Video transcript:
Do you ever find yourself unable to shake off the mistakes you make in games? Maybe it’s a strikeout at the plate, and you take that at bat and the field with you. Or maybe it’s an error you make in the field and it snowballs into two or three errors. While we’ll never be able to eliminate mistakes from our games, we can learn to reset from them and respond in confidence. It’s this ability to reset and respond that separates the most consistent baseball players from everybody else.
Now the question is: How do we actually do it? How do we set the reset button in the heat of the moment when it is all too easy to get caught up in our unhelpful thoughts and feelings? Luckily we’ve already discussed the most important tool we can use. A refocus routine. Which we talked about in the present moment focus video. So having awareness of when our mind becomes distracted and in this case by a mistake, finding a recentering focal point that rewinds your mind back in, taking a breath, and refocusing your attention to the task at hand with trust and commitment. Now it’s one thing to have a routine. It’s another to make it stick and work for us when we need it most. Here’s two ways we can do that.
Number one: Practice it. In practice, when you make a mistake, when you are unhappy with a rep, or you simply find yourself distracted, go through a refocus routine. It’s just like any skill in that the more you use it in practice, the more reliable it becomes in games. Number two: Make a plan of when you’ll use it. I know we never want to plan to make mistakes in games, but the reality is, that it happens sometimes. Before a game, think of all the situations in which you might find yourself caught up in unhelpful thoughts and emotions. Make a plan to use your routine in those situations.
It’s important to remember that being able to reset and respond in confidence is not just some special ability that few are born with. It’s a skill the most consistent players develop. So practice it. Plan for it. You’ll find that mistakes don’t actually have to hold you back from peak performance.