Do you struggle with not thinking about past mistakes during games? Does the last mistake you made stand out in your mind and distract you from the next play?
When you can’t let go of past mistakes, the chances of you making more mistakes increases. You are not as focused for the next play or as confident and in the moment.
In this article, you’re going to learn why it’s so hard to stop thinking about past mistakes, and a simple strategy you can use to let go of mistakes quickly and refocus during games.
The Challenge With Not Thinking About Past Mistakes
What goes through your head after you make a mistake?
What are you thinking about?
It’s likely you’re thinking about the mistake.
But why?
Well, it wasn’t exactly something you wanted to have happen, right? And when things happen that we don’t want to happen, it’s natural to think about why they happened and how much we wish they hadn’t happened.
But that type of thinking does us very little good in the moment during a game.
But nevertheless, mistakes are incredibly difficult to not think about. Especially if they were costly mistakes. You know, those mistakes you make where you want to hide your head in the ground.
What happens the more you think about mistakes, though?
The more you think about mistakes, the lower your confidence drops and the more your fear will grow. If one mistake was bad, you don’t want to make another!
But have you ever had those games where the snowball effect happens? Where you make one mistake that suddenly turns into two or three?
The snowball effect has more to do with your reaction to the first mistake than it does anything else. When you can’t stop thinking about a past mistake, the chances of you making another mistake increase.
If we know how harmful it is to dwell on mistakes, why do we do it? Why do mistakes attract our attention like lights attract moths at night?
There are two main reasons: because you didn’t want to make the mistake and because of a negative self-talk loop.
I Wish I Hadn’t Made That Mistake!
I can remember many baseball games when I stood at short-stop following an error. I struggled and struggled to let go of the mistake I’d just made. My mind raced, thinking about why it happened and what I should have done differently.
Unfortunately, no matter how much I thought about it, I wasn’t going to change the past. It was over and done with. The door was shut. All the thinking in the world couldn’t change that.
But I still thought. And thought. And thought.
And this is a pattern a lot of athletes talk to me about when I’m working with them in mental coaching.
After a mistake, they think about why they made the mistake and what they should have done differently.
Just as with myself, this stems from the fact that they didn’t want to make the mistake in the first place and they aren’t happy about it at all.
By thinking about the mistake, it somehow feels like you care. If you were to just brush it aside and forget about it, wouldn’t that mean you didn’t care about playing well and helping the team win?
But as you’ll learn in the next section, you need to care…just about the right thing. And at that moment, what you need to care about is bouncing back from the mistake. Something that becomes close to impossible if you can’t stop thinking about the past mistake.
A Negative Self-Talk Loop
When I used to think about the error I just made while standing at short-stop, I wasn’t thinking about it in an objective way. I wasn’t calmly going over my mistake and thinking about how I could learn from it.
I was berating myself for being so terrible and for how embarrassing the mistake was. How much my stupid mistake just hurt the team!
Do you ever have similar thoughts?
These types of negative thoughts are known as negative self-talk. And once they begin, they form a negative self-talk loop that is difficult to stop.
The reason this loop forms is due to the thought-feeling cycle.
The thought-feeling cycle describes the process where a thought leads to a feeling. Then that feeling feeds into another like thought.
Going off my example, I thought to myself how stupid of a mistake I just made, which caused me to feel embarrassed and down on myself. Those feelings would fuel further negative thoughts, which fed into further negative feelings.
This cycle continued until something pulled me out of it. Which ended up being either a good play I made, a good at bat, or the game simply ending.
But to stop thinking about a past mistake, you have to be aware of this negative self-talk loop and work to get yourself out of it as quickly as possible.
Strategy to Stop Thinking About Past Mistakes
The two main reasons it’s difficult to stop thinking about past mistakes during games are wishing you hadn’t made the mistake and a negative self-talk loop.
For our strategy, we’re going to target each of those two reasons. The first part addresses the desire to not have made the mistake in the first place. The second part deals with stopping the negative self-talk loop.
Changing Your Goal After a Mistake
It’s so easy to get caught up in how much you wish you hadn’t made the mistake. It keeps replaying in your mind over and over and over again.
Unfortunately, no matter how much you think about it, you can’t change what happened.
The mistake is in the past. And you can’t control the past.
But you can influence the future.
When you’re stuck wishing the mistake you just made didn’t happen, are you as focused as you need to be on the next play?
I was talking with a parent yesterday who was explaining to me how when her daughter makes an error, her body language completely changes and she’s not in a ready position for the next pitch.
If the next ball is hit to her, she is not ready to make the play and one error quickly turns into two.
I experienced the very same thing as a baseball player. When I had a bad at bat or made an error, the mistake replayed in my mind and I wasn’t locked in for the next pitch. My mind wasn’t fully focused and so my reaction time was hindered.
A split second delay in reaction time can be the difference between making a play or making an error.
And the delay is simply caused by still thinking about the past mistake and wishing it hadn’t happened.
To stop this negative pattern, we need to change your goal after a mistake.
Instead of thinking about how you wish the previous mistake didn’t happen…focus on not letting it happen again.
Now, this doesn’t mean you’re going to be all tense and scared to make another mistake. That would be counterproductive to what we’re wanting to accomplish.
What it does mean, though, is that you recognize the importance of locking back in and expecting the ball to be hit to you, for you to take the next shot, or whatever the next play looks like for you.
You focus on making the next play and making up for the mistake instead of dwelling on the mistake itself.
This is a huge shift in terms of your goal and focus following a mistake.
Of course you wish the mistake didn’t happen. But wishing it didn’t happen isn’t going to change the fact that it did happen.
All you can influence is the next play. Which means, all you can fully control at that moment is how ready and focused you are to make the next play!
Make that your goal.
Stopping the Negative Self-Talk Loop
Once you work on changing your goal following a mistake, you must begin working to stop the negative self-talk loop that’s taking place.
Stopping a negative self-talk loop will help you to stop thinking about the past mistakes, since it is the past mistake that is the focal point of your negative self-talk.
Stop the negative self-talk and you stop yourself from thinking about the mistake itself.
Since it’s a loop, we know that the negative self-talk is feeding on itself. One thought leads to another and another and another. The more you think about the mistake, the worse you feel, and the worse you think.
Something has to happen to stop this loop.
A lot of times that something will involve you making a good play or something positive happening for your team. But we don’t want to rely on that.
The goal is for you to control the power to stop the negative self-talk loop.
To gain that power, you must step in with conscious thought and break up the negative pattern.
This can be done through the use of a thought-stopping phrase.
A thought-stopping phrase is a simple phrase you memorize that works to stop negative thinking in its tracks.
For example, your thought stopping phrase might be: stop, reset, refocus.
Something simple that you can remember in those moments when negative self-talk takes over and you can’t stop thinking about a past mistake.
Final Thoughts
Thinking about past mistakes is a quick way to make more mistakes.
As you think about the mistake, your confidence drops and you become distracted.
The reason it’s so difficult to stop thinking about mistakes is because you wish the mistake hadn’t happened, and because of the negative self-talk loop that forms.
To help, you want to first reframe your goal following a mistake. Don’t think about how you wish the mistake didn’t happen. Think about how you can make up for the mistake.
And you can use a thought-stopping phrase to stop the negative pattern of thinking that’s formed.
Apply the two parts of the strategy to get yourself to stop thinking about past mistakes during games.
Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
