Control the Controllables
The weather. The umpires. Your opponents. A light that hangs annoyingly over the basket on a basketball court. Your teammates, your coach, the course conditions, the outcome of a game, injury, sickness…I could keep going, but I’ll stop there.
If you’ve been an athlete for any amount of time, it’s likely you know that much of sports falls outside of our control. In fact, there is a lot that we cannot control and it’s easy to fixate on these factors.
Maybe you get angry after a bad call or frustrated when your coach pulls you out of the game. Maybe you are still thinking about that last error you made or how windy it is during your 2 mile run.
Rather than letting your mind run rampant focusing on the things outside of our control, what if we were more strategic about the focus of our thoughts. Just as you have a physical game plan; what if you had a mental game plan as well.
Let’s start with awareness.
Instead of simply reading this blog, feel free to grab a piece of paper and pencil and dive into this. First off, I want you to draw a circle in the center of your piece of paper. Now, outside of the circle, write down all the things you cannot control. Maybe your paper will include some of the things I mentioned previously. Maybe it’s a new player coming in or a change in your coaching staff. Maybe it’s someone else’s attitude. Come up with as many factors as you’d like.
Next, in the inner circle list all the things you can control. Your attitude. Your effort. Your preparation. Your breath. Take a few moments to do this as well.
Once you have both your controllables and uncontrollables written down, consider if it is benefiting you in any way to pay attention to the things you can’t control. Does it help you to focus on how frustrating that wind is? Does it help you to stay mad about a bad call or a mistake that happened in the first quarter? Does it help you to consistently focus on the uncontrollables?
If not, let’s make a shift.
Have you ever gotten to the end of a day and felt physically exhausted because you had been exerting so much energy.
In a similar way, have you ever gotten to the end of the day and felt mentally exhausted? Maybe your mind had been running constantly and you were thinking about a number of things you had no power over.
When you are in the midst of a practice, game, or even preparing for a game, it’s important to focus on the controllables. If there’s no benefit to thinking about the things outside of our control, then why spend ample amounts of time with those thoughts on the forefront of our minds.
This was a simple practice of awareness for you to begin becoming strategic with your mindset. Sometimes awareness is enough to get you started on making huge gains to the mental side of the game. Simply draw awareness to what you can control and what you can’t so that you are able to remain in the present moment and increase the likelihood of performing at your best knowing that your attention is where it needs to be.
If you'd like to learn more about preparing mentally, feel free to schedule a consultation today.
