Reflecting - The Danielson Series

While Danielson and I owe you a “report” about his August tournament, I wanted to step back and share something that completely surprised me the other day and caught me off guard.

I think one of the coolest things about doing this Danielson project is something that I think a lot of players who compete in tournaments should really take into consideration and learn from.

You see, because Danielson (the pool player who we are following in this series) kind of needs to report after every tournament what happened in his matches, it's providing a sense of honest self reflection that not a lot of people often do after their tournaments.

I can think of probably 1,000 tournaments that after I left the venue and on the way home or the days after I may have reflected about how I wish I would have done better or maybe I thought about what I wanted to work on. But I didn't really and truly and deeply reflect about what happened and why I won or lost, and what I could/should do about it. Instead it was just a general reflection mostly about my disappointment of how badly I finished (lol), and unfortunately not the details of what I can do to improve things for the next time I play.

I think what even hit me, that I didn't expect, was actually a sense of excitement for Danielson! This project is in a way forcing him the unique opportunity to reflect on every match or reflect deeply about his tournament play of the weekend.

He gets a chance to be honest with himself. Further, he has told me, "talking it out can really help me more."

How cool is that?!

So my suggestion/offer is this: Think about your match/tournament play so you can learn from it. Think about why you didn’t play your best. Or what you could have done different. Instead of just going to a tournament and then leaving a tournament with no after-thought or sincere reflection, do yourself a huge favor and reflect on what could have been improved in each match! Why you didn't win and what you could have done different.

Even if you don't learn one thing from Danielson's particular progression in his pool journey, I think that honestly reflecting on your matches and tournament play is one the biggest lessons you can gather from this project.