Nobody comes to the field everyday with 100%. You’ll show up feeling sore, tired, mentally exhausted, all of which are just the reality of the situation. Those feelings are not going to go away, but the moment you start listening to yourself you fall into trouble.
When you listen to yourself, you listen to how you feel or the negative thoughts that go through your head. Your brain’s purpose is to protect your body from reaching the point of failure, meaning that your mind wants to give up well before your body. To do that, your mind will tell you whatever it can to make you want to shut down. This should sound familiar to all of us, thinking back to situations where we’ve had to really push ourselves physically. If you’re getting near 100 pitches of a tough outing, on the back end of a summer double header, or maybe in the weight room during a hard workout, thoughts like, “I’m too tired,” “I’ve lost all feel for my mechanics,” “there’s no way I’m going to hit this pitcher,” “there’s no way I can get one more,” or “this is too hard” can creep into your head.
These are all negative thoughts that you hear when you listen to your body. Now, the moral to this story is not “just don’t listen to those negative thoughts.” The truth is that everybody has those bad, negative thoughts. Every athlete deals with them and you’ve probably dealt with thoughts like this playing other sports. You won’t be able to stop them because they are a part of the natural thought process. Like I said earlier, your mind is doing it to protect you.
Instead of trying to ignore them, our goal should be to acknowledge them. Be aware when you are having those thoughts and tell yourself that you don’t want to listen to them. Imagine if those thoughts in your head were another person, constantly telling you all of the negatives right to your face. Would you want that person around you? If they were telling you you can’t handle the pressure, you can’t execute that pitch, you can’t make that play…you would want to punch them in the face.
So why would we want to let those thoughts and feelings take over our mind? We don’t. After acknowledging them, we want to make sure we switch our mind from listening to talking. Too often we get caught listening to how we feel, listening to what already happened, or listening to that negative voice in our head trying to hold us back. In those moments, try talking to yourself.
Switch your mind’s focus to the present with productive thoughts, focusing on your cues, positive affirmations, and things that you can control. Talk to yourself with such conviction that you truly believe what you are saying. Tell yourself that you are the best until you believe that you are the best! Tell yourself you can execute that pitch, you can field the next ground ball, you can hit this pitcher, even if you have missed the last 10 pitches or ground balls.
Talk to yourself in whatever intensity you need to give yourself the energy to execute the task at hand. For some, it might be soft and relaxing. For others, it might be intense with a ton of expletives. Those intensities might change depending on the situation and the moment. It’s important for us to understand what we need to execute the very next task at hand, one pitch or play at a time.
Everybody’s subconscious mind, when they listen to it, will have negative thoughts. Your job is to differentiate the listening from the reality of the situation. The reality is that your present mindset is completely in your control. When you can flip the switch from listening to the negatives and talk to yourself about the great potential of the opportunities ahead, you’ll truly be able to maximize your skills.
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