April 29, 2025:There are two parts to mental skills work. Part one is mental wellness and that refers to how you feel about yourself as a person, and a player. The second part is mental performance, which means being intentional with your self-talk on the field to help you execute, defend better, score more goals, etc.
Mental skills is both of these things, together. But the mental wellness piece is ALWAYS the one that takes priority, because until that piece is online, the mental performance piece won’t work.
It’s important to understand this and how they overlap, because if you just throw tools & strategies at players, but they are internally being their own worst critic and think poorly of themselves, the tools & strategies will not work.
You have to figure out the mental wellness piece first before tackling mental performance. But once you get there, man is it fun to explore this space!
Here’s a small snippet of just one of dozens of mental performance nuggets that players learn inside of the Mindset Mastery Academy, nuggets that have them playing better soccer immediately upon switching their thoughts…
Mental performance tool: Flip the DON’TS and the STOPS
On the soccer field, your BODY is going to FOLLOW the most dominant (the LOUDEST) thought in your mind. Your body hears everything your mind says; whatever the MAIN thought in your head, good or bad, your body will move to do THAT.
Example: when you are on a tall building sightseeing, or hiking up a mountain or something, what happens when someone says “don’t look down”? What do people always do? They look down.
Why is it that people always look down? Whether you say DON’T look down or LOOK down – they still look, right?! The ‘don’t’ doesn’t matter. They look because someone said something that MADE THIS THE DOMINANT THOUGHT at the moment. And your body follows the most dominant thought in your mind, so your body will literally TURN and look, guaranteed!
Let’s think of a soccer example: have you ever told yourself DON’T do something, or STOP doing something?
Examples:
- don’t worry about it
- don’t think about the mistake
- don’t miss the goal
- don’t dive in
- don’t mess up
- don’t give the ball away
Does that work for you to say that?
If your body follows the most dominant thought in your mind, and these “don’ts” are the dominant thoughts, what is your body going to do? (hint: the DON’T on the front doesn’t even matter to your brain)
Whether you’re thinking about doing it or thinking about NOT doing it, you ARE STILL THINKING ABOUT IT - and it is still the most DOMINANT thought.
It’s ironic, but conscious efforts to suppress an action make it more likely to actually happen, again because your BODY is going to FOLLOW whatever you are thinking about.
Your job as an inner coach is to make sure that the most dominant thought in your mind IS HELPFUL so that this works in your favor, not against you.
Instead of what NOT to do, we want to replace it with what TO DO. An instruction about what to do. INSTRUCTIONAL SELF-TALK.
Example: instead of “don’t give the ball away”, we could say “turn your body! protect the ball!”.
Why is this actually more effective at helping you keep the ball, than saying “don’t give the ball away”?
Because it puts the RIGHT dominant thought in your mind 🏆 🙌 🧠
You want to FLIP IT to an instruction about what TO DO. Consciously switching your thoughts from a “don’t” thought to an instructional thought gives you a HIGHER CHANCE of making the thing happen.
It works SO MUCH better when you tell yourself what TO do, than what not to do.
And this folks, is what mental performance is: purposefully filling your head with intentional thoughts that literally help you play better 🔥 ⚽️
Till next Tuesday,
Grow your confidence through preparedness.
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Hi everyone! I’m Jenn and I create content to help female soccer players and coaches maximize individual and team potential by developing healthy mindset skills. Join other subscribers and sign up for the newsletter for all my best tips and advice!
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