Sure, it’s said with good intentions. Makes you feel good about yourself. Makes others think good things about you. Happens all the time. But then things get real! Those actions…They will catch up to you. Words are great and all but it will always come down to actions and effort. What you DO will ALWAYS carry more weight than what you SAY. So you might want to ease up on the Smoke, stop saying things and making promises you can’t keep, or to be honest, don’t know how to keep.
This is life. Everyone is a salesman to some extent. Whether you’re a parent, a teacher, a coach or even have “Salesman” in your job title, we are all trying to convince someone that this is the best way or what’s really going on.
To my fellow coaches, we use the word “development” often to define our approach. Or the phrase “trust the process” to help others with patience. Or “have fun out there” to help our players relax.
But here’s the thing…
We say that in one breath but then don’t understand that “development” requires so many reps and opportunities. It requires us learning more about the game and getting better ourselves. Deep down our goal is to really help them but in the moment our emotions win and then appeasing our feelings becomes more important. The numbers on the scoreboard start to cloud our judgement.
The “process” has no end date and even though we talk so much about it, we might be the worst one at genuinely trusting it. Our eyes get big, our smiles get wider when we see those early bloomers but we look past those kids who haven’t grown at the same pace because they can’t help us win some youth ball game that no matter the importance we put on it, it really doesn’t mean much in life.
We want the kids to “have fun out there” but have something to say on every play, our team meetings consist of talking about and harping on everything we see they did wrong and need to be better at. Our body language cries of disappointment. We try to make ourselves feel better with passive aggressive comments towards them. We yank them off the field in the middle of an inning because we are tired of seeing them out there making mistakes. We encourage them to be aggressive but then wear them out when they get out “being aggressive.” We get on them for not executing fundamental baseball but haven’t provided them with countless practice reps on those fundamentals.
Adults, we need to slow down. Start paying closer attention to our attitudes, actions and are we REALLY living our words. The kids will start to see through it and when they do, don’t be surprised when that oh so important “trust” thing starts to fade. That’s OUR fault. GET RID OF THE SMOKE!
Founder of Baseball Dudes. Blessed with three beautiful children and an amazing wife. Baseball is my life, after my family, and I love sharing what I have learned from it. Thanks for taking the time to view what we offer here at Baseball Dudes.
