Of all the horses that I would love to have met Seabiscuit is the one I would put first. For many their choice would be Secretariat or Big Ben, but what makes Seabiscuit special is that he had none of the advantages of most other horses, and in fact he had many disadvantages. At 15.5 hands he was considered too small for racing. He was trained to lose to other horses and won only twenty-five percent of his first 40 races. He ran erratically and was emotionally troubled, at least for a while, as a result of early mistreatment.
Yet, it's safe to say he never worried about these things when he raced. His trainer, Robert Smith, and jockey, Red Pollard, recognized his abilities but they never tried to make him perfect, but they did work to make him excellent, and it was excellence, not perfection that made him a winner. He became the most famous racing champion of his era beating out horses which were considered superior in all respects including the Triple Crown winner, War Admiral, in the famous match race of 1938.
Yet even today too many athletes, particularly in equestrian sports such as dressage and show jumping have the mindset of perfection when they train and compete in the belief that perfection is what makes champions. Part of it is self-induced, but it is also often impressed upon them by riding coaches, peers, parents and sometimes even owners.
Perfection is a rainbow that remains elusively out of reach. Some athletes who are perfectionists do well, but it can often come at a serious cost. For perfectionists failure is a serious challenge that many don't know how to deal with emotionally. Always expecting success each failure when it occurs can often result in new efforts to succeed becoming a nightmare, another opportunity for humiliation. After all, in the mindset of a perfectionist, only those with inadequate talent tolerate their imperfections and need to work to achieve success. This kind of fixed mindset can often lead to frustration, a growing dislike for a sport that was once loved, and an overwhelming sense of being a failure at being stuck at a certain level with no sense of how to advance.
However, mistakes are inevitable in sport as they are in life. For those with a growth mindset they are necessary for the growth they seek and for the learning that fuels it. In any endeavor there are too many changeable variables to control to create any possibility for perfection to take place. In equestrian events for example there is the weather, footing, judges' preferences, different venues, different patterns, courses and tests not to mention which side of the bed the rider or the the horse got up on that day.
The misconception is that not being a perfectionist means settling for mediocrity. Rather, having a growth mindset enables an athlete to approach challenges and failure in a different way that is both healthier for them mentally and for their enjoyment and success in their sport.
The good news is that mindsets can be shifted to help perfectionist, fixed mindset athletes reduce and even eliminate the burden of stress that they impose upon themselves on top of the challenges already inherent in competitive sports. Growth minded athletes reward themselves for small victories which they can build upon and see failures as a natural part of growth and as opportunities to do better. Having self-compassion and recognizing that success isn't a destination but rather a process that they can take control of are hallmarks of the growth mindset that these kinds of athletes use as part of the process that leads them to success. This is the kind of process mindset that not only Seabiscuit's trainer and jockey used to achieve the pinnacle of success, but so did athletes such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods who used it to not only grow but expand their talents which resulted in them becoming among the most dominant players in the history of their respective sports.