Mindfulness: A Performance Skill
With busy schedules and daily life stressors, being in the moment can be hard for anyone. It can especially be hard for athletes, who prioritize intense training, nutrition, and competition and practice schedules on top of busy lives. While it’s easy to be caught in the past or future, athletic success and overall well-being comes from a present-moment focus.
Mindfulness is a state of being fully engaged and connected with the present moment.
Past, Present, and Future Thinking
While our minds can exist in past, present, and future thinking, we only have control over the present moment. We can think abstractly and take the past and future into consideration; however, can only exist in the present. For instance, athletes can learn from their past and reflect on their best performances, helping them to get an idea of what helps them compete at their highest level. And, by taking into consideration the future, athletes can conceptualize what they want to achieve and the action steps they will take to get there.
While this can be helpful, athletes only have control over the present moment. Too much fixation on the past can negatively affect present-moment mood and emotions. Similarly, too much fixation on the future can create an overwhelming amount of “what-ifs,” creating anxiety. By staying in the moment, athletes can begin to transform their “what-ifs” into “what-is.”
How to Bring the Mind to the Present:
Focused attention: Encourage athletes to concentrate on a sensation, such as their breathing, thought, or single object. This can bring their attention away from a stressful stimulus and back to the present moment. Focused attention can improve an athlete’s ability to maintain focus under pressure and handle distractions.
Awareness: Bringing awareness to what the athlete can see, feel, hear, smell, and taste in the present moment can be a powerful tool. Awareness of their current environment, mind, and body can help improve an athlete’s understanding of their emotional and physical state and adjust as needed.
Non-judgmental acceptance: Athletes must let go of the value they assign to their thoughts and emotions, such as labeling them as “good” or “bad.” By replacing these labels with facts and feelings, athletes can be better equipped to manage their fear of failure, setbacks, or performance-debilitating emotions.
Perfectionism
Many athletes and high performers develop perfectionistic tendencies, making it hard to forgive perceived mistakes or imperfections. However, mindfulness is incongruent with perfection. Perfectionism forces athletes to analyze and focus too heavily on the past or future, taking their focus away from the present moment. Again, these are two timeframes that the athlete has no control over in the present moment.
Perfectionism can also cause athletes to “play it safe” in fear of making mistakes. This can lead to underperformance since the athlete is more focused on avoiding mistakes than performing to the best of their ability. Perfectionism also relates to the concept of “paralysis by analysis,” which involves athletes overthinking and doubting their abilities. Instead of perfection, athletes should work to achieve excellence, which focuses on willingness to take risks and an athlete’s work ethic.
Physical relaxation: Athletes can utilize cue-controlled relaxation and rapid relaxation to manage muscle tension and regulate stress when perfectionistic thoughts and tendencies arise. This can also help moderate some of the distress an athlete feels when they believe they are not competing to the best of their ability.
Imagery: Athletes can develop their imagery skills and best performance imagery to include a more holistic view of their performances. Imagery can improve regulation of emotions, attentional focus, and confidence by developing an athlete’s ability to create, re-create, and control internal experiences.
Self-talk: Athletes can use positive self-talk to re-frame situations and to replace performance-debilitating self-talk with more positive messages and mantras. This reduces self-critical elements of their performance evaluations.
Acceptance
Acceptance can be defined as coming to terms with factors that you cannot control. By learning to separate emotions from uncontrollable aspects of performance, athletes can improve their emotional regulation and more positively react to elements outside of their control. For instance, athletes cannot control a “bad call,” but they can control how they react to one. This will help an athlete focus solely on their game and the controllable aspects of their performance.
How to Practice Acceptance in Sport:
Valued action: Athletes should identify their values to establish a personal commitment to behaviors that align with these values. These behaviors are within the athlete’s control. By focusing on valued action, an athlete’s struggle or need to change uncontrollable thoughts, emotions, and sensations will decrease.
Self-awareness: By becoming non-judgmentally aware of one’s internal state and emotions, athletes can improve their ability to allow undesirable or uncontrollable thoughts and feelings to come and go without letting them ruin their performance.
Comparison
Many athletes often find themselves comparing themselves to others, often teammates or other competitors. However, comparison can lead to negative self-talk and promote doubt. This takes the athlete’s mind off what they can control and, instead, makes them focus on what they cannot control. By comparing themselves to others, athletes give other people control over their well-being and confidence. Instead, athletes should recognize their own control over their thoughts, feelings, and action.
At Athlete Insight, we offer individual counseling to help athletes navigate mindful action and acceptance. We help athletes replace judgment and comparison with facts and feelings. We focus on excellence, instead of perfectionism. We challenge athletes to replace comparisons with controllable, value-driven action.
With the right support, athletes can achieve mindfulness and acceptance in and out of their sport.