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.

The Mental Game Coach

Eli Straw, M.S. - Mental Game Coach

Eli Straw holds a Master's Degree in psychology with a sport psychology specialization. Eli brings a proactive and applicable approach to mental training. He believes that repetition is the key to success and so it is no different when it comes to mental training. Eli's philosophy is to make mental training a habit that becomes part of your daily routine. That is how he believes lasting change can be created.

Combined with his expertise in clinical and applied sports psychology, 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. His background has provided him with first-hand experience of the struggles faced by athletes and those wanting to perform well.

He has witnessed both the ups and downs of sports and understands the impact competition can have on your mind. Eli works with athletes of all sports and all levels and is a current member of the AASP.

Mental Game Coach Eli Straw

Eli's Story

Eli Straw has an M.S. in psychology along with having experience as a collegiate and professional baseball player. Through his years playing, he dealt with insecurities, self-doubt, low self-confidence, and all other terrible ways of thinking that can limit your potential. However, these past struggles have served as a blessing, because they pointed Eli in the direction of sport psychology.

Beginning in his high school years, Eli felt tremendous amounts of anxiety and self-doubt in all aspects of his life, especially on the baseball field. This proved to be troublesome because his dream was to play college baseball and have a shot at a professional team. Luckily, while in college, Eli teamed up with John Ellsworth from protexsports.com and learned the needed skills to combat his performance anxiety and build a strong sense of self-confidence.

This introduction into the field of sport psychology opened Eli’s eyes and gave him the motivation to want to help others who struggle with similar mental game challenges. According to Eli, these challenges kept him from reaching his potential early on in his life, which is why he is so passionate about helping athletes, so they can move forward with full confidence towards achieving their dreams.

Free Trainings

Master Your Mental Game With One-On-One Coaching

Get one-on-one mental performance coaching to help break through mental barriers and become the athlete you're meant to be!