MONDAY MINDSET: SADDLE UP, COWBOY!

WEEK OF 11/11/24

 

Got a more pragmatic one for you today.  By no means am I a sports psychologist or an expert in the field of performance optimization, but I do have a ton of experience as both a coach and and athlete and I’ve seen some things over the years.  So, I’m going to share one of my own mental exercises that helps keep me from spiraling out prior to a competition.

First things first, it’s ok to have intrusive, crazy thoughts.  These are absolutely normal and everyone has them.

“What if I get KO’d with the first punch?”

“What if I do so poorly that people laugh at me?”

“I should never have signed up, I’m terrible at this, I’m only going to embarrass myself”

And so on and so on.

These, to a degree, are normal.

So here’s how I deal with them: I put on my cowboy hat, saddle up on my horse, and imagine that my thoughts are like a flock of sheep that I’m herding through some challenging terrain on the frontier.  After all, what better way to explain the lead up to a competition than trying to get from point A (where you are) to point B (the competition) in the proper mental and physical state?

Generally, I can keep myself together by just corralling my thoughts in the right direction.  But every once in awhile, a real crazy one starts getting away from me.

At that point I toss my lasso around it, bring it back into the herd, and move on.

That’s it.

The specific content of the thought is unimportant.  I ignore it.  I just recognize that this thought is not going where I want it to go, so I just bring it back in and move on.

Thoughts, like sheep, are going to get away from you from time to time.  It’s how they operate, and being a successful athlete is not about maintaining a flock of thoughts that move in an perfectly ordered and organized fashion.  It’s about moving through your mental space and maintaining order as you traverse difficult terrain, and keeping your lasso handy in case something starts bolting away from you.

Like everything, this takes practice.  But the first step towards keeping your “herd” together is accepting that the herd is chaotic by nature, and that this chaos is not a sign of mental weakness or failure, but rather just a sign that you are moving through difficult terrain!