point of possible failure as being negative and therefore “too hard”.

So after considerable introspection I have not only answered the personal question of “too hard” but I have made two ancillary discoveries in the process. First and primarily, “Am I too hard on myself and those under my direct influence?” No, I am not. Secondarily and incredibly satisfying to me, “Am I too proud of the accomplishments of those in my care and have I been too emotional in witnessing their successes?” Nah, just the right amount.