Alec Ingold is a fullback for the Miami Dolphins and the author of the book, “The Seven Crucibles: An Inspirational Game Plan for Overcoming Adversity in Your Life.”

The thing I relied on to get to the NFL was my preparation.

It was a great mindset to have, and it served me well for a long time. I wanted to see how far into the deep end I could go, push myself to my limit and see if I could surpass it every single day.

If game day didn’t turn out exactly the way I had expected or prepared for, I would get frustrated because I had done everything I could to be my best. If every single play didn’t hit, I’d get frustrated.

The frustration of not playing to my potential every snap used to motivate me to work harder, but now I was running on an empty tank, without answers. I literally wrote a book about overcoming adversity. I was supposed to know the answers to this test, but found myself struggling to find a way to add value to the guys around me.

That’s the lesson I learned this season: to remove expectations from performance.

Earlier this season, we played a game against Atlanta. We were 1-6 at the time, and I had to change how I played football. We were introducing all these new shifts and motions to the offense, so I had to change my stance and a lot of what I had always done on the field.

I exhausted myself in preparation. I was like: I’m going to control my effort and really go after this thing. There were practices where I was just absolutely gassed.

We got to the game and the offense did great. We blew out the Falcons, and everyone was happy. But on the plane back to Miami, I watched the tape and thought: Man, I sucked.

I didn’t sustain my blocks up to my standard. Everything we had just installed, I wasn’t good at yet. I dug deep to give more than I thought possible and still felt like I let the team down.

I talked with coach Mike McDaniel on the plane. He has a way of opening my perspective. I watched the tape with him and he showed me the big picture of the offense: the blocking angles for the offensive linemen, the pocket for the quarterback, the lanes for the running backs. He showed me how we were able to improve from one week to the next.

And I talked to Frank Smith, my offensive coordinator. He harped on letting go of expectations. He told me not to walk into anything expecting it to be easy or simple or what I want it to be.

That was a lightbulb moment for me, and I started to change my perspective.

I had to let go. I had to remove my expectation that I needed to block every single guy. I had to embrace change and the challenge of whatever happens.

After the Atlanta game, communication shifted from frustration to urgency: “This guy was here but that’s not what he showed on tape. How are we going to fix this?” That has allowed one bad moment to stay one bad moment.  Rather than becoming frustrated and emotionally distracted by a new wrinkle, I became a problem-solver.