Joan has just missed a tag on her own try line (she’s playing tag rugby) and it has led to the opposition scoring a try.
Now it’s not important that she made a mistake what’s important is how she responds to it. So the way I see it, she can view this mistake in two ways, healthily or unhealthily.
To flesh out the unhealthy version Joan will:
Beat herself up about it, call herself an idiot and a terrible tag player.
Speculate that all her teammates are complaining about her.
Amplify her mistake by pointing out to herself that her missed tag led to a girl box try (max points conceded) and it happened in a very tense cup final where every point makes a difference.
This train of thoughts will lead to Joan believing that she is a terrible tag player and most likely jeopardize her performance for the rest of the game.
The healthy alternative is, that Joan views this event objectively:
A missed tag can happen anywhere on the pitch and at any time. It was just unfortunate that this time it led to a girl box try.
Missing a tag is not exclusive to her, it happens to the very best players as well. In fact a number of her teammates missed tags earlier in the game.
She can view the rest of the game as an opportunity to make up for her mistake.
This healthy train of thoughts can help Joan view the mistake for what it was, an honest mistake that could happen to anyone and could be a source of motivation to play better afterwards.
“Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it” Lou Holtz
Thomas Duggan 