Chasing Success Is a Poor Performance Strategy

Winning should make the next season easier.

You've proven you belong. You've reached the highest level. You have the confidence, the validation and the résumé to remind yourself—and everyone else—that you can do it.

In reality, success often creates the very obstacle that keeps athletes from performing at their best.

The challenge isn't becoming great. It's trying to become the version of yourself that already was.

For Erin Coffel, the first-ever Athletes Unlimited Softball League MVP, that realization came before the 2025 season even began.

"If I try to be the MVP again, I'm not gonna get anywhere," Coffel said.

It's one sentence, but it captures one of the most overlooked truths in high performance.

Success is a result. It is not a strategy.

The Dangerous Side of Achievement

Sports celebrate outcomes.

Awards. Championships. Statistics. Records.

Those moments deserve to be celebrated, but they become dangerous when athletes start using them as a blueprint for future performance.

Psychologists have studied this phenomenon for decades through Achievement Goal Theory, originally developed by John Nicholls. The research consistently distinguishes between performance goals, which focus on proving competence through results, and mastery goals, which focus on improving skills and executing the process. Athletes who emphasize mastery are generally more resilient, more adaptable and better equipped to navigate setbacks than those consumed by protecting external achievements.

In other words, yesterday's accomplishment cannot become today's assignment.

That's exactly the realization Coffel reached.

Before the AUSL season, she gathered with her teammates after a disappointing spring training scrimmage. Expectations surrounded the Bandits after several accomplished careers and individual accolades. Instead of asking everyone to recreate the best seasons of their lives, Coffel delivered a different message.

"Whoever you were, okay, that's awesome. That's gotten you here," she said. "But be you. Be the best self that you can be right now."

That distinction changes everything.

Success Can Pull You Away From the Present

One of the biggest misconceptions about elite athletes is that pressure comes from failure.

Often, it comes from success.

A breakout season creates expectations. An award creates comparisons. A championship creates the pressure to defend it.

Instead of competing against the pitcher, the opponent or the moment, athletes quietly begin competing against the best version of themselves.

The game changes.

Every at-bat becomes a comparison. Every mistake becomes evidence that last year's player has disappeared.

Sports psychologist Timothy Gallwey explored this concept in The Inner Game of Tennis, a book Coffel referenced during her conversation. Gallwey describes two competing internal voices: "Self 1," the analytical, judgmental mind, and "Self 2," the instinctive performer capable of trusting preparation and competing freely.

Coffel has intentionally worked to recognize when that analytical voice begins taking over.

"I think trying to recognize that voice has been really big for me," she said. "I'm still working on it... just to be a Self Two queen."

The objective isn't to eliminate pressure. It's to stop letting pressure dictate attention.

Because performance only happens in the present. Expectations live somewhere else.

Confidence Isn't About Feeling Invincible

Coffel is remarkably honest about something many elite athletes rarely admit.

Confidence didn't come naturally.

Looking back at high school, she remembers someone who constantly criticized herself.

"I was super, super hard on myself," she said. "He just helped me gain confidence."

She credits her high school coach for believing in her long before she fully believed in herself. Years later, she found another turning point.

Listening to a short podcast on what she jokingly called "delusional belief" challenged the way she viewed confidence.

The phrase may sound humorous, but the psychology behind it is well established.

Albert Bandura's research on self-efficacy demonstrated that belief in one's ability influences persistence, resilience and willingness to embrace difficult challenges. Athletes with stronger self-efficacy don't magically become more talented—they're simply more likely to trust the preparation they've already put in when the moment demands it.

For Coffel, confidence stopped meaning perfection. It became permission.

Permission to compete without carrying every expectation into the batter's box.

Leadership Looks Different After Success

Perhaps the most revealing part of Coffel's story wasn't winning MVP. It was what happened afterward.

She didn't arrive at spring training reminding teammates what she had accomplished. She reminded them where they were.

That kind of leadership reflects another principle consistently reinforced throughout performance psychology: attention is a limited resource. The more athletes devote to protecting reputation, comparing seasons or defending accomplishments, the less remains available for reading pitches, reacting instinctively and executing skills they've practiced for years.

Elite performance isn't sustained by replaying old highlights. It's sustained by returning to the present, over and over again.

Yesterday Doesn't Get an At-Bat

Every athlete eventually faces the same question.

How do you follow your best season?

The instinct is to recreate it, to chase it, to defend it.

But that's asking yesterday's version of yourself to play today's game.

Coffel's answer is far simpler—and far more difficult.

Stop trying to be who you were. Be who today's moment requires.

Because MVP awards don't win tomorrow's games. Preparation does. Presence does. Execution does.

Success deserves to be celebrated.

It just shouldn't become the strategy for earning the next one.