The mind plays a large role in your success as an athlete. Once you get to a certain skill level, it isn’t physical talent that separates good players from great ones…it’s mindset!
Working as a mental performance coach, I’ve seen first hand the types of mindsets high performing athletes have, and I’ve also experienced mindset shifts athletes have made to take their mental game to the next level.
What I have done below is outlined the three main mindset shifts that will take you from good to great as an athlete. I have explained each mindset shift, why it’s important, and provided you with an actionable way you can make the mindset shift for yourself.
Mindset Shift #1: Focus on How to Win Instead of Wanting to Win
All athletes want to win. It’s the reason you train, work hard in the offseason, and practice diligently throughout the week.
Winning feels good.
Winning is the reason you play.
However, you shouldn’t get caught up in wanting to win so much that you forget how you win.
Now what, exactly, does that mean?
When we want to win, it is a desire. There is an underlying goal present which is to go out there and beat your competition.
But the way to achieve any goal is through action. The process that leads to the end result (which in this case is winning).
Many athletes I work with in mental performance coaching struggle with fear and anxiety. They worry about whether or not they’ll win and how well they’ll play. Such outcome thinking leads to tense and timid play.
When you focus only on wanting to win, it opens the door to fear and worry. It leads to trying to force the outcome. And above all, it takes you out of the present moment.
Great athletes want to win. Make no mistake about it. But they don’t focus solely on the fact that they want to win. They give much more attention to how they win.
In other words, they focus on the process more than the outcome.
Why Focusing on How to Win Improves Your Game
When you focus on the process more than the outcome, you give more attention to the present moment. You also give more attention to what leads to the result you want.
If you really want something to happen, does it make more sense to focus on how badly you want it, or does it make more sense to focus on how you get what you want?
It makes a lot more sense to focus on how you achieve what you want!
Within sports, being process focused means you give your attention to what’s in your control. Yes, you want to win. Of course you do. But instead of thinking about it constantly, you focus on what’s in your control in the present moment that will lead to winning.
When you have this type of in the moment focus, many benefits are experienced within your game.
For one, you reduce any anxiety or fear you are experiencing and minimize the chances of experiencing sports anxiety or fear of failure in the future.
In addition to reducing fear and anxiety, focusing on how to win also improves concentration and makes it easier to play in the flow state.
Overall, to go from good to great as an athlete, shift your focus from wanting to win to how to win and watch as your game transforms.
How to Make the Mindset Shift
To get yourself to focus on how to win instead of just wanting to win, you first need to know what all goes into winning.
This is where you want to create a list of what is in your control.
There are many elements to winning. Not all of them are in your control, however. With this mindset shift, you are wanting to not only focus on how to win, but how you can put yourself in a position to win.
Which means, you must focus on what is within your control.
Make a list of everything that is within your control that puts you in a position to win.
Now that you have that outlined, you want to select items from the list you will focus on during games and throughout the week.
Throughout the week you want to have actions you take that get you prepared to play. These will be controllable actions that set you up for success come game time.
Next, you want to select one or two controllables to set as objectives for yourself during the game. These objectives will keep your attention on the process and on how to win instead of allowing your mind to fixate on how badly you want to win.
Mindset Shift #2: Changing the Way You See Mistakes
Mistakes are inevitable within sports. There is no way for you to fully avoid them. In fact, trying to avoid mistakes does much more harm than simply making mistakes in the first place.
When you play to avoid mistakes, you play timidly and hold yourself back. This is where fear of failure develops and causes you to feel like you’re playing with your foot on the brake.
You are, in a sense, due to your mind trying to avoid mistakes.
But if we know mistakes will happen, and we also understand the negative impact seeking to avoid mistakes has on our game, how should we see mistakes?
Mistakes need to be accepted and used to help yourself improve.
That is how great athletes see mistakes.
It’s not that they want to make mistakes or anything like that. But they are definitely not out there terrified of making mistakes and worried about what will happen if they do.
That is a recipe for underperforming.
We want to go from seeing mistakes as a negative thing, to viewing mistakes in a productive way.
Seeing mistakes in a productive way means you use them to learn. You don’t beat yourself up after you make a mistake, and you don’t pretend like they didn’t happen.
You recognize the mistakes you made, accept them, and then learn from them and use what you learned to improve moving forward.
Why Changing the Way You See Mistakes Improves Your Game
If you play to avoid mistakes, you will underperform.
I have worked with many athletes who struggle with the fear of failure. At the core of fear of failure in sports is a desire to not make any mistakes.
This is something we also see in athletes with sports performance anxiety.
Now, when you play with fear and worry surrounding mistakes, avoiding mistakes becomes your top priority. When avoiding mistakes becomes your goal, you’ll play in a way that aligns with your goal.
Unfortunately, when you play to avoid mistakes, this doesn’t mean you will play to succeed.
Succeeding in sports is only possible if we accept the possibility of mistakes. The two go hand in hand.
When you play to avoid mistakes, you don’t play to succeed. You play not to fail. Which means you play it safe and hold yourself back.
Yes, you may not make a ton of mistakes. But you are also not effective and showing the true player you can be.
This is why, if you do play to avoid mistakes, you find yourself leaving games disappointed and frustrated. Not because you made mistakes, but because you held yourself back.
When you can shift the way you see mistakes, you no longer play to avoid messing up. This frees you to play naturally and more aggressively.
Playing naturally and aggressively is where you find yourself playing up to your potential.
How to Make the Mindset Shift
To change the way you see mistakes, you want to do two things:
- Accept mistakes pregame
- Learn from mistakes post game
We are going from seeing mistakes as something purely negative, to a necessary and productive part of your game. This change requires you to actionably alter the way you think about mistakes.
Before games, remind yourself that mistakes are natural and that they may happen. Accepting mistakes is a key element of playing aggressively and without fear. When you try too hard to be perfect, it’s easy for this to turn into you playing scared of making mistakes.
In addition to accepting the possibility of mistakes pregame, you want to get into the habit of learning from your mistakes after the game.
A great way to do so is going through a post game evaluation, where you think about what you can learn from the day, and, most importantly, how you will improve upon those areas during practice.
Mindset Shift #3: Changing Where You Get Your Confidence
Confidence is critical to high level success.
No elite athlete is playing with severe doubt and constantly questioning their abilities.
When you question yourself and your skills, you hesitate. You play scared due to a lack of trust. To go from good to great as an athlete, you must have higher levels of self-confidence.
But what does it mean to change where you get your confidence?
Well, it’s natural for us to base how confident we feel on external factors. Such as comments from other people or how well you’ve been playing recently. However, when you rely on these types of externals for your confidence, confidence becomes fragile.
What if coach yells at you? What if you’ve played poorly your last few games or have had a bad week of practice? What will happen to your confidence?
If you rely solely on external factors for your confidence, it will drop.
If you get your confidence from within, you can still approach your next game with confidence…even if you haven’t played well recently.
Changing where you get your confidence from is all about reclaiming control of your confidence.
If it’s in other people’s hands, or in the hands of your past performance, confidence will vary greatly. When confidence is in your hands, you find yourself playing with a more stable level of trust.
When you get your confidence from within, your game transforms.
Why Changing Where You Get Your Confidence Improves Your Games
I am working with a baseball player right now who has historically struggled with slumps. When he has a bad game or two at the plate, his confidence tanks, and he finds himself in a slump that can last weeks.
One skill we’ve been focusing on is his confidence.
In the past, his confidence has relied on his performance. If he hit well, his confidence increased. If he hit poorly, his confidence dropped.
That is a dangerous place to be in as a hitter, since more often than not, you get out. That’s just how the game works. For him, this meant more often than not, he felt down on himself.
We are working on changing that. Getting him to find confidence within himself, no matter how good or bad his previous at bat or game was.
What this is doing is allowing him to approach each at bat with a foundational level of confidence. That’s why changing where you get your confidence from improves your game…it leads to more consistency.
Instead of having your confidence go up and down, you can play with stabler levels of trust. When you do, you play well on a more consistent basis.
How to Make the Mindset Shift
To change where you get your confidence, we want to use two mental training tools to do so.
The first tool is self-talk. You must pay attention to the language you’re using when speaking to yourself.
Use your thoughts and the words you speak to yourself in a deliberate way. Think thoughts that increase confidence and build trust in yourself.
A great way you can ensure you’re feeding your mind confident thoughts is by using a self-talk routine. This is a list of confident statements you read to yourself at least once a day.
The second tool is visualization.
Visualization is a great tool to use if you do find yourself relying on past success to boost your confidence. You can provide your mind with the memory of seeing yourself succeed, even if you haven’t been playing well recently.
What you want to do is visualize yourself playing well. Make it real and imagine going through a game and succeeding in different moments.
By using a self-talk routine and visualization, you can begin making the shift to go from relying on external factors for your confidence, to getting your confidence from within.
Final Thoughts
Mindset is the key difference between good athletes and great athletes.
To go from good to great as an athlete, you need to pay attention to making three key mindset shifts:
- Focus on how to win, not wanting to win.
- Change the way you see mistakes.
- Change where you get your confidence.
Focusing on each one of these shifts will take your mental game to the next level.
If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to help make these mindset shifts, along with building many other mental skills you need to elevate your performance, please fill out the form below to learn more about mental performance coaching.
You can also use this link to schedule a free introductory coaching call.
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
