The Mental Battle — Coming From An Athlete

There’s a time and place for everything.

Jackson
ILLUMINATION
3 min readAug 3, 2024

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Photo by Sydney Rae on Unsplash

Being in the right mental space is crucial for many areas of life. Whether studying for an exam or needing to score that game-winning shot, you need to learn to win the mental battle and get out of your head.

I’ve had experiences with both examples where I had to be in the right mental space to succeed.

When it comes to school, you need to win the mental battle so you don’t psych yourself out and fail an exam or lose focus during class and not understand the lesson.

There have been times when I was so worried about an exam that I studied until the last minute, only to forget almost everything when it was time for the test. Just because I psych myself out.

I’ve always wondered if I don’t get in my head, would I do better in life?

The answer is yes, at least for me.

School is tough and is even tougher when you let your mind get in the way of your studies.

As I get older, I learn to control my mind and not psych myself on exam day. But it’s still extremely hard not to let my mind wander.

I think about everything that would happen if I didn’t pass this exam.

I’ll use my Regents exams as an example —

If I fail, my GPA will go down and I won’t get into the college I want to.

If I fail, I’ll have to retake this test in the summer.

If I fail then I really have to do good in baseball or I’m screwed come college applications.

The things I say to myself during the exam are why I can’t reach my academic potential. It’s a terrible feeling knowing that if I get out of my head, which I can’t seem to do, I’d probably be more successful.

Baseball is a similar story.

I treat baseball like something I need to do well in rather than something I should just have fun with.

I NEED to do good so I can get scholarship money for college.

I NEED to do good so I can play baseball in college.

I NEED to do good or all this training was for nothing.

Thinking about the future clouds my head and gets me out of my rhythm to the point where I do terribly in my game.

It’s a continuous cycle.

If there’s anything I’ve learned these past couple of months while trying to dig deeper into this, it’s that focusing on the future, while very important, is not something you need to think about constantly.

Thinking about colleges and your future is very important, but not during big tests and when I’m playing sports. There’s a time and place for everything.

Living in the future is what has caused me to fail at things I shouldn’t be failing at. I’ve used my failures as motivation. I don’t want to repeat the mistakes I’ve made, and you shouldn’t want to repeat the mistakes you’ve made either.

As I get a little older, I learn that everything in life is a mental battle. Some figure out early on, and some figure out too late and never recover. What will you do?

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