She's not lazy. She's stuck.
How to motivate your daughter in sports
When a young athlete looks lazy, she's usually stuck on one of three things: not enough focus, not enough time, or not enough confidence. And it feeds itself. Without an organized plan, she doesn't have the focus, the time or the confidence. Without those, she doesn't make a plan. The way out starts small: a pen, paper, a chair, and three questions. What do I want to have? What do I want to do? Who do I want to be?
Okay, so let me start with me.
I have ADHD. In school I talked nonstop, got thrown out of almost every class and almost never did my homework. My grades? Fine. At parent-teacher night my parents asked the teacher what exactly the problem was, and that's where the conversation ended.
The way I got through was building methods for myself. For school, for work, for sports. Later I built a bigger one, for life, and taught it to my players. Mostly to the girls I coach. On this site it's called the Next Play Mindset: a simple way to decide what she wants, do the work, and believe she can get there.
1.Figure out which one it is
Three things usually get people stuck: no focus, no time and no confidence.
No focus
She wants more. From her sport, from school, from herself. And she ends up on Instagram, TikTok, the group chat and YouTube instead. Same loop, every day. She wants out. She just doesn't know how.
Tony Robbins has a line for it: where focus goes, energy flows. Right now her focus is on everybody else's videos and pictures. The day she gets a little more interested in her own life than in theirs, things start moving her way.
No time
School, practice, homework, friends, family. By the end of the day she's tired, and underneath the tired there's a little disappointment. That feeling of "I didn't get to it."
That feeling usually comes from one place. There's no clear direction written down, no plan she's actually working from. It's all in her head, in a mess.
No confidence
"I'm not good enough at this." "I can't." "I'm not getting where I wanted to be." Or just scared.
This one starts to change when she's busy with what she wants. Once she knows what she wants and works toward it, her chances of getting better go way up. And so does her confidence.
2.See the loop she's in
It's a paradox.
Because she doesn't work with an organized plan, she doesn't have enough focus, time and confidence. And because she doesn't have enough focus, time and confidence, she doesn't work with an organized plan.
And the clock keeps running.
In five years you will arrive. The question is where.
The plan itself is simple. It's easy to get how it works. The hard part is doing it every day, over time.
3.Give her a pen, paper and a chair
I was stuck once too. Badly. Some nights it wouldn't let me sleep.
So I started thinking. An hour or two a day, for about two weeks, I thought and wrote about where I was. Who I am, what I'm good at and what I'm not, what I got from my parents and grandparents, which values matter to me. Then the harder questions. What's my purpose? What do I actually want from this life?
And then I wrote my goals. The things I want to have, do and be. That part took about 30 minutes.
A pen, paper and a chair. That's it. Before that, I was driving blind. After that, I knew where I was going, and my life changed.
4.Hand her three questions
She answers them as a list, one under the other.
What do I want to have? What do I want to do? Who do I want to be?
One rule. She writes what she really wants for at least the next 10 years, as if nothing in the world could stop her. Not what makes sense. Not what she thinks she can get. What she wants. All in all, it takes about 30 minutes.
For her: three questions, thirty minutes
One printable page, written to her the way I talk to my players. Letter size.
5.Ask her to write it again tomorrow
Every day, until it's routine.
From then on, part of her day is writing her goals down at least once, until it becomes a habit. That's how it starts.
If she doesn't believe it works yet, that's fine. She only has to be willing to check.
Before you talk to her
Criticism usually comes from the people closest to a kid. Keep yours at a level that still lets her learn, progress and improve.
What she says, and what you can say back
Every answer here comes from the book. Some are what I say back to my players at practice. Some are lines I ask them to say to themselves.
| When she says | You can say |
|---|---|
| "I can't." | "You can. I believe in you. Believe in yourself." |
| "I'm not good enough at this." | "You're good enough exactly as you are. And you're doing what it takes to get better." |
| "I'm not getting it." | "Try again. That's what practice is for." |
| "I have no energy." | "Do it with no energy." |
| "I failed. I'm a failure." | "Failure is just a result. What did you do, or not do, that led to it?" |
| "I didn't get to it." | "Tonight, before bed, plan tomorrow." |
The kid who loved a hard puzzle
The psychologist Carol Dweck once gave kids puzzles that kept getting harder. One boy pulled his chair in and said he loved a challenge. That boy led to 30 years of her research on two mindsets, a fixed one and a growth one. She wrote it up in her book Mindset.
Questions parents ask
Is my daughter just lazy?
Usually not. When she looks lazy, she's usually stuck on focus, time or confidence. And if she has been lazy until now, that's exactly the reason to start. She has a feeling she could do more. She just never had a method for doing it.
How long does it take?
The three questions take about 30 minutes. Writing them again takes a few minutes a day.
What age is this for?
Young athletes, roughly 13 to 18. When a 13-year-old tells me she doesn't understand half of it, I tell her every idea has an explanation in the book, and you can start at any age. The younger, the better.
What if she doesn't want to do it?
In the book I give her two options. She doesn't believe it and doesn't want to try, no hard feelings. Or she doesn't believe it but she's willing to check: she writes the list, gives it some time and effort, and sees what happens.
Is this for boys too?
Yes. The book is for all the girls, at every age. And for the boys too.
Free: The Next Play Mini Journal
By the end of the week she has closed the last game with a clear head, picked one thing to work on at practice, and written her plan for the next one. Seven pages, one a day, five minutes a day, written by Coach Isaac in the same words he uses with his own players.
- Day 1, The Reset. Tonight, before she goes to sleep. Three slow breaths, one honest sentence about what happened, a name for the feeling, and the one thing this game is teaching her. Then she closes the game. Tomorrow is a different page.
- Day 2, The Tape. The next morning. Coaches watch the tape the next day, never the same night, because the same night you only see the mistakes. The next day you see the whole game, including what she did right.
- Day 3, My Why. When the why is strong, the how gets easier. She writes down why she plays, clearly enough to say it out loud.
- Day 4, One Focus. She knows what to fix and why it matters. Now she turns it into one small thing she can do at practice this week, and repeats it. That's how real improvement works.
- Day 5, Winter. A sports season works like the seasons of the year, and game season is winter. You can't cancel winter. What you can do is get better at it: stronger physically, stronger mentally, stronger with your feelings.
- Day 6, Believe. Belief isn't magic. It's what she says to herself, over and over, until it's what she thinks. On this page she writes her own lines instead of the ones other people put in her head.
- Day 7, Next Play. Her game plan for the next game. Eyes forward. The season only moves in one direction.
It's free. Leave your email, and the download opens right away, in Letter and A4.
Based on chapters 2, 3, 9, 10, 11 and 18 of From Gazelle to Lioness by Coach Isaac. "Where focus goes, energy flows" is Tony Robbins. The puzzle study is from Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.