The mental game is built on a foundation of thinking. Athletes who have a strong mental game use their thinking to their advantage. Their thinking is more under their control.
Athletes who struggle mentally have their thoughts working against them. Their thinking is the very thing holding them back.
Your thinking is something that can and must be trained. Which is why it’s possible to build a stronger mental game, and something I help athletes with through one-on-one mental coaching.
A key place we begin is thinking. Working to get them to use their thoughts to their advantage.
Which begins with understanding the difference between the two key types of thinking athletes can have during games: outcome thinking vs process thinking.
Outcome-Oriented Thinking Explained
Outcome-oriented thinking involves thinking about results. You focus on the future and what will happen.
This is by far the easier and more natural of the two ways of thinking. Since sports are built on outcomes. Winning and losing, your stats, winning an award, making a mistake…these are just a few of the many outcomes that occur within sports.
All of which are what you want to achieve if they are positive and what you want to avoid if they are negative.
Put simply, outcome-oriented thinking means you think more about the result of what you’re doing than the act of doing it (the process).
When you think more about the outcome, this can often be detrimental to you achieving the outcome you want.
The Danger of Outcome-Oriented Thinking
I work with a lot of athletes on managing fear of failure and sports performance anxiety. At the core of each challenge is outcome-oriented thinking.
Failure is an outcome. It is the result of a single play or a game as a whole. The more you think about failing, the more it will become something you fear.
Let’s take turning the ball over in basketball as an example. Turning the ball over is a result you do not want to have happen. But what will occur if you think about turning the ball over?
As you think about turning the ball over, you will grow more and more afraid. Meaning, you will play to avoid making that mistake. This results in you holding yourself back and playing timidly.
Due to the fear you have surrounding turning the ball over, anxiety will form. Sports performance anxiety occurs when you worry about what may or may not happen.
This worry focuses solely on the outcome. Which is why outcome-oriented thinking is the main driver for sports performance anxiety.
As you think about not wanting to turn the ball over, anxiety will grow. Leading to more tension when you play.
The timidness you play with due to fear and the tightness you play with due to anxiety increases your chances of making mistakes.
That is the major danger of outcome-oriented thinking: by focusing on the outcome, you cause yourself to underperform.
You are not as focused as you need to be in the present moment, and to make matters worse, thinking about the result drives fear and anxiety. Both of which lead to underperforming.
But is outcome-oriented thinking purely dangerous?
Since there are results you want to achieve, is there a way to think about them that helps your play instead of holding you back?
Using Outcome-Oriented Thinking to Increase Performance
Yes, if you know how to use outcome-oriented thinking to your advantage, it can absolutely improve your play.
But you must be in control. You cannot have your thoughts be out of your control. That’s when they will travel into the future and lead to fear and worry.
If your thoughts can remain within your control, however, outcome-oriented thinking proves valuable.
The way outcome-oriented thinking improves performance is by increasing motivation and strengthening process focus.
Motivation is all about you knowing what you want and having a burning desire inside to achieve it. In order to have such a drive, you need to first know what it is you want to achieve.
That is where outcome thinking comes into play.
When you think about an outcome you want to achieve, this strengthens motivation. It gives you something to work toward.
Let’s say you don’t want to train today because you’re tired and didn’t sleep well. If you just focused on today, you wouldn’t train. However, if you thought about your long-term goal and the outcome you’re working to achieve, that would fuel you to push through your tiredness and train anyway.
In addition to instilling motivation, outcome-oriented thinking can also help during games.
Let’s use the same example as before, where you’re afraid to turn the ball over. If you go into the game and think about how much you don’t want to turn the ball over, this can easily lead to fear and anxiety.
But it doesn’t have to!
If you think about how you don’t want to turn the ball over, and then you think about how you need to play and what you can control about not turning the ball over, then the thought becomes helpful.
You would be using the thought of an outcome (turning the ball over) to increase process focus. To help you give more attention to the controllable parts of your game that help you play well.
Instead of getting stuck worrying about the outcome and hoping it won’t be negative, you focus on what you need to do to play well.
That is the number one way I have seen outcome-oriented thinking help during games. You think about the outcome as a way to increase focus on what you can control.
It is through focusing on what you can control that you play your best. A type of focus that becomes more natural the more you adopt process thinking.
Process Thinking in Sports Explained
Think about a puzzle. You have the completed puzzle and then all the pieces that go together to give you the completed puzzle. Putting each piece where it goes is the process of completing a puzzle.
Process thinking in sports means you spend more time thinking about how to achieve an outcome than the achievement of the outcome itself.
You are focused on all the steps that will get you to where you want to go.
You think about the puzzle pieces instead of the completed puzzle.
It is the process that gives you the outcome you want. So it makes sense that spending more time thinking about the process would be more effective than thinking about how much you want to achieve or want to avoid an outcome.
And that’s true. However, there is a dark side to being process focused. It comes when you find yourself overthinking the process itself.
Process Thinking and Overthinking
I encourage all athletes I work with to focus on the process of their game more than the outcome. By giving your attention to what you can control, you decrease fear and anxiety, while increasing your chances of success.
However, we have to be careful not to allow process thinking to turn into overthinking.
Overthinking causes hesitation, timidness, and underperforming. A lot of times it’s caused by trying to be too perfect in terms of an outcome.
You want to take the perfect shot, so you overthink each shot. You want to get a hit so badly that you overthink which pitch to swing at.
We can also see this overthinking take place when you focus on the process, especially in terms of mechanics.
I was a huge overthinker when I played baseball. One element of my game that was victim to this overthinking was my swing. I focused so much on perfecting my swing and my mechanics. To the point where I would be questioning if my hands were in the right position while standing in the batter’s box.
That type of process thinking isn’t helpful at all. It’s distracting and leads to doubt.
I’ve also worked with players who overthink their game plan, their serve, their training plan throughout the week, and much more.
Process thinking is more helpful than outcome thinking. However, just as with any type of thinking, it can have its drawbacks. With the major drawback being the tendency to overthink the process instead of focusing on and trusting the process of your game.
Benefits of Process Thinking in Sports
Outcome thinking is a major driver of sports performance anxiety and fear of failure. The more you think about an outcome, the easier it is to worry about it not happening and stress about playing your best.
Both of which are patterns of thinking that do not lead to peak performance.
What does lead to peak performance, though, is being present.
Above anything else, being present is the state I’ve found athletes are in when they perform their best.
There are many ways athletes get themselves present and many ways of thinking they have that help them get into the best mindset to compete. But no matter what, there is always the underlying principle of being present.
When you are present, there is no forcing. No pressing. Just playing. You are fully focused on what you’re doing and you get out of your own way and allow your talents to shine through.
Many times we are our own worst enemies. And our thinking (about the past or future) keeps us from performing our best in the moment.
When your mind is present, physically you play your best.
So the question becomes, how can you compete with a present mind?
Focusing on the process is the key. And that is the main benefit of and reason why process thinking is so helpful to you as an athlete.
To be focused on the process of your game means you are focused in the present moment. Because for something to be part of the process and in your control, it is something that is happening right now. In the present moment.
Using Outcome Thinking & Process Thinking to Help Your Game
As with all types of thinking, both outcome and process thinking have ups and downs. If I were to generalize it, I would say process thinking is the better of the two types of thinking for you to have as an athlete.
It’s the one I have seen athletes have the most success with.
But we can’t discount the fact that outcomes are everywhere within sports and you want to achieve positive outcomes when you play. Which makes it difficult to completely let go of outcome thinking.
Instead, you want to train yourself to use outcome thinking in a positive way, instead of having it hold you back.
Similarly, we want to make sure process thinking remains a positive and helpful way for you to think. And does not turn into overthinking during games.
To help, there are three simple tips you can follow.
Tip#1: Use Outcome Thinking as Motivation
The number one way outcome thinking helps you as an athlete is by giving you direction. You know what you want to achieve and that knowing leads to motivation.
When you find yourself not wanting to train or coming off a tough game, remind yourself of the outcomes you want to achieve in your sport. Use them as motivation to get yourself back on track and motivated to train and push through.
Tip #2: Use Outcome Thinking to Drive Process Thinking
Once you know what the outcome is you want to achieve, you should always follow it up by asking yourself how.
How do you put yourself in the best position to achieve the outcome you want?
The answer to that question will guide your attention onto the process of your game.
It is the process that leads to the outcome.
So if you really want to achieve a result, you better give complete attention and full effort to the process that will help you get there.
That is where outcome thinking can help you become more process focused during games.
Tip #3: Set Process Goals
Process goals are targets you focus on that are 100% within your control. These will be part of the process of your game.
Focusing on the process will keep your mind present. However, we want to also minimize your chances of overthinking.
You don’t want to be trying to think of what is part of the process during the game. You should already know what it is that is part of the process that you should focus on.
Those will be your process goals.
Set them before the game and focus on them throughout the game to keep your mind present.
Final Thoughts
There are two broad categories of thinking you can have as an athlete: outcome thinking and process thinking.
Outcome thinking involves thinking about the end result.
Process thinking involves thinking about the steps and the process that leads to the end result.
Both have benefits on your game and both can equally hurt your performance. It all depends on how you think about the process or the outcome.
To help utilize both types of thinking to your advantage, be sure to use outcomes as motivation, have outcomes drive your attention onto the process, and set process goals going into games.
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
