Mind Gym
By Gary Mack
- “Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical.” — Yogi Berra
- Once you reach a certain level of competency, your mental level is just as important as your physical.
- Building mental strength is just as important as building physical strength. If you work on the inside, it will be seen on the outside.
- By changing your thinking, you change your performance.
- Learn to use your mind or your mind will use you.
- You need a mind gym, a place where you can retreat and mentally prepare for what you’re about to do.
- Confidence comes from being both mentally and physically prepared.
- Why is it that pressure makes some people better and causes others to fail? Mental preparation is the difference.
- It requires mental toughness in order to win.
- Good players have a can-do attitude.
- Competition is won or lost on a 6-inch playing field; it’s between the ears.
- You have the power to push yourself forward or hold yourself back.
- You can’t control the other players or the crowd, but you can control yourself.
- Many people get in the way of themselves with fear, doubt, and condescension towards themselves.
- You are not playing an opponent, you are playing against yourself.
- Motivation is not something you can buy or others can give you, it comes from within; you have to give it to yourself.
- You can turn your shortcomings into strengths if you will be honest with yourself — recognize and work on any weak areas.
- Contrary to normal people, extraordinary people live their lives backwards; they create their dream and then live it out.
- Fear of failure can cripple a player. When you’re not afraid to fail, you’ll likely succeed.
- You can choose to listen to the negative critic or positive coach in your head. You can turn that negative critic into a positive coach.
- Learn to control your emotions or they will control you.
- When you let anger get the best of you, it brings out the worst in you.
- A player who cannot control his temper on the court will not become a good player.
- The best athletes are masters of their anger, not servants to it.
- Fear limits your life.
- Fretting about the shot you just missed will likely get you another one just like it.
- Sometimes going faster will make you only go slower. You need to be like the best players, call a time out and reevaluate before you go back in.
- Pace instead of race.
- Over-prepare so you don’t under-perform.
- No one can take away from you your self-esteem.
- MVP’s see stumbling blocks as steppingstones.
- What lies ahead of us should not be a big concern, but what lies within us should be.
- When times are good, be grateful. When times are bad, be graceful.
- While positive thinking might not always work, negative thinking always works.