Psychological Training - The Barrier to Humility

Sailors have to develop a special relationship to their environment and their fellow competitors. There has to be a good deal of humility in front of the weather gods and in respect of other people's safety on the course.

Yet humilty is also something we need to nurture in order to learn and grow at what you can call a natural rate.

The first thing about humility which is difficult for experienced sailors is going through the basics and polishing off little systems which otherwise we can take for granted in the ego swing to try new things, to focus on the big wins, to talk about low hanging fruit and to put pressure usually on a high pressure start and high pressure roundings to pull results up by the shirt collar!  Ok I say to my advancers in sail school, I can teach you a few tricks now, but it is the basics of weather sense, trim&balance, sail and rig setting and course-to-sail which you will come back to every time to polish and to polish.

The first step in doing this move to humility, which yes I find hard too, is to realises that in the sport of sailing there is a lot of 'chop water, fetch wood', Before a race or when rigging the boat for the season, we go through check lists. If we have gone through our check lists, we mayve have another check again, and we maybe add some small points to that check list. If we then have time in the dinghy park or the pre race, we think about the weather forecast and actual weather signs on the water, and we think about adjustments for that or maybe just maybe trying something a little new.

When you do have time then, after all the brassware is polishded for the day then and only then is there time for And no just take one thing, It could be time then to shake down crew choreography for take-downs or to shorten the backstay cascade system.

Humility then continues. We remember then Rule 2, general sportsmanship, and rule 14 - avoid collision if possible, beyond being right. We kmow some people are beginners or less competent, and yes we know there are arrogant chancers who will misuse rule 14 and people's timidness about the 'wee room' whcih stops them protesting, to their bully boy advantage. Then humility comes as an approach to the weather. Do we actually have more wind than our number  one genoa ambitions? Then we come to what is now the blue peter time, 4 mins out, and what are the fleet doing? Are they late or early? Bunched or spread out >? How does this influence our plan for a tight boat end start or to get a text book safe, third way down the line start?

Now we read things. We take a slurp of coffee maybe, now is not the time to make circumstances seem to fit out plans, now is time to move on if they dont. In essence then this is the attitude we take further in the whole race, with each change in fortune. Very good boats which make bad starts, and we are talking second rack starts, have an uncanny habit of clawing back top ten places and not having discards as high as the teens. An advantage of a bad start, is that once we have cleared our wind, as we must, taking more pain or hopefully easing ahead by a nose....sorry an advantage of a bad start as I was saying is that you can read the fleet and the first shift, and take another look at tide and wind strategy. A lot of mid line boats will be tacking around to clear their wind, and others will be pinning each other out of actually using the wind shifts. In effect a major part of the fleet is slowing the whole game down by its sheer 'tactical viscosity' . One deal here for the 'come back kid' is that you can make fewer tacks on the first beat in order to get to the correct side, probably use the shifts more to your advantage, amd then most likely come out with a better mental picture for the run and the second beat which can then drag you up dozens of places.

Humility here too in outset!  If you are short crewed, to a point of not being competitve, then why not offer your crew to some better boats who maybe miss one or two, and spread out your spies? Another option is to get up on the right hand side of the extenstion of the line, do a fake start out of the way of everyone, and watch the fleet from the best seats in the business? Soon you can tack up beyond the lay line and keep yourself clear. If you are far short crewed, motorsail it up to keep pace with the fleet. Being flicked off the crew in a nationals for the first two days once gave me a wonderful chance to work alongside professional course officials laying marks and observing the fleet. I heard almost no shouting in the top 5 boats round the windward mark, and no mistakes, just differences in times to hoist.

Humility comes then with of course less than shining results and also a result or podium place pulled by lady luck more than our own endeavours per se on the water. We take stock and go through what we did badly with objectivity and out lady lucjk and the fuck up fairy to one side a little, avoid blame storming and look at how the system with the skipper at its asthmus is peforming. It is the skippers decision to race, and his decision too on how hard to push his crew or if he is wise, how to match your manoevres to the crews ability. Gybes are usually the weakest point in the whole chain where a canny helm will adapt to his crew of the day, hung over or scratched from the harbour side as they may be.  You will choose to do fewere manoevres and take time about them, or for example carry out an early take down and white sails gybe rather than a more ambitious last minute gybe and drop at the mark.

We are humble to the sea and to misfortune if there are breakages, and indeed we remember Rule 1 each time we set out and do not just pay a hailing lip service to that rule, we instruct our crew to be ready to down tools and give assistance. The sea is very large and man is but a small barnacle on a wooden plank.

Dropping Your Shoulders....More Sports Psychology

I think the biggest change in my overall enjoyment of sailing as a sport was when I won the first race I ever helmed in a keel boat. There was a healthy tension and a great crew, with the owner tweaking the boat to get optimum speed. I felt both butterflies in my stomach, but I felt I could drop my shoulders and use my years of dinghy sailing experience and nouse as would-be-tactician over many years to do my best and cooperate with the crew. We won by a country mile. 

I am currently on an evening management course  on understanding and tackling stress - emotions, motivations and peri-conscious thought patterns which disturb our performance and ability to handle the challenges life and work present.

The course is a superb distillation of a large body of work done by pyschologists and clinicians over the last 60 years. ( I studied two years in Pyschology at University btw) . Towards the end of last night's course we were introduced to a concept of  "esteem and confidence silo's" which was kind of a Eureka moment for me when I thought back to my sailing career and those around me.

The Assymetry Between Confidence & Esteem 

I think we all know people who are very practical and able to get things done, often to the point where they are outright irritating and or even overbearing. The equation though is not that they have necessarily high self esteem.

The theory here states that self-esteem is something which feeds into self-confidence, but not really the reverse. There is a non reverse proportionate, or assymetric relationship. The gas filling you get in self confidence from feeling good in your 'soul' is largely a one way street.

Self confidence is closely linked to our ability to react and handle the world. Self esteem is a deeper premises from which we find the root to our opinions and starting point for how we then go on to experience the world and take the learning experiences which lead to self confidence. There is a slight feedback there though, some leak from Silo 2 to Silo 1. But the second silo of self confidence will not back-fill, and it can get pretty full - there is almost a one-way valve, we fill up but it does not go back out and as the pressure builds to act apparently 'assertively' we can appear increasingly arrogant and aggressive.

So appearing to be highly confident does not mean that a person has high self esteem, and can mean the exact reverse.....

Self Esteem then gives us our outset , our ego- articulated values, long lasting inner feelings about our selves, and unwritten life-rules  - not only how we steer our own lives but also of course how we interact with others. How fulfilling these encounters, relationships, overcoming-of-challenges and interactions with the world are depends mostly on our self esteem and not our self confidence per se.

Think Sailors!

Now sport and not least sailing is a very particular part of our lives. For many of us from 'Anglican' countries, sport is the only real outlet for adrenaline spun competitive spirit. We are stiff upper lip and to be honest, a little pussy-whipped in our offices and oh-so-safe work sites. In sport we often expose an underlying self esteem and display a different self confidence than in the very emotionally inhibited and temperament neutral careers we live with.

You can then think about your own sailing and those of your erstwhile helm or crew or competitors and start to recognise that many who exhibit self-confidence are actually quite abrasive and are not really fulfilling the spirit of sporting. I suggest further that they are not actually being very fulfilled emotionally, and that they need to have a series of little wins within races and grab wins and flout their glory when they can if they are good sailors. This is often the loud-mouth, bully and outrigh cheat and every club has at least one in their fleet.

An alternative type is the "frustrate". Someone who make bold desicions, often doing a course side flyer, trying to roll a better competitor on the run, or gybe setting and the like when they just can't carry it off. Worse they are intolerably bossy and often ill tempered with their own crews.

Eternal Orgasms of Unfulfillment

The same thing is true of shopaholics, these two types of helms are not being fulfilled by an inner sense of well being from the sport. They have a need for pushing and being arrogant is the symptom of that. They need small wins and the feeling of being in control to feed into their quite weak ego system. They need small ego boosts all the time to feed their mean-machine outset and under developed self esteem.

What is Positive, Sporting Self Esteem in Sailing ?

The best people to see positive self esteem in the context of our sport are actually eager  new beginners believe it or not. They can be a little irritating in the club house of course, always pointing out the obvious, asking 'stupid' questions and talking excitedly about their minor improvements and incidents on the race course as if they were in the Americas cup.

Back up here you cynics!!  These types of people often come into sailing as adults with a great deal of life experience and fulfillment, or a children with optimism and enthusiasm. They come with the attitude " I can learn this, I can master step by step, and I can enjoy this beautiful sport".

We as more experienced sailors need to learn to learn again, and come with a new set of inner feelings which maybe force us to jack down our self confidence, eat some humble pie and go back to admitting we are learning. We also need to question, as I often point out, if we are enjoying the sport and competition locally on  a weekly basis? What are we seeking through sailing and are we feeling fulfillment?

Driven and Fulfilled by Competing 

This does not mean you have to leave behind you those things which drive you - for me originally it was loving the experience of racing, and hating to lose. For others it can be the rush of the start, or coralling their crew or following the rules as if they were the letter of the law so to speak.

Think realistically about where our sporting self esteem lies and if the silo is actually much emptier than our self confidence. Consider further then that if we are over confident we need to seek values and goals which feed our self esteem and not try to find short cuts to 'quick wins' or pushing other people around.

High self well being and esteem with low self confidence is then a matter of learning experiences and seeking out mentors and sailing courses which can help you overcome the nerves, the mental blocks and the lack of eye-hand coordination you may have.

Sporting Spirit and Your Ego

I think personally that sporting spirit is then very closely linked to your self esteem, and that self confidence and ability on the race course is a following positive result from having a good set of values and feelings before you step foot in a boat.

Sporting spirit means respecting the rules, your competitors and most of all the crew around you. It means conceding small battles in order to win wars. It means congratulating people who beat you in the last tack to the finish line, or get water on you at the last rounding. It means dusting off your failures and accepting them as learning lessons and defining these then as challenges to overcome by learning and experience. It means dropping your shoulders and enjoying your sport.

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This concept of the two Silos lies a little deeper in the 'soul' than the concepts of assertiveness on the racecourse but are a better start point. I think I have blogged on assertiveness on the race course a couple of years ago, will see and republish or update that.