“Know Thyself!” the ancient Roman dictum is as true now as it was then. Few athletes realize that they will never reach their full potential unless they have developed their maximum capacity for self-knowledge and self-love. This may sound strange to the ears of a competitive alpha-type sporting personality, for self-love is usually regarded as an undesirable trait, something that is best avoided.
“Jenny just loves herself “ is an emphatically unkind observation. What we mean when we make such comments is that Jenny is self-centred and narcissistic, too busy loving herself and her own performance to really care about teammates and others. And let’s face it. Most teams have their “Jenny.”
Truly selfish people are interested solely in themselves, want everything for themselves, feel pleasure not in giving, but in taking, and only tend to give in order to get. They see the world and its people as there to be exploited.
That said it’s easy to fall into the trap of confusing self-love with selfishness. I know this sounds peculiar, but athletes who are selfish suffer not from too much self-love but actually, from too little. They grab all the goodies they can get for themselves, because they feel too unlovable to acquire them as a natural right. So selfish people are not able to feel and care for others easily, but then they're incapable of loving themselves either. Selfishness and self-love, far from being similar, are therefore quite the opposite.
On the other hand, your love of yourself and your feelings for others are embroiled and intertwined. You have to love yourself before you can start on others. And in order to love yourself you have to know yourself. It's best to establish that identity relatively early on, even in childhood. Many athletes don't manage to do this until its too late – well past their prime. And dare I say, some never do.
Whatever the case, a strong identity is pre-requisite for optimal growth, development and performance. It’s a critical ingredient not only in knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, but also in learning to reach out to others around you and allowing them into your “inner” world.
Remember: If you don't think highly enough of yourself, you're always going to sell yourself short. Not just on the field of play, but in life generally. You’ll emit the wrong (often-times arrogant) messages, which suggest “why do you even like me!” And if you do so convincingly, your teammates may eventually come to regard you in that vein and things could begin to fall apart between you and them. Conversely, your strategy might be to put your teammates down all the time when what you're really doing, is cutting them down to size in order to line up with your own poor self rating. And that can be very destructive.
In short, you need to discover who you really are and how to change all those things about yourself that you really want to change! And to peel away the layers that hide the real you from yourself, your team mates and perhaps even the world around you.
Dr. Lenny Kristal