Seconds tick by on the clock like hours.  It feels like the game is already over.  You’re down – both in score and morale.  So what’s the point?  Why bother?  Why keep playing?  Well, as Yogi Berra once put it, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Thanks Yogi, but we all know how difficult it can be in these moments to maintain optimism and enthusiasm – especially when no one else around us is doing it either.  So what can we do about it? In any given event, our emotions are going to get triggered.  It’s natural to have an immediate knee-jerk (emotional) reaction.  In these situations, we tend to get hooked and caught up in the emotions themselves rather than focusing on what’s happening in the present moment and our stake in the outcome.  However, those who focus more on their personal control within the situation, and hence, their outward reaction and response, tend to outperform those who focus on the neg...

Phil Hansen was going to school to become an artist when he discovered something that he thought would end his career before it even began. He had developed a shake in his hand from using pointillism—a painting technique in which small dots are applied in patterns to form a single image. Because he could no longer create art through his preferred method, he decided to drop art school and art altogether. However, years later he decided to return to art and saw a doctor about his condition. The doctor changed his life with a single question: “Why don’t you just embrace the shake?” Hansen’s TED talk describes his inspiring journey to find his new calling through art: “And I realized, if I ever wanted my creativity back, I had to quit trying so hard to think outside of the box and get back into it.” Athletes can mirror this idea by spending time going back to the beginning and thinking about what aspects of their sport made them fall in love with it in the first place. Mor...

This weekend we look to our neighbors to the east, Wisconsin, as the final men’s golf Major Championship commences. Teeing off at 2:20pm CST today in the PGA Championship include Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked golfers in the world, respectively. There has been a lot of talk about Spieth in 2015 as he has emerged as a top tier golfer and amassed the first two majors in 2015. More talk piled up as he went for his third Major Championship, the Open Championship, back in mid-July. He missed a tie for the lead by just one stroke, which would have led him into a four-hole playoff with the other leaders. Even so, throughout his tournaments following the Masters, Spieth and his caddy, Michael Greller, have used one phrase to keep them going: free rolling. In numerous interviews Spieth has credited this “free rolling” as a way to alleviate stress during the rounds. In early April, Spieth—just 21 at the time—had won his first Major Championship a...