Mudita
What a roller coaster, after completing an indoor season where we found unexpected success from a group of athletes that weren’t as connected as I would like. Thinking it must be me and my ability to connect the group, I do my best to avoid the personalities not seeing eye to eye and try to pump up our team's efforts and individual athletes, and wow, we rode a wave of success all the way to a CIF Final, succumbing to La Canada in 5 sets. The effort provided us with the opportunity to play in the state tournament, where we had an unbelievable signature upset win against Foothill HS (Santa Ana), the CIF runner-up in the division above us (D3), before losing a second time in 5 sets to our new nemesis, La Canada. The long season (extra 7 matches) had been hard on our team, and losing to the same school twice in 5 sets made the end that much harder to swallow.
Meanwhile, our beach season had essentially started, our athletes not playing CIF were conditioning at the Jungle (JW Performance) and alternating days with Michael and Olivia on the sand for practice. The day after our CIF state loss, I was on the sand with the JV team. I was excited to move on to the beach, have hurt turn to pride, and allow the realization of how successful our indoor season was.
The one thing I spent a lot of time thinking about was how to better unite my teams in the future to prevent locker-room mayhem, jealousy, and envy like we saw this past year. I knew I had made a good move by bringing Matthew Stith on as our Mental Skills Coach. Unfortunately, Matthew couldn’t complete our planned curriculum due to family issues and scheduling conflicts, but he gave us a great start at a time when I was pressed for time and felt overwhelmed by the indoor and beach seasons running together. Matthew helped to get the beach season off on the right foot.
As many of you know, I’m fortunate to have a relationship with John Mayer and LMU beach. Spending time with John, supporting his teams, and having a front-row seat to the excellence of a top NCAA Beach program has been an amazing life endeavor and tremendously beneficial for my growth as a coach. During the indoor season, Mondays were my LMU day, which consisted of morning practice followed by the team's mental skills session. However, in talking with John about life before practice (just after our final CIF loss on Saturday), he mentioned adopting a team concept called MUDITA, which he learned from Patrick Murphy, the head softball coach at Alabama. With limited time right before practice, John gave me the one-minute elevator pitch and told me he had an impactful episode coming out on his podcast.
What I found was this concept of how I wished my athletes would view their sports opportunities and experiences. Mudita is a value and a word that represents the opposite of Jealousy and Envy, where you live by expressing vicarious joy and excitement for the success of others. It’s a shift in mindset from scarcity to one of abundance and connection. Years ago, I saw the ESPN documentary on Alabama Softball (BAMA SB). It was an impressive story about Alabama’s drive to the 2012 National Championship. The documentary repeatedly showed all the athletes living by high moral standards, but never mentioned the overarching concept of Mudita.
I wanted to learn more, but in my mind, I had little regard for implementing such a big, overriding concept into our program this year. First, a Google search yielded a Wikipedia page, no surprise, it’s a Buddhist term that has quite the history, then John’s podcast came out. I learned that Patrick Murphy has had Alabama softball operate under the concept of Mudita for over 20 years, and this concept seems to alleviate the stress of team jealousy and envy and foster camaraderie, joy, and a sense of purpose among all on his team(s). There’s a lot, but Mudita does not limit competitiveness; it just seems to keep athletes on track for enjoyment and encouragement, and to provide a shared purpose. Mudita had become the way they did things at Alabama Softball; those who couldn’t bring Mudita into their hearts were to stay quiet and remain open. It usually wasn’t long before a live example of the Mudita spirit occurred during a team activity, and the wondering soul would want to adopt the powerful behavior.
While I was excited, Mudita, with the pre-season underway, I questioned if it was possible to introduce? Was this a good concept for developing athletes at the high school level? What's the best way to implement Mudita? I had a lot of questions.
The next week, Matthew was doing a session to uncover our team values with our Varsity group. He used Mudita as an example of a team value and fully explained the concept's basis. Matthew showed the Alabama softball example of shared value in action (see "Anatomy of a Team" on YouTube). During the exercise, the team gravitated towards a traditional value list, and after some back and forth, settled on Unity, the importance of the team to be connected, and Grit, believing in our abilities and fighting for every point. Our team felt that Grit was an overarching term encompassing resilience and perseverance.
We then discussed how we might incorporate the essence of Mudita into our new values. We agreed that limiting (or eliminating) jealousy and envy would be beneficial to everyone’s experience. Mudita was to become part of the team’s Unity connection, in which we would strive to express vicarious joy for the success for others, doing so would express another level of Unity.
What then came to light was that for Mudita to have a chance of taking hold, a level of belief and positivity towards your teammate had to be in place. Being positive towards your fellow partner was inherent in our team. We had some of the most mature individuals on this year’s varsity team, and supporting each other and staying positive were absolutely who they were. Within minutes of watching our athletes practice, Matthew identified that they were playing to their values of support, positivity for each other, and embracing Unity. Grit and Unity were values we could live by and be consistent with throughout an entire season. Finding opportunities to live Mudita would challenge us in the background and give us the chance to further support our trusted values and improve our experience.
Next year, Mudita will be at the forefront and even more aligned with our values and discussions. While I still believe the concept of Mudita is a hard value for youth athletes to live by, I also believe striving for acceptance is just as valuable and healthy for our athletes.