When it comes to working through anxiety, working through fear, not playing scared, not holding yourself back, a lot of this has to do with where our attention is when we play.
What I’m going to discuss in this article is a simple mindset shift that you can make to work through a lot of different mental game challenges that you experience as an athlete.
Introducing the Mindset Shift
The mindset shift I am referring to is where you go from focusing so much on yourself to focusing on helping the team win.
Now, admittedly, this idea really applies to athletes who play team sports.
So, the reason that I love this approach is because when we look at performance anxiety, fear of failure, self-doubt, seeking social approval, or any other mental game challenges that tend to hold athletes back, we find that athletes are focused on themselves.
Now, I’m not saying this to mean that that’s a bad thing and that you are a selfish player or anything like that.
What I’m referring to is when you go out there and you play, if your attention is so much on yourself to where you are worried about how well you’re doing, you’re constantly stressing about whether or not you make a mistake, you’re constantly worried about what other people think of you and how they are judging you as a player, this can hold you back.
So, I want to give you two different examples of athletes that I’ve worked with in one-on-one coaching who have adopted this mentality and how it’s helped them.
Example #1: High School Catcher Struggling with the Yips
I work with a lot of baseball players and softball players who struggle with the yips.
The yips are when there is this seemingly unknown reason why an athlete is not able to do something simple. So, with a lot of baseball and softball players, it involves their throwing. Mainly, I see this in catchers, but also pitchers and fielders.
But the example I want to share is of a catcher. The catcher I’m referring to was a high school catcher when we were working. He’s now playing in college.
When we first began working together, he was so worried about what other people thought of him. And because he had developed the yips, it became a point of embarrassment for him where every time he went out there, he thought everybody was judging him and he was terrified of making a bad throw.
We used mindfulness techniques. We worked on changing his thinking. We did a lot of different things to help him with the yips.
But something that helped him more than anything else was one day in a game his pitcher was struggling. So, all of a sudden, he took his attention off of himself.
This wasn’t something that he did consciously. It just ended up happening.
But he he took his attention off of himself and he was just focused on his pitcher. All he was thinking about was I want to encourage my pitcher. I want to keep his spirits up. I want to help him as much as possible.
In doing so, he wasn’t thinking about himself anymore. He wasn’t thinking about whether or not he would make a good throw.
He took us his attention completely off himself and as a result, he ended up making really good throws.
The yips themselves are caused and strengthened by this hyper self-consciousness where a catcher or just any player is so focused on themselves, their mechanics, and what’s going to happen that they then hold themselves back due to this overthinking.
But he was experiencing none of that because all he was concerned with was was helping his pitcher. And that led to him playing a lot better and being able to make those throws.
Example #2: College Basketball Player and Field Goal Percentage
Another example is a college basketball player that I’ve worked with. When she and I first began working together, she was experiencing a lot of fear when it came to missing shots.
Most of this came from her being completely fixated on what her field goal percentage was. That was a key stat for her and after every single game, she checked in on it.
When she went into games, if she had a great field goal percentage, she was more scared to shoot because she didn’t want to lower it. If she had a bad field goal percentage, she was equally scared because she didn’t want to worsen it even more.
What we talked about was getting her to spend less time worrying about her field goal percentage. So, for the remainder of the season, she didn’t pay attention to her field goal percentage at all. She didn’t check it.
All she focused on was helping her team in the best way possible.
This involved taking shots if she was open, but it also involved playing hard defense, giving full effort, and doing whatever she could to help the team win.
It allowed her to just play freely, but most importantly, she wasn’t concerned about herself as much. She wasn’t concerned as much about what other people thought of her or what that vanity metric looked like in terms of her field goal percentage.
All she worried about was playing to help her team win. That mindset allowed her to have the best field goal percentage she’s ever had, and it allowed her to be a very effective player.
Why Taking Your Attention Off Yourself Works
Those two examples highlight the power of taking your attention off of yourself and instead just thinking about how you can help your team win.
And the reason that this helps so much with a lot of different mental game challenges is that you’re not as self-conscious. You’re not as concerned with what other people think of you because you’re playing for something bigger than yourself.
You’re playing for your team. You’re trying to help your teammates.
With that baseball player example, he was just trying to help his pitcher and that’s what he was concerned with. And as a result, he he allowed himself to play freely.
So really, what I’m getting at with this whole idea is that when we spend less time thinking about ourselves and hyperfixating on how well we do and we just focus on being a key part of the team and doing whatever we can to help our team win, we end up playing more freely.
We end up playing more naturally as well.
We’re not overthinking. We aren’t hyperfixating on mistakes or anything like that. Our attention is on our team and as a result of that, we end up allowing ourselves to play much more freely.
How You Can Apply This Mindset
So for yourself, what I want you to ask yourself, and maybe do some journal writing this week on is, are you spending more time thinking about yourself, thinking about your own stats, how other people think of you, and could you maybe change that a little bit and just focus on how you can help your team win.
And this can even help if you’re struggling with playing time and you are afraid of getting benched.
Maybe you could switch that to be, when I am out there, I just want to be as effective as I can. But if I’m on the bench, I’m just going to cheer my teammates on. I’m going to try to find any tendencies I can with the opponent or anything so I can maybe help my teammates by watching and then giving them some feedback when they’re playing.
I know it’s not necessarily the most exciting approach to take. And to be honest, most of my episodes and the videos and the articles that I make, and even the the work I do one-on-one, is directly with athletes trying to get them to play their best, trying to help you play your best.
But sometimes, in order to play your best, you need to take your attention off of yourself and you need to play for your team.
So, I encourage you to try to work on taking this new approach for your next game or your next tournament that you have coming up.
Mental Coaching Help for Athletes
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Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
