Fear and Frustration
Interpretation: In lawn bowls, fear and frustration are emotions that occur in situations where one is blocked from reaching a personal goal. The more emphasis placed on the goal the greater the fear and frustration of loosing. It is comparable to anger if not controlled.Sources: The sources of frustration within the game of lawn bowls may be internal or external as follows;
- Internal: Internal sources of fear and frustration involve personal deficiencies such as a lack of confidence or knowledge in game situations that prevent one from reaching a goal e.g. tactical knowledge and its application or mental training. Conflict can also be an internal source of frustration when one has competing goals that interfere with one another,
- External: External causes of frustration involve conditions outside the person such as ability in performance skills, lack of individual training, or lack of game event activity.
Note: A good example of internal and external conflict is when knowledge verses performance skills e.g. when bowlers employ tactics within the game and do not have the ability to perform the required shots, or vice versa, a lack of tactical knowledge but good performance skills.
Opportunities: Bowler’s opportunities are defined by the levels of events, in the structure of club, district, zone and State and the society conditioning of the individual through hierarchy and social status.
Usefulness: Frustration should be regarded as a useful indicator of the problem within your game in order to regain balance, and when your performance is observed with open-mindedness and tolerance, your emotions may prove to represent the problem as a whole.
Self-portrait: Focus your attention on what knowledge you have about the tactics of the game and the good and bad shots that you have played during competitive games. When you feel that you can understand the connection between these two skills, you’ll have formed snapshots of the aspects about your strengths and weaknesses. By focusing your whole mind on each tactical move you have employed and the array of shots played, you will create associated pictures or self-knowledge about your ability. These pictures will gradually grow to form a large self-portrait and you will naturally use these pictures to control and master the positive and negative aspects of your performance levels. Knowledge dispels fear, practice dispels frustration and perfection of knowledge and practice builds confidence. If you control the emotional aspects of fear and frustration within your game then you’ll greatly avoid going the next level of anger.
Treatment: In terms of game psychology, passive, aggressive and collective behaviour in your game is a method of dealing with fear and frustration. This type of remedial action should take place during training and lead into the competitive arena. Perfecting tactics and performance skills in training should be made harder then the game.
Training: training should involve the coach because the coach will determine with you the strengths and weaknesses of your required training, such as movement of the eyes, the coordination and timing of balance, alignment and the pendulum action for length. This involves the three following types of behaviour;
- Passive; practice all the tactical shots of defence,
- Aggressive; practice all the tactical shots of the attack,
- Collective; practice all the shots of recovery and improve your tactical knowledge.
Competitive arena: This involves changing the behavioural modes of defence, attack and recovery during certain situations throughout the game;
- Passive; drawing to save, positioning of back-wood etc.
- Aggressive; any offensive action or procedure e.g. the practice of making a planned game assault, attack or offensive action in general,
- Collective; this may involve a behavioural action between passive and aggression but the objective is to obtain the shot.
Emotions: During your bowling career you may experience the following emotions; acceptance, affection, ambivalence, anger, boredom, compassion, doubt, despair, disgust, empathy, envy, embarrassment, excitement or fear.
Frustration: Frustration can develop from; guilt, happiness, hate, hope, horror, hostility, homesickness, jealousy, loneliness, love, pity, rage, regret, remorse, sadness, shame, suffering, surprise or sympathy.
