HOW TO TOUGHEN YOUR MIND
By Dr. Peter Sacco
(a psychologist and freelance writer living in Niagara Falls, Ontario)

The surest bets for improving mental toughness and maintaining it during the course of a game—not to mention an entire season—IS to apply the same basics people use in everyday life.

By following these seven simple suggestions, you are more likely to feel in control of your mindset and the stressful, annoying and frustrating situations you may encounter on the field or court.

Don't blow things out of proportion. Try to always keep things in perspective and don't magnify things into being worse than they are. When things go bad, over a period of time we start to stereotype everything that happens to us as "bad luck" because we are using the same magnifying glass to look at them. Some individuals take infinitesimal situations and blow them into catastrophes. Always ask yourself, "What difference will this make a year from now?"

Avoid all-or-nothing thinking. When we think in terms of extremes, we set ourselves up for failure. If you look at a continuum where there is good on one side and bad on the other, we all want to be good. But as soon as something doesn't turn out the way we want it to, we view the outcome as bad and tend to extrapolate the performance into who we are. In fact, in order to "not be bad," we try too hard to be good and we are bound to make mistakes. Perfectionism makes it hard to be perfect.

You can't please everyone all of the time. If you walk onto the court and plan on keeping everyone happy and have them like you, then you are in for a major shock. If we try to be pleasers, we cater to others and that causes us to deviate from our main goal: to remain objective.

Don't bog yourself down with "uncertainty questions" such as, "Why me?" When things go bad we often seek answers of an absolute nature. Let's face it, not all questions have answers we understand. When we question ourselves, we sometimes analyze ourselves to death, which adds undue stress.

Always mentally rehearse your game. Players and coaches go over mental game plans all the time, and officials should too. It keeps you able, ready and mentally on your toes. Twenty-year NCAA baseball umpire Jim Abraham believes you can't overstate the importance of mental preparation. Before every game, Abraham says he "visualizes techniques and things that are likely to happen during the game."

Shrug off a bad game as an unfortunate incident. Don't be too hard on yourself or treat yourself like a victim of circumstances. Here is a general rule of thumb: If you think it, you will feel it, then you will act it and you will eventually become it. Turn it around for your benefit; if you think like an achiever, you're bound to become one.

Take one game at a time. In fact, take one day at a time. There are always enough worries in current situations, so why spend your energies thinking about tomorrow. The best exercise in mental toughness is to develop moment to moment awareness. And how do you do that? Keep your thoughts focused on the present.

Mental toughness, like the name suggests, is 100 percent mental. And if it's mental, that means you have to think it into existence. Whatever you choose to think and feel is your choice and responsibility. Always remember, you have the right to feel whatever you choose and no one can make you feel otherwise. So why not think powerful thoughts? Do the mental crunches, the emotional arm curls. The choice is yours. Flex your mental muscles.