Be a goldfish

I love Ted Lasso. 

The Apple TV show, that is.

It is funny, endearing, a tad raunchy, and heartwarming.

It also includes nuggets of sports psychology among its f-bombs.

Sports, unlike flying or office work, is performed in front of a live audience. Any dropped passes, missed shots, fouls, fights, and successes are in the open for all the world to see.

For us pilots, and soon-to-be pilots, making a mistake on the flight deck, depending on its severity, may be seen and known by only ourselves. If that mistake results in an accident, a few more people will know about it, but likely not live on high definition TV with announcers.

And for those who make a mistake during a check ride, well, we may not become a pilot or earn that next higher certificate or rating.

Mistakes happen. We’re human after all. 

But mistakes don’t have to derail the situation. Not if we know how to properly respond.

The mental aspect of anything is just as important as actually doing that thing.

For that reason, I’m thrilled to see Southern Illinois University (SIU) researchers, inspired by sports psychology, testing mental coaching on performance and safety on the flight deck.

“We are looking at performance psychology that has been used in professional sports for many years, where they get athletes in the right head space for optimal performance,” said Irene Miller, an SIU assistant professor in aviation management, adding that utilizing performance psychology is new to the aviation field.

Step into your local bookstore’s “self-help” section and a large number of those books are written by former athletes and coaches — people who know winning doesn’t always go to the strongest or fastest athlete.

“Students at times might make a seemingly minor error during a check ride,” continued Miller, “but then dwell on that rather than focusing on the tasks at hand and anticipating the tasks ahead.”

In that case, Ted Lasso would coach a player in a similar situation to “be a goldfish.”

In one scene, player Sam just made a mistake during practice…

After the mistake, Sam comes to the sideline to apologize.

“Do you know what the happiest animal on earth is?” Lasso asks Sam.

After a few moments of confusion, Sam shakes his head, to which Ted says, “It’s a goldfish.” Pause. “You know why?” With more confusion in his eyes Sam says, “No.” “Got a 10 second memory.” Pointing at Sam’s chest, Ted says, “Be a goldfish, Sam.”

In other words, forget that mistake and move on. 

Of course, it isn’t as easy as “just forget that mistake”. 

SIU’s goal is to have 120 students — 60 each in the fall 2022 and spring 2023 semesters — with varying amounts of flight experience participate in the research.

The students will work with four clinical psychology graduate students to learn how to increase their psychological flexibility, motivation, and performance. This will happen during six one-hour sessions via Zoom.

Six hours of mental coaching is a great start. 

Hopefully the study finds success for participants and sets them up for a lifetime of recurrent mental training in addition to recurrent flight training. 

Better yet, research success could lead to new methods for training current and aspiring pilots beyond the mechanics and memorization of flight. 

Flying doesn’t allow for substitutions, like sports. At least at the personal aviation level.

Having more tools at our disposal to overcome a mental mistake or a mechanical failure is good thing.