The following post is an excerpt from Emotional Aptitude In Sports NOW available through most on-line retailers! Click Here to Order
Five Solutions to Foster Emotional Strength:
Apply Positive Visualization
Winners use positive visualization by imagining themselves executing their best patterns and plays without hesitation. Less successful athletes are overcome with negative visualization, which of course overwhelms their thought processes with visions of failure.
Train Under Game Day Stress
Athletes need to train much more than just their physical techniques and athleticism in practice. They have to get comfortable… being uncomfortable.
Rehearse Tolerance
Overcome hardships and pain in practice. Simulating stress in practice provides you with the opportunity to conquer your emotional demons. By doing so, reoccurring game day negative thoughts are replaced by positive thoughts such as: “I’ve done this before, I’ve conquered this several times and I know I can overcome this again because I have done it often.”
Learn to Compartmentalize Emotions
Great athletes stay in their optimal performance frame of mind during discomfort by staying on script (pre-set protocol). This entails choosing to mentally focus on the job at hand by overriding the emotional contaminants, thus not letting emotions control the show.
Stop Feeding Negative Emotions
Flip constantly feeding the problems, worries and fears with customized protocols which feed optimism, courage, resiliency and fortitude. Athletes should have pre-set triggers (words and actions) that help them focus on positive plays and patterns.
