Events, Response, Outcomes: The Tool for the Car Ride Home

I want to give you a tool you can use tonight at dinner, the next time something goes wrong. I call it E-R-O: Events, Response, Outcomes.

An event happens — a bad call, a missed shot, a benching, a rude kid, a hard test. The event is not in your control. What is fully in your control is your response.

It is the response, not the event, that determines the outcome. Most people live as if the event controls the outcome directly, so they spend their lives reacting, blaming, and feeling powerless.

The whole secret of a strong life is this: there is a gap between what happens to you and what you do about it — and you own that gap completely.

This connects to something I believe to my core: thoughts are things. The conceiving always comes before the achieving. One of the very few things any of us controls is the thought we hold in our mind.

Teach your player to name the event, choose the response, and own the outcome. That is the car ride home conversation worth having every time.

We build this mindset at TDBA across every program — summer camps, leagues, private lessons, and individual classes. Come see how we do it. Let your player try it.

For more on raising a mentally tough player, my book Let Them Love It is free at teddydupaybasketballacademy.com.