You know that voice inside your head? The one that reminds you of something negative at the most inopportune moment? We’ve all got it. Those voices are our minds at work. Over the course of our existence, our minds have developed to keep us safe by solving problems. However, while they strive to keep us safe, they don’t always do so honestly. That’s right: our minds sometimes tell us things that aren’t true or helpful in order to solve problems. If you’ve ever been reminded of the last shot you missed while standing at the free-throw line, or the last pass you bombed the moment you were throwing the ball, you’ll surely be aware of the effects it can have on your performance. While it might not make sense that these thoughts would “help” us, our minds are trying to remind us of these old actions in hopes that we might not repeat them. (This goes back to those old survival instincts where repeating the same action twice might result in death.) While we can’t s...

This blog post is Part 4 of a 4-part blog series featuring the work of University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock. Even a small chunk of meditation practice goes a long way, says Sian Beilock, Ph.D., in a recent interview on the website Brain Science Podcast. At the University of Chicago’s Human Performance Lab, psychologist Sian Beilock has found that simple meditation instruction helps people perform better under pressure. In the lab, people underwent a mere 10 minutes of meditation instruction before taking a test. This appeared to make a significant “difference in their score.” Beilock quotes research th...

We bring every past moment to the present moment. This is both good and bad. Thankfully, we carry all of our hard work: Every game we have played and each step of the training and practice. We also take the last mistake we made, such as a swing at a bad pitch or the pass you just dropped. This is why playing in this exact moment is vital. We need to let go of the mistakes while focusing on the positive stuff. Of course, this isn’t an automatic occurrence, this learning how to be here right now. Luckily, we can learn how to play this way. Authors Ken Ravizza and Tom Hanson give us concrete steps to reach this goal in the book Head-Ups Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time. The first step on this path is self-awareness: “being aware of what is happening and then respond to it.” Think of this as a traffic light. When your body is in the green, you are playing in the zone. You are playing well with no need to think. When your body is in the yellow, you are startin...