The Play You Couldn’t Control (And the Part You Could)

Discover why standard control vs. outcome advice falls short and how recognizing the influence zone helps athletes direct frustration into performance.

By Scott K. Wilder · Confidence and Focus

PERSPECTIVE — LINKEDIN | FOCUS

Perspective-LinkedIn: The Play You Couldn’t Control (And the Part You Could)

3 Key Takeaways

1. Not everything falls neatly into “you controlled it” or “you didn't.” There's a middle zone — things you can influence but not guarantee — and most mental performance coaching skips right past it.
2. When you tell an athlete who did everything right to “just let go of the outcome,” it can feel dismissive. Naming the influence zone gives them somewhere honest to put that frustration.
3. The fix isn't to stop caring about outcomes. It's to identify the specific actions inside your control that move the odds — and pour your energy there.

The Save That Shouldn’t Have Happened

She timed the run perfectly.

Split the two center backs, got a full step on her marker, met the cross in stride. Clean connection. Right corner, low, exactly where she wanted it.

The keeper got a fingertip on it anyway.

Corner kick. Nothing changed on the scoreboard.

On the sideline, her coach said the thing coaches are trained to say: “Great process. Forget the result. You did your job.”

She nodded. And she didn’t believe a word of it.

Here’s why. She did control that play — the run, the timing, the strike. Telling her the outcome wasn’t hers to control felt like a lie, because in every way that mattered to her, it was.

Where the Standard Advice Breaks Down

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Most mental performance coaching — GRM included — teaches a clean split: process goals are in your control, outcome goals aren’t. Win your first 1v1: controllable. Win the game: not. It’s good, simple, useful advice, and it works for most moments.

But it breaks down for exactly the situation above. Scoring a goal isn’t pure chance, like weather or a bad whistle. It’s not fully controllable either — a great keeper beats a great strike all the time. It sits in between. And when you flatten that in-between zone into “outcome, let it go,” a sharp athlete hears an oversimplification, not an answer.

The Missing Middle Tier

There’s a name for that zone: influence.

You can’t control whether you score. You can’t control whether you win a header against someone four inches taller. You can’t control the referee’s whistle. But none of those are outside your reach either — your movement, your timing, your positioning, your decision-making shift the odds every single time, even when they don’t guarantee the result.

Three tiers, not two:

• Control — your effort, your technique, your attitude, your next action. Fully yours.
• Influence — outcomes your skill moves the needle on, without guaranteeing them. Scoring, winning a header, a referee’s call earned through positioning instead of protest.
• Can’t control — the weather, a bad bounce, what already happened. Not worth a second of attention.

The point of naming the middle tier isn’t to give athletes permission to obsess over outcomes. It’s the opposite — it gives them a more honest place to put their frustration than either “that was all me” or “that had nothing to do with me.” Both of those are wrong. The truth is in between, and kids can tell the difference.

What This Sounds Like on the Sideline

Instead of “forget the result,” try: “You can’t control whether that goes in. You can influence it — through your run, your timing, your composure in the box. So that’s where the work goes.”

Same redirect. Same discipline. But it doesn’t ask the athlete to pretend the outcome doesn’t matter, or that their effort had no bearing on it. It just points them at the exact levers that are actually theirs to pull.

What to Do Next

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After your next game or practice, pick one moment that felt like a “close miss” — a shot that didn’t go in, a pass that didn’t connect, a save that almost happened. Ask three questions instead of one:

What part of that was fully mine? What part could I influence but not guarantee? What part was completely out of my hands?

Write down one specific action inside the influence tier you’ll repeat next time. That’s the part worth training. The rest isn’t worth carrying home.

Mental performance shouldn't be left to chance.

Train it. Track it. Improve it.

#MentalBall #GameReadyMindset

About the Author

Scott K. Wilder is the founder of Game Ready Mindset (GRM), a mental readiness system built for high school and collegiate athletic programs. GRM moves beyond one-off mental skills sessions to install a full mental operating system — tools like ARC, WIN, and the Weather Check — sequenced across a season and spoken in coaches' daily language. Learn more at gamereadymindset.co.

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