The Mental Game

You hear people talk about being "mentally present" all of the time. Being an athlete I have heard this term way too many times in the passed fourteen years. It started when I was young listening to my dad screaming at me to focus, then I got a little older and my teachers and coaches would ask me "where is your head at today"? Now I am to the point in my life where I have to tell myself to be mentally strong. There has been many times in my life where my physical performance has faultered due to the fact that my mind is not in the same place that I am. My coach at the moment likes to tell us that "our minds and [butts] need to be in the same place" wherever I am physically needs to be what my mind is focused on. When I hear the term "Mental Game" I invision a competition of the mind. To me competition always has two opposing forces, even when you are competing with yourself you are still competing against two parts of you. Mental games can be between two physical forces or against the two forces of yourself that you create. So my mental game is always against myself. I do occasionally like to have a battle of whit between a deserving foe, but a true mental game is a battle against myself. My opposing forces are my body and my mind. Being a long time athlete I understand that your body shuts down faster when you begin to doubt yourself. So it is vitally important that I strengthen my mind for whatever I choose to do, almost like training for a game. I do this so that when my body becomes tired I can "trick" my body into having a little extra than it has had before. This is the case for more than just sports, it is the case with school work as well. When I am studying for hours on end because I have procrastinated my way into a midnight cram session of fifty pages of reading, I am able to stay focused if my mind is trained to do so. When it comes to my "Mental Game" I train my mind so that it is able to win the competition with my body. My Mental Game is a constant battle to focus on whatever my task at hand is, so that I may become better in all aspects of life that I am performing.