Take a moment. Examine your career. Look back over the past couple of years and tell me: who has been the biggest critic? Who has been the toughest on you to become better? Who, when evaluating your skills, rates you the lowest? If you are like me, it's yourself. If you are playing at a high level, you have learned how to self-evaluate. If we want to be successful athletes, it is critical to use our self-evaluations to empower us, instead of break us down.
Let's take a look at some stats from my senior year in college at MTSU.
How many of you would say that this was a pretty successful start? I pitched into the 9th and only gave up 3 runs (2 earned). Looking back, it was a pretty solid start; I did my job by giving our team a chance to win. We ended up losing in extra innings and after the game I nitpicked my performance. I could have done this...I should have thrown this...If I would have made this pitch...I was picking apart every negative thing I did rather than focusing on the positives. I went to bed that night feeling like I had pitched 3 innings and given up 10 runs; I was completely down on myself. The next day I was walking around with my head down and feeling like I was the sole reason we lost. All week I was trying to become better than the start before, which was highly unlikely since it would have had to have been a CG with one run or less. I was striving to be perfect, and because of that, it only made me worse. The truth is, we are humans, and we aren't perfect. The key is to embrace our failures and turn them into positives or else we will continue to fail. I had to learn this the hard way.
Don't get me wrong. We need to be able to evaluate what we did both good and bad, BUT we must be able to put the game behind us, focus on the positives and work to fix the negatives. You can't get stuck only thinking about what you should have done better.
This was my start the very next week. I think we can all agree that the negativity took over and that resulted in a terrible start. Some people may say that I got hit around because I was leaving the ball up in the zone, or not throwing quality strikes, or anything else they may have seen visually. But NONE of these things were the true cause of my bad performance. Yes, obviously I left the ball up in the zone and wasn't throwing quality strikes (I gave up 15 hits and 10 runs- it doesn't take a baseball genius to figure that out), but these weren't the reasons I got shelled. The reality of my bad performance was that I had criticized my start from the week before, and didn't take away any positives to build on.
When you continually tell yourself that you aren't good enough, that you need to pitch better, or that you just sucked it up last game, guess what you start believing? That you aren't good enough, you aren't a good pitcher, and you just plain suck. But it doesn't stop there. Once you believe you are those things, guess what you become? ...A really bad pitcher.
I bet you are wondering how my next start went, right? I mean after a good start I couldn't take anything positive out of it, there's no way I could find something good to take out this one right? Exactly right! I was back in my depressed, negative rut that I was in the week before. I was thinking the same things all over again like a broken record: "I could have done this...I should have thrown this...If I would have made this pitch..." By now you can probably guess what the line looked like, but I'll give it to you anyway.
There it is. Less than 6 innings pitched, 8 runs, and another L for the team. I won't keep going through the rest of the season because I think you get the idea.
1. Know the true power of your mind.
Your mind is a powerful tool. If you continuously tell yourself that you aren't good enough, you better believe, that's what you soon will become. Why don't you start using your mind to focus on positives? If you can trick your mind into believing you aren't any good, why not trick yourself into believing that you are GREAT.
2. Believe in yourself.
You know what I do when I have a few bad outings in a row? I go back and look at box scores and game recaps of outings where I was pitching well. I find my best games and go through them again, not just reading them but playing them out in my head mentally. I go through what I can remember of that game and recall the hitters I faced, and the results that I achieved. After about 10 minutes of going through old games I feel like I could face the top lineup in the world and get them out. What have I just obtained? CONFIDENCE. No one can play the game without confidence. You will get beat day in and day out until you can't handle it anymore and hit rock bottom. Your confidence needs to be produced mentally before it can be shown on the field. I'll be completely transparent in telling you that even after writing this blog, I feel down on myself because I was forced to re-live those terrible starts. Do not let this happen to you; believe in yourself.
3. Become a good self-evaluator.
You have to learn how to evaluate yourself realistically. This means don't evaluate yourself as the best pitcher on the team after giving up 3 laser shots to the wall for a 1, 2, 3 inning. It also means don't beat yourself up because you gave up a wind-blown 295 ft. home run. After you are out of the game, take a look back at your outing. Give yourself a true evaluation and continue to work to get better in a positive manner.
4. Surround yourself with TRUE teammates.
You need to have teammates around you that will "give it to you straight". I have many teammates who I can go to after an outing and know that they wont feed me crap just because they think that's what I want to hear. If they saw something I was doing bad they will tell me, but right after that they will feed me a positive aspect of the outing too to keep me right. I don't want teammates who are always breaking me down or always building me up. I want ones that do both. I want to surround myself with people who truly want to help me become better. This is what a real teammate does. You should search for them and become one yourself.
5. A new day means a new opportunity.
My final piece of advice is that regardless of whether you throw a complete game shutout or didn't get out of the first inning of your start, enjoy it (or hate it) for the rest of the day/night and then forget about it. Don't come to the field the next day depressed because of your outing the night before. If you dwell on it, you will continue to produce bad results because you can never let go (learn from my mistakes). When tomorrow comes, forget about yesterday. Embrace the new opportunity to get better and show how good you really are!
Let's take a look at some stats from my senior year in college at MTSU.
How many of you would say that this was a pretty successful start? I pitched into the 9th and only gave up 3 runs (2 earned). Looking back, it was a pretty solid start; I did my job by giving our team a chance to win. We ended up losing in extra innings and after the game I nitpicked my performance. I could have done this...I should have thrown this...If I would have made this pitch...I was picking apart every negative thing I did rather than focusing on the positives. I went to bed that night feeling like I had pitched 3 innings and given up 10 runs; I was completely down on myself. The next day I was walking around with my head down and feeling like I was the sole reason we lost. All week I was trying to become better than the start before, which was highly unlikely since it would have had to have been a CG with one run or less. I was striving to be perfect, and because of that, it only made me worse. The truth is, we are humans, and we aren't perfect. The key is to embrace our failures and turn them into positives or else we will continue to fail. I had to learn this the hard way.
Don't get me wrong. We need to be able to evaluate what we did both good and bad, BUT we must be able to put the game behind us, focus on the positives and work to fix the negatives. You can't get stuck only thinking about what you should have done better.
This was my start the very next week. I think we can all agree that the negativity took over and that resulted in a terrible start. Some people may say that I got hit around because I was leaving the ball up in the zone, or not throwing quality strikes, or anything else they may have seen visually. But NONE of these things were the true cause of my bad performance. Yes, obviously I left the ball up in the zone and wasn't throwing quality strikes (I gave up 15 hits and 10 runs- it doesn't take a baseball genius to figure that out), but these weren't the reasons I got shelled. The reality of my bad performance was that I had criticized my start from the week before, and didn't take away any positives to build on.
When you continually tell yourself that you aren't good enough, that you need to pitch better, or that you just sucked it up last game, guess what you start believing? That you aren't good enough, you aren't a good pitcher, and you just plain suck. But it doesn't stop there. Once you believe you are those things, guess what you become? ...A really bad pitcher.
I bet you are wondering how my next start went, right? I mean after a good start I couldn't take anything positive out of it, there's no way I could find something good to take out this one right? Exactly right! I was back in my depressed, negative rut that I was in the week before. I was thinking the same things all over again like a broken record: "I could have done this...I should have thrown this...If I would have made this pitch..." By now you can probably guess what the line looked like, but I'll give it to you anyway.
So, now you are asking: How can I fix this or avoid this from happening?
Well, here are some tips and advice:1. Know the true power of your mind.
Your mind is a powerful tool. If you continuously tell yourself that you aren't good enough, you better believe, that's what you soon will become. Why don't you start using your mind to focus on positives? If you can trick your mind into believing you aren't any good, why not trick yourself into believing that you are GREAT.
2. Believe in yourself.
You know what I do when I have a few bad outings in a row? I go back and look at box scores and game recaps of outings where I was pitching well. I find my best games and go through them again, not just reading them but playing them out in my head mentally. I go through what I can remember of that game and recall the hitters I faced, and the results that I achieved. After about 10 minutes of going through old games I feel like I could face the top lineup in the world and get them out. What have I just obtained? CONFIDENCE. No one can play the game without confidence. You will get beat day in and day out until you can't handle it anymore and hit rock bottom. Your confidence needs to be produced mentally before it can be shown on the field. I'll be completely transparent in telling you that even after writing this blog, I feel down on myself because I was forced to re-live those terrible starts. Do not let this happen to you; believe in yourself.
3. Become a good self-evaluator.
You have to learn how to evaluate yourself realistically. This means don't evaluate yourself as the best pitcher on the team after giving up 3 laser shots to the wall for a 1, 2, 3 inning. It also means don't beat yourself up because you gave up a wind-blown 295 ft. home run. After you are out of the game, take a look back at your outing. Give yourself a true evaluation and continue to work to get better in a positive manner.
4. Surround yourself with TRUE teammates.
You need to have teammates around you that will "give it to you straight". I have many teammates who I can go to after an outing and know that they wont feed me crap just because they think that's what I want to hear. If they saw something I was doing bad they will tell me, but right after that they will feed me a positive aspect of the outing too to keep me right. I don't want teammates who are always breaking me down or always building me up. I want ones that do both. I want to surround myself with people who truly want to help me become better. This is what a real teammate does. You should search for them and become one yourself.
5. A new day means a new opportunity.
My final piece of advice is that regardless of whether you throw a complete game shutout or didn't get out of the first inning of your start, enjoy it (or hate it) for the rest of the day/night and then forget about it. Don't come to the field the next day depressed because of your outing the night before. If you dwell on it, you will continue to produce bad results because you can never let go (learn from my mistakes). When tomorrow comes, forget about yesterday. Embrace the new opportunity to get better and show how good you really are!
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