The Only Way To Decide

Guest Blogger: Inner-Sports

by Garret Kramer

This morning, I had a young hockey playing client and his father come in to see me. A senior in high school and an excellent player, this young man was badly struggling with the decision to go to prep school next year as a post graduate, or to go play in the USHL, the leading junior hockey league in the United States. You see, in the world of college hockey these days, virtually all coaches require that their recruits take an extra year (or two) between high school and starting their college careers. So, while his college plans were all set for a year from now, what to do next year had become a major see saw battle in his and his parents’ heads. They believed I could help shed some light on the predicament.

“Let’s talk about how I can help you uncover the answer for yourself.”

After we chatted for a while, the young man came right out and said, “Coach if you were me, what would you do?” I quickly responded, “Well, since I’m not you I have no ability to answer that question, but let’s talk about how I can help you uncover the answer for yourself.” I then said to the father and son, that I am going to take a quarter out of my pocket. I am going to flip the quarter and if it comes up heads you’re going to prep school, if it comes up tails, off to juniors you go. I pretended to reason that since the family had gone back and forth on the choice about a hundred times, the only way to solve the apparent dilemma was to leave it up to chance. Hence, I flipped the coin high into the air and much to my delight, before it landed back in my hand, the young man blurted out, “I hope it comes up heads!”

The outside world has made decision making far more complicated than it has to be.

Now, there are two essential lessons for all of us to learn from the events of this morning. One is that if you are a coach, teacher, or even a parent, your calling is to never make a direct decision for your player, student, or child. In truth, the best leaders serve to bring out the inner wisdom in those they mentor. The method used is solely up to you (I have no idea where I came up with the coin trick, by the way) but remember, while part of your role is to help produce quality listeners, your role is never to produce quality followers. Second and most importantly, whenever we intellectualize the pros and cons of a decision, the answer will always get clouded. I suppose that it’s fine to think things through up to a point, but sooner or later your intuition, inner knowledge, or heart must be consulted. Unfortunately for all of us, the outside world has made decision making far more complicated than it has to be.

Our most enduring ideas or thoughts only occur via insight.

Bear in mind then, if we allow it, the right choices in life will simply come to us. Most of us unfortunately believe that individuals, who seem to navigate smoothly through life, do so via use of the intellect. The truth however, is that many intellectuals struggle mightily in their personal lives. To the contrary, our most impactful thoughts and ideas actually occur via insight. And like the above example, when we are not even trying hard to figure something out. Thus, what occurred to me this morning is that both coaches and players have profound requirements to live up to at decision time. A coach’s job is to subtly bring forth a player’s own ever expanding inner knowledge. A player (and all of us) must see that the only path to enduring choices is through the magical power of insight. I hope that both sides can now clearly see that a productive decision can never come from an overworked or uneasy personal perspective … and never from someone else.



Garret Kramer is the founder and Managing Partner of Inner-Sports.com. Inner-Sports evaluates and then coaches athletes of all ages on the behavioral characteristics that lead to peak performance on and off the field of play. Inner-Sport’s evaluative partner has created the behavioral assessment used at both the National Hockey League and the Major League Lacrosse scouting combines. Inner-Sports and Garret work with Baseball Factory players at select player development events.