Your goal as an athlete:
To get rid of the mental baggage, the junk, all the negativity, and all the things that basically hold you back and slow you down.
Let’s take the analogy of a ship going across the ocean. It is like dragging an anchor and you are not going to be able to go as fast as you want. You are trying to get from point A to point B (point B is you playing your best).
All sorts of interference is the stuff that acts like an anchor and holds you back.
I find it really helpful to explain to all my athletes, and this one I taught to my little kids (athletes) in little kids language. You want to understand that we have two functions of the mind. Most people think when we say mind, they point to their brain but that is not true. The mind is more than just the brain and there is two functions.
Two functions:
- One of them is what I call “The Thinking Mind” and this is a part of us that makes all decisions and choices.
- Then we have what I call “The Power Mind”. Now if you care, the technical terms are the conscious and the unconscious mind, but I feel like my terms are more down to earth and less overwhelming.
Now, there’s a block between the two functions that we just talked about. You could be out there and you are just about to go out on your field with your teammates. Now your Thinking Mind is saying,
“Okay I need to get in this field and rock this game!”
“I need to calm down.”
“I need to stop all this negativity and worry about if I screw up”
“I have to start thinking positive.”
And you are trying to send all these message to your Power Mind but it gets blocked on the way because the Power Mind runs your body and it is all your automatic functions. This manages all your energy such as your heartbeat, breathing, immune system, digestion, etc.
You can’t just think about your movement and your strategies, you have to actually do it. So the goal here is for you to get through your block, because you could be thinking all day long:
“I want this so bad.”
“I want to feel great.”
“I want to feel confident!”
And all this gets blocked, but if you can get through the block, your body will respond and you will feel confident in addition to thinking confident. You can think of something all day long but if the body is not in line, you can forget it because you are going to lose that battle.
So how do you get rid of the interference?
- Useful positive thoughts
- Destroy the interference
This is just the overview of what I teach. Stay tuned for more articles, programs, videos, etc. that I teach in Mental Toughness.
I’m Craig Sigl,
Your Mental Toughness Trainer