Mental Skills of Athletes: Decisive, Committed, Clear
How decisive, committed and clear you are when facing any number of situations in life, directly affects how well you perform in those situations. This is also true of your sport performance as well. What you think, perceive, and ultimately believe, all impact how clear you are about what you want to do, how decisive (or indecisive) you are in taking action, and then how committed you will be to that decision. If you are weak in these mental skills, you will struggle not only in your sport performance, but in all areas of your life.
I am offering you some insight that will help you improve these areas, by focusing on a self suggestion from my products. The suggestion is: “I am decisive, committed and clear on every shot in practice and in each round of golf.” However, if it is another sport you practice, like clay shooting, basketball, or even swimming, this suggestion will still work for you. Change up the words to fit your sport.
How often are you decisive versus indecisive? You have opportunities to make decisions all the time in your relationships, at work on projects and in meetings, on the golf course or when playing any other sport. How often do you doubt your opinion, or doubt where you are coming from and where you would like to see things going? Do you trust your insight, your judgment, your knowledge and skill? Or do you question it when someone else has a different opinion? If someone chooses a different club when they tee off from what you were going to use, do you turn to friends, caddies or others, to help you make your decision or confirm what you might be thinking? Or does your doubt or indecisiveness cause you to then change your mind to what is being offered to you?
In order to be decisive, you must trust yourself and recognize the knowledge and skill sets you have, and the hard work you have done up to this point. Commit to that decision. Be decisive rather than indecisive, and then commit. Once you have made a decision, then you can commit to your plan of action or the club (insert your sporting equipment here) you will use. You can commit to tournaments, events, business decisions and relationship decisions without hesitation. But you cannot easily make decisions or commit to them, without first being clear and having clarity.
Clarity, or being clear, comes from knowing who you are. Reflect upon your past experiences. See progress you have made, know what clubs go what distances for you, what you are able to perform and what you are capable of doing with different clubs. All that knowledge base is built up over time, and helps you to be clear on who you are and what you are able to do. It helps you see how you perform a particular skill or set of skills, and how you like to take action. Having that clarity helps you be decisive and committed, where you can then take your shot or perform in whatever situation you are in.
My suggestion also includes “in practice” as well, because it comes up all the time where people say they do not perform as well in their sport as they do when they practice. So take this mental skill of being decisive, committed, and clear to your shots into your practice round. Practice it at the driving range, or wherever you practice your sport. It is another skill set you can practice in addition to practicing your swing, your aim or whatever skill you are working on.
The more you practice being decisive, committed and clear with repetition, the more you will trust yourself and increase your clarity, your decisiveness and your commitment. It is just like how you repeat your swing over and over. Be aware of the skills and work on them with your conscious mind. Eventually you will be able to apply them very easily and naturally. It will then be a natural progression for you to just have those skills during an event.
So these are mental skills that you can practice on a regular basis. If you do, then you won’t have to hope you might be that way during an event. That still doesn’t guarantee you will perform the same in an event as you do when you practice, because there are lots of attitudes and mindsets, perceptions fears and doubts that come in and change how you are able to perform at any given moment. A lot of mental skills come into play when you go out to perform, so being able to practice them is extremely important and vital to being able to pull them off and out during an event.
And remember that these are life skills too, that you can practice during every waking moment. Become mindful of these particular mental skills and practice them in everything you do. When you are at work, at home, in relationships, making business decisions; all this week, pay attention to what you have learned, who you are and where you stand, so you can be decisive, committed and clear. Then you can take your action and perform with confidence – on or off the course.
I wish you well as you get working on these mental skills, and I am here for you if you need any help. This is another huge area that you can perfect if you become mindful and diligent about it. I bet you will be successful this week at noticing when you are indecisive, not committed and lack clarity, and how ineffective that is in your performance in golf and all areas of your life. Hopefully that helps inspire you toward a strong desire to be decisive, committed and clear. You can do it! Thanks for reading. InJoy your day!
