About Success Starts Within
Success Starts Within provides sport psychology resources to athletes and performers looking to improve their mental game. Success Starts Within offers 1-1 mental performance coaching and mental training courses to help you build confidence, mental toughness, and all the mental skills you need to elevate your performance. We also provide many free resources, including weekly articles, podcasts, and videos that cover sport psychology topics to help you master the mental game. No matter your sport, skill level, or financial ability, you will find the mental training resources you need here at Success Starts Within.
Mission Statement
Make mental training and sport psychology accessible, affordable, and achieveable to all athletes.
Eli Straw, M.S. - Mental Game Coach
Eli is a mental game coach and the founder of Success Starts Within. He holds a Master’s Degree in psychology with a sport psychology specialization. He has worked one-on-one with athletes from 6 different continents and over ten different countries on building a stronger mental game.
Eli has extensive experience coaching, teaching, and consulting with professional, elite, college, high school, middle school, and youth athletes. Eli also has experience playing baseball at the collegiate and professional levels.
Eli works with athletes of all sports and all levels and is a current member of the AASP.
Founder of Success Starts Within, LLC
Sports Psychology Articles
How to Build Game-Day Confidence and Perform Freely Under Pressure
Quick Summary: How to Build Game-Day Confidence
- Game-day confidence is not about hype or guarantees. It is about trusting yourself and staying present under pressure.
- Preparation alone does not guarantee confidence if fear, anxiety, or negative thinking take over during competition.
- Confidence drops when attention shifts to outcomes, consequences, and what others think.
- Building game-day confidence requires setting controllable standards like effort, relaxation, and reset speed.
- Encouraging self-talk and quick mental resets help you recover after mistakes and stay composed.
- True confidence allows you to play freely, focus on controllables, and trust your preparation instead of chasing certainty.
The Right Way to Use Visualization Before a Game (And the Mistakes to Avoid)
Many athletes already understand what visualization is. However, many athletes unknowingly use visualization in a way that increases pressure instead of building confidence. This article
Why Do Athletes Hold Themselves Back During Games?
Quick Summary:
- Athletes often hold themselves back in games due to fear, not lack of talent.
- The most common fears include fear of mistakes, intimidation, fear of injury, fear of success, and over-focusing on results.
- Fear triggers a protection mode in the brain that leads athletes to play cautiously and avoid involvement.
- Holding back may feel safer, but it usually worsens performance and confidence.
- Identifying the specific fear driving your play is the first step toward playing freely and aggressively.
4 Tips to Stop Playing Not to Lose
Quick Summary:
- Playing not to lose shifts athletes into a defensive, scared mindset.
- Fear of losing leads to hesitation, safe decisions, and underperformance.
- Playing aggressively requires accepting mistakes and losses.
- Athletes should judge performance based on effort and intent, not outcomes.
- Awareness of fear before and during games helps athletes play to win.
Build Team Mental Toughness
Quick Summary:
- Mental toughness in teams comes from trained skills like focus, emotional control, communication, and resilience, not motivation alone.
- Teams struggle under pressure when fear of failure, emotional reactions, and communication breakdowns take over.
- Mentally tough teams focus on controllables, reset quickly after mistakes, and stay connected under stress.
- Mental toughness is built through consistent practice routines, pressure training, and leadership development.
- A structured 12-week team mental performance program helps teams perform more confidently and consistently in games.
How Mental Performance Coaching Helps Teams
Quick Summary:
- Sports teams often underperform due to mental and emotional factors rather than lack of talent, including fear of failure, anxiety under pressure, confidence swings, and poor responses to mistakes.
- When fear and pressure increase, athletes are more likely to hesitate, overthink, or avoid responsibility, which disrupts execution, communication, and trust across the team.
- Mental performance coaching helps teams develop practical skills such as emotional regulation, focus control, confidence under pressure, and effective reset routines after mistakes.
- Structured team mental coaching improves consistency in games, strengthens leadership and communication, and helps teams respond constructively to adversity instead of reacting emotionally.
- Teams that integrate mental training into their season are better able to translate preparation and talent into confident, composed performance when it matters most.
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