1 Dealing with adversity
Baseball is a game of failure, and the top players are comfortable with adversity. They don’t base their self confidence on the results during the game. They aren’t attached to outcomes.
2 Body language
The best athletes walk a certain way. Their body language displays a confidence, an expectancy, a presence, on and off the field.
From the field of psychology we know that nonverbal communication trumps over verbal. This means how you walk, facial expressions, how you look at opponents (i.e. the eye of the tiger), how you carry yourself and your body when things aren’t going well, tells more than what you say.
Body language not only communicates to others (teammates, opponents, scouts, coaches, etc), but it’s also self-talk (see #19), meaning it communicates to yourself how you feel about yourself. An easy example is to try to feel really happy and excited when slumped over and frowning, or really sad when you’re smiling broadly; tough to do.
3 Breathing
(during competition and in visualization)
Breathing has a huge role in athletics, not just baseball. Breathing affects many things including heart rate, blood pressure, light-headedness, nervousness, and focus.
The best athletes get oxygen circulating well throughout their body, and they control their breathing during chaotic points in the game.
4 Ability to get in the zone
There is a place, mentally, where each player performs their best, often called the zone.
When a player is in the zone, he is completely in the moment, not thinking about the past or future, not really thinking anything, just focusing on the task at hand and enjoying that task, the competition, the challenge.
Time slows down, the ball looks big (to a hitter), actions are easy and smooth, and there is an intensity and focus that is hard to describe.
5 Concentration
The ability to concentrate comes largely from the ability to get into the zone. They are intertwined: concentration is an ability to block out distractions, including your own thoughts, and focus on the actions needed; concentrating is a part of being in the zone.
6 Staying in the moment
The greatest athletes play their best when they have a moment-to-moment focus. Nothing else enters their mind or garners their attention.
7 Quieting the mind
The mind, being like a spoiled child, wants to think whatever it wants to. It can start to chatter with what we call the monkey mind, continually spewing forth distracting thoughts, negative thoughts, whatever.
Those who excel know how to control their mind this way.
8 Keeping internal focus
Having an internal focus is the ability to concentrate on the task and not on the result or outcome. Our culture is so results-oriented, largely caused by the media, and great athletes know how to block that out, and focus on tasks they can do, (i.e. running hard to first base), rather than whether they were called out or safe.
9 Hyper-focus
Hyper-focus is a term I use to describe an ability to block out incredible distractions and chaos while performing nearly perfect (dialed in). When it’s the 7th game of the World Series and the game is on the line, the crowd is going wild, how well do you tune in and use that energy around you to your advantage.
10 Controlling the mind
As mentioned in #7, an undisciplined mind will think whatever it wants;like a little kid, it has to be trained to focus solely on the goal desired. Themore focus, the more powerful. It takes practice like any other aspect ofsports. Focused thoughts are powerful, weak and scattered thoughts areweak and scattered.
11 Confidence
Confidence comes easier to some than others, but it can be developed. Learning to control what you can control is one way; a feeling of being out of control is hand in hand with lack of confidence.
Another way is to set small, process-oriented goals that you can build on.
12 Process Oriented
(Setting process-oriented goals as well as outcome oriented.)
Process oriented goals are goals that seek to accomplish things that you can control, things that are part of the overall process of achieving your big goal of becoming a major league player or whatever. (i.e. setting a goal to take 100 extra ground balls a day)
Outcome oriented goals are the typical goals such as hitting .350, winning ten games as a pitcher, making the team, etc.
Process oriented goals are even more important than outcome, because process goals make it happen, whereas outcome goals are often out of one’s control.
13 Courage
Courage is facing your fears and doing it anyway. It’s not an absence of fear or nervousness, it’s having those feelings and still charging ahead.
14 Making fear your ally
Fear is a powerful thing, and causes untold numbers of athletes to fail. Fear is like fire, uncontrolled it will burn you and can cause you to lose everything, but controlled, it can provide energy and power to propel you.
Fear is powered by one of the most powerful forces on earth, the imagination. The best players have used their imagination their entire lives to their advantage.
15 Self-coaching
Success in baseball as well as athletics in general is about making adjustments, reacting to an uncontrolled and often hostile environment and doing what is necessary to keep yourself poised, and change what’s not working.
16 Eliminating negativity
Part of being in the zone is controlling that voice, that part of your mind that says “hey, you struck out last at-bat, or "this guy took you deep last time." Those thoughts are there even with the greatest athletes, but they know how to control those thoughts.
17 Poise
Poise is playing up to your ability in situations that are chaotic and/or pressure-packed. Players that lose their poise, that aren’t the same player in those situations have not learned how to control their thoughts, or programmed their mind well.
18 Excelling in pressure situations
There are many factors to why a player does or doesn’t perform well inpressure situations, but the main one is that those who do not perform well are not in the zone, and those who do are.
19 Trying too hard vs. achieving flow
Baseball is a game filled with failure, and those who succeed work very, very hard. But like running, success comes from being smooth, controlled, and in the zone. When you press, or get anxious, slumps begin.
20 Having faith
Faith is the ability to stay with the program even though results are not what you desired at the moment; it’s knowing that there is land out there even though all you can see is the ocean; it’s knowing you’ve worked as hard as you possibly can, and that it will all pay off if you stay the course.
21 Self-talk
24 hours a day, 7 days a week your mind is going, talking to you. What you say to yourself, determines what you focus on, and what you move toward. The greatest have a distinct manner in which they (largely subconsciously) talk to themselves.
22 Visualization
night before, during day, pre-game, during game
You cannot outperform your self-image. Self-image comes from thoughts that you think, and dwell on, and pictures that you focus on. When you program the thoughts and pictures to be of the goal you want, and you do it vividly, repeatedly, you will move towards those things.
23 Emotional control
There are many things that happen in baseball, and in life, that are very disappointing. The best players may or may not be very emotional, but they know how to control their emotions so their emotions don’t control them.
24 Studying the game
To be successful in this game takes a lot hard work and some cognitive ability. Hitters need to study pitchers and pitchers need to study hitters as well as the act of hitting and pitching.
25 Acting as if
Champions are always born in the mind of the individual, then it happens physically on the field. It can’t happen unless it is first seen in the mind.
26 Enjoying the game with the game on the line
Enjoying the game in these situations means you have freed yourself from being attached to the outcome; you’re completely in the moment, and you’re playing for the love of the game at that time right there, nothing else.
27 Visualizing every possible scenario
Like an Olympic skier visualizing the bumps around every turn before she hits them, baseball players play their best when they’ve recently seen the play that just happened in their mind’s eye first.
28 Using affirmations
Great players are continually affirming to themselves their greatness (usually done with self-talk). It often becomes a fine line between cockiness and confidence, but that is what the greatest have.
29 Have routines
Having routines in pre-game, the night before, and during the game gets them into a rhythm, into the zone. And when the game speeds up, routines help slow the game down.
30 Take responsibility
Don’t blame teammates, the weather, injuries, umpires, etc. You control your destiny.
Source: http://www.webball.com/cms/page5328.cfm
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