Happy New Year,

If you want to improve your focus in the new year, this newsletter is for you.

My first article explains why you don't need to be confident to do well and achieve your goals. It helps, but isn't necessary. Focus is actually the key.

I elaborate in the second article with what types of focus help (and hurt) skill execution.

Enjoy!

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Confidence vs. Focus

MYTH: You have to feel confident to perform well

TRUTH: You have to focus to perform well

Yes, confidence certainly helps. It is easier to focus on what we are doing when we are confident. But this illustrates how confidence may enhance performance through improved focus and execution.

It is focus that matters most. You can cut out the middle man of confidence.

This is good news because we don’t always have a right to be confident. We will go against better players, against teams ranked higher. We will have to perform well when losing with little time left on the clock.

Emotions do not earn us any points.

The objective nature of sport is simple: whoever scores the most points wins (unless it is golf, then whoever scores the least).

Your sport doesn’t care about what you feel. It cares about what you do.

So if you are in a slump and think you have to work on confidence, I encourage you to work on focus instead. For example, you may feel anxious when thinking, “ugh, I’m afraid to miss the shot. I don’t trust myself.”

Sounds like a confidence issue, right?

Not really. In this case the athlete’s focus is on a feared future, feelings and thoughts, not on making the shot in the moment.

Regardless of what s/he feels, the best response is to refocus on the task. A complete immersion of attention on the sport moment will improve performance. Emotional improvement may not. Especially if your focus is on how good you feel and how awesome you are. In this case you may feel better but you are still distracted from the task at hand! Since your thoughts are not coaching you on what to do, you are still likely to play poorly.

(Have you ever seen an overconfident team come out and play flat and lose to an underdog? Of course you have. I rest my case. It happens a lot).

So have a plan to think on purpose. When you feel insecure, accept that these feelings are part of the game The threat is real. So what are you going to do about it? What actions can you take to get the best result? CHOOSE to focus your attention on what you need to do right now to perform well. Think action thoughts.

Go all in on that kind of focus and watch your performance improve … confidence will then flow as a natural result of your actions.

For more on how to improve both your confidence and focus, check out The Psychology of Performance: How to Be Your Best in Life through The Great Courses at www.thegreatcourses.com/dreddieoconnor

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"What do I focus on?"

It depends.

If you are learning a new skill in practice, then yes. Your attention is best put on the parts of the skill you are looking to drill and improve. That attention to detail helps you make small corrections and approach your best form.

But, this focus on only part of the process will hurt your overall performance if you already have the skill, especially when anxious. Thinking is slower than performing, and when you think about the details of executing a well-learned skill, you disrupt the flow of that execution. When you trust your body to do what it has been trained to do, your performance improves. 

“But what about when I’m scared or nervous and don’t want to make a mistake … shouldn’t I pay attention to technique?”

Yes and no. You certainly to want to pay attention to what you are doing. Thinking action thoughts is great, but be sure they are holistic process goals and not just part of the process.

For example, if a long jumper wants push her non-takeoff knee upward after takeoff, she could think “drive knee.” But that would limit focus to the knee at the expense of the whole movement. A better holistic focus is “height.”

Similarly for the golfer who wants to focus on a short backswing while putting, a part process goal focus could be “short back.” But this conscious control over the stroke will interfere with the more fluid and automatic processing that is based on implicit knowledge. A whole stroke thought like “easy” and focusing on the feel of the stroke will work much better.

The takeaway is this: when under pressure, keep your focus on whole process action thoughts (not on parts of the movement) to encourage smooth, automatic execution of skills.

🥇If you would like to learn more on how to focus under pressure and further develop your mental skills, join me inside Success Stories Membership here: https://dreddieoconnor.com/membership

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Dr. Eddie O’Connor

www.DrEddieOConnor.com

DrEddie@dreddieoconnor.com