Staying Positive Step 7

Staying Positive: The ability to use tactics and strategies to overcome setbacks and achieve goals.

Step 7: I look for opportunities in difficult situations

Outcomes

To achieve Step 7, learners will have to be able to identify where opportunities exist, even in difficult situations.

In earlier steps, the focus was on how individuals respond to something going wrong, which could be interpreted as a one-time event. The focus now moves on to how to find opportunities in difficult situations.

Learners need to be able to:

See why opportunities exist even in difficult situations
Be able to identify some of those opportunities for themselves

Introduction

There are often upsides to a situation but we need to understand that situation a bit better first.
In order to find the opportunity, we have to first try to really understand what has happened, thinking about the positive and negative sides of the situation. We can make a list of these if that helps us.

Skill Starter

Opportune Moments

Recap what learners did in the previous session. Ask them to identify what was challenging or difficult about it. Encourage them to then identify the positive opportunities they have in this session which will lead to success and build on it. For example:

“I have found it particularly challenging returning the back hand shot at speed. The downside is that it has made me feel frustrated, and affected my confidence, but the pros are that it has allowed me to identify my ‘work on’; I am able to practise this at slower speeds to gain confidence and achieve success. I am also developing a new skill and I am enjoying myself”.

5 mins

Individual activity

Discussion

Teach & Apply

To help identify the positive and negative sides to situations it can help to take yourself out of an existing situation, and imagine that you are an observer. You could ask, if I was someone else, what would I say were the positives?
Alternatively, we might be dealing with a situation that is still happening. In this case, we can think in terms of threats and opportunities. Threats are things that might happen with negative effects, whereas opportunities are things that might happen with positive effects.
Model an example: “Imagine you’re playing in a team where you don’t know anyone. Positives: You get to meet new people and make new friends; you might learn something new and have lots of fun. Negatives: You feel nervous or uncomfortable.”
We can then choose to focus on the positives and identify actions that can lead to those.

Optional Activity

Bright Side Tactics

Set learners difficult situations within your chosen game or activity, e.g.

Play people out of their chosen position
Give one team easier conditions on the game
Ignore infringements or advantages (bad refereeing)
Give more points to one team or player than the other

In team huddles mid-game, ask learners to consider the challenges they face and to identify the positives and negatives of them.

Afterwards, learners discuss and focus on the positive opportunities which led to solving the ‘problem’ or to success/positive outcomes.

20 mins

Group activity

Discussion

Active

Reflection & Assessment

Embed these strategies across your teaching and coaching to help learners apply what they’ve learnt.

Whenever learners are feeling really challenged in a situation, give them time to pause and evaluate the positive side and opportunities.

Use these ideas for ways of assessing this skill step to help you check learners’ understanding and confidence.

When you observe learners who are faced with difficult situations, question them about the positive opportunities in the situation. Can they focus on the positives?
Ask these reflective questions:
- What does it mean to say ‘every cloud has a silver lining’? Can you give some examples?
- How can you get a good view of a difficult situation?
- How can you identify opportunities in difficult situations?