Distance From Thoughts
One of the things that you can do as an athlete to focus more effectively and ultimately perform better is to create some distance between yourself and your thoughts. Let me explain what I mean by that.
Process>Outcome
The easiest trap to fall into as an athlete is prioritizing the outcome over the process. So making things like wins and stats and awards the central focus over the act of playing the game and doing what it takes to play the game well. And going after accomplishments isn't a bad thing. We should want to be good at what we do and take pride in that. We like to be recognized for being good at what we do but when we make that the main thing, we put both our performance and enjoyment at risk. And why is this? Much of it is because we're sacrificing a task relevant focus. A focus on what we want to do in the immediate moment. Outcomes lying the future outside of our control.
Confident Action
So I’m reading this book called The Confidence Gap by Russ Harris and it's a fantastic book for anyone to read, athlete or non athlete, who struggles with self-confidence. And in the book he discusses this made up rule that we all seem to be following at times which is where our mind tells us, “Once I feel more confident I can do blank or once I feel less anxious or less worried or less afraid I can do blank.” He also brings up two different definitions of the word confidence. The first being, a feeling of certainty or assurance and the second being, an act of trust to reliance.
Let It Happen
High performers have high expectations and as they should. But sometimes we hold on to these expectations too tightly and this can really hurt performance. When we're really good at something because we’ve worked really hard at it and we've done really well in the past, we expect to be really good in the future. And inherently, there's no problem with that, but problems do arise when we think we have to play to a certain level of performance. I have to hit 350 this year. I have to be a starter.
Fear of Failure
One of the biggest things holding us back from competing at a high level is both the unwillingness to experience fear and the unwillingness to experience failure. And this isn't irrational or unreasonable because failure and all the thoughts and feelings that come with it really do suck and anyone that says they don't or that they're easy to respond to is kidding themselves.
Have a Plan
Not enough athletes do this. They don't plan for when things go sideways in competition. Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” I'm saying that we need to plan for after we get punched in the mouth. For anything external that could go wrong like if the other team does something to upset you or if there's a bad call, bad weather or if you make a costly mistake.
Focus on the Present Moment
In baseball, there’s countless, countless things to try to pull our attention away from our intent. But our intent requires us to be in the present moment. Well that following through with our intent requires us to focus on the present moment, right?
Practice Pressure
There’s a quote from the navy seals that says we don't rise to the occasion, we sink to our level of training. And I think this rings really true in sport as well. I noticed a lot with athletes, I myself was one of them, who put in a ton of work in training, but it just doesn't always seem to be translating into competition. And I think the biggest reason is that we don't practice the skill of competing under pressure enough.
Know Your Why
Why do you play the game? Why did you begin playing the game? Every athlete that I've asked these questions to, whether it be baseball, softball, golf, you name it, has said something along the lines of: It's the complexity of it. Or it's the beauty of it. Or it's just the fact that you're taking a very difficult and nuanced activity and doing it really well. If you've been playing your sport since you were a kid you might not even completely understand why you’ve always loved it. You just knew it was really fun and you showed up and balled out every time.
