Dear Reader,
It’s the end of August, 2022, and I’m watching the US Open — the pressure-packed matches of the semifinals and finals, the ones that go on and on for five sets before coming down to a tiebreaker.
At the end of a match like that, both players are completely spent. The loser barely has the energy to pack up the rackets and get off the court. The winner is in much the same shape — and yet somehow finds a way to stand for the interview and make sense of what just happened.
The challenge for both of them is the same: to debrief. To learn from the effort. To capture the good, feel and release the not-so-good, and make clear decisions about how to improve the next time out.
Watching one of those matches, I decided to write about the metaphor of Move Forward — and the process that lets you take maximum value from every challenge you face.
Moving forward doesn’t mean rushing past. It means facing the result honestly, taking what it has to teach you, and carrying only what serves you into the next point, the next match, the next day. That’s the work. That’s how the challenge becomes the gift.
Thirty Years
On the cost of carrying grief, and why you can’t afford to wait
I was being interviewed the other day about why it matters to deal with grief. Not push through it. Not tough it out. Deal with it. And right in the middle of answering, a memory came up that I hadn’t touched in thirty years.
In 1963 we were playing against Alabama on national TV. It was a quick kick — my job was to hit my man, hold the block until I heard the kick, then run downfield and make the tackle.
I did make the tackle on the goal line. But the man I was supposed to hit almost took out our punter, Billy Lotherage, in a very vulnerable spot.
I’d forgotten all about it until the Monday night film review. When we got to my play, the coaches all yelled in unison: “Brad Yates, you know better than that.” It seemed like they ran that mistake back forever. My omission was clear for everyone to see. I was humiliated. And I did what we all do — I stuffed it down. Shoved it into a mental folder labeled “horrible plays” and tried to move on.
Except I didn’t move on. I carried it.
That’s the part nobody tells you. Grief doesn’t end when the whistle blows. I carried it off the field. I carried it home. I carried it through my twenties, my thirties, my forties. I carried it into the classroom when I taught at Punahou. I carried it onto the practice field when I started coaching. And I didn’t even know I was carrying it — not consciously. But it was there. Always there.
Here’s what happens when you don’t deal with grief: it doesn’t shrink. It waits. It sits below the line, pulling on your energy at the exact moment you need that energy free. You think you’ve moved on. You haven’t. You’ve just buried it where it can ambush you later.
A film session with a team. A coaching point I’d give some kid about finishing a block. A quiet drive home. There it’d be again — that same half-step, that same slide-off, that same feeling in my gut. The weight of it. The shame. Thirty years, and my body still remembered what my mind tried to forget.
That’s festering. And festering is the enemy.
I carried that block through decades of coaching without knowing it was there, shaping how I taught, what I demanded, how hard I was on myself and others. The energy it cost me — the presence I lost, the freedom I gave up — I didn’t even have a name for it. That’s the real cost of grief you don’t process. It’s not the pain of the moment. It’s the slow drain of carrying it.
Thirty years. Think about that. Thirty years.
What finally turned things was learning to do two things I now build into everyone I work with.
The first is the debrief. You go back and look — not to relive it, not to punish yourself, but to see it. Really see it. Awareness. What actually happened? I came off slow. Why? I was thinking about the play before the play. My head wasn’t where my feet were. That’s the truth of it. And the truth, once you say it out loud, loses most of its teeth.
The second is the reframe. You take the thing and you ask it three honest questions.
What can I change? The block was over — I couldn’t change it.
What can I improve? How I held my focus, snap to snap, so my head never got ahead of my feet again.
What do I need to remove? The story I’d been telling myself — that I was the guy who missed the block. That wasn’t a fact. That was grief wearing the costume of identity.
When I finally ran that play through the reframe, thirty years late, something let go. The energy I’d been spending to hold the lid down — it came back to me. I could think about that game and smile.
But here’s the part people skip: You have to celebrate the resolution. You have to mark the moment the weight comes off. Because that’s what teaches your system it’s safe to face the next hard thing instead of burying it.
So when somebody asks me why grief matters in performance, this is what I tell them. You can do all the noticing you want. You can play loose and free and chase your game. But if there’s grief stored down there, it’ll surface under pressure, and it’ll surface ugly. The work isn’t playing past it. The work is stopping for it.
Don’t let it fester. Don’t carry it for thirty years like I did.
Debrief it. Reframe it. And when it lets go — and it will let go — celebrate that. That’s not a detour from the progress. That is the progress.
The day I put down that block was the day I understood what I’d been teaching all along.
The Move Forward System
review · summary · system · process · conclusion
REVIEW
You’ve just read two pieces that look different and land in the same place. A letter about two exhausted players at the US Open, and a story about a block I missed in 1963 and carried for thirty years. One is about a single match; the other about a single play. Both come down to the same question: what do you do after? Do you face the result honestly, or bury it and let it fester?
SUMMARY
A bad result, a missed assignment, the weight of a loss — none of it shrinks when you ignore it. It waits below the line and drains the energy you need most under pressure. The way through isn’t toughness. It’s a process you can run every time: see it honestly, let go of what doesn’t serve you, keep what does, and mark the win when the weight comes off.
THE SYSTEM
Underneath everything is one simple backbone:
Awareness. See it as it is — no story, no spin. What actually happened?
Acceptance. Let go of what doesn’t serve you. Keep what does.
Action. Decide, and move forward.
THE PROCESS
A repeatable loop for any effort — a match, a game, a meeting, a day:
1. Engage. Be fully present and find the enjoyment in the effort. You can’t debrief what you were never really in.
2. Debrief. Capture the good (save), release the not-so-good (delete), and decide what to improve — using the Debrief worksheet.
3. Reframe. Run the issue through Change · Improve · Remove and the five questions. Remove the story that isn’t a fact — using the Reframe worksheet.
4. Celebrate. Mark the moment the weight comes off. That’s what teaches your system it’s safe to face the next hard thing instead of burying it.
5. Move forward. Carry only what serves you into the next point, the next match, the next day.
CONCLUSION
Don’t wait thirty years. Whatever you’re carrying right now — debrief it, reframe it, celebrate the release, and move forward. That’s not a detour from the progress. That is the progress.
Move forward,
Brad Yates
HiLevel Coaching Service