Although we might not consider it a part of who we are, the things we do on a daily basis will affect us for life. For example, as a child we might have been a competitive sports player, but then we’re adults and we don’t have to force ourselves to put in the same amount of effort. In fact, it might be the opposite. Our lives are so busy that we might not even realize how much we do and don’t do.
This brings us to the idea of mental focus. It’s the ability to control our thoughts, actions, and behavior. Our thoughts come in many shapes and sizes, and the ability to choose which ones matter is a skill. Because we are all individuals, we can only control our thoughts, actions, and behavior so much, and the control we have to them is limited. If we don’t do something, our actions and behaviors may be random. They’re not.
In most cases, we can control how much we think about something, but the control we have over our thoughts and actions is still limited. We can think about a lot of things without actually doing anything, but we can only control a tiny fraction of them. Even the people who think they do well control and limit their thoughts and behaviors. They get away with it because they can control only a tiny portion of them.
The idea of mental focus is simple enough. We take in information and thoughts and put it into a mental repository. These thoughts and emotions are stored in our brain and can be used to control behavior. To do this, we have to make ourselves as aware as possible of our thoughts and emotions. We have to pay attention to how we think, what we feel, and how we feel about things.
We all have “stored memories” that are stored in our brain. These memories can be positive or negative. We can decide to be positive or negative. The goal is to stop the negative ones and allow our own positive ones to be the dominant ones. This is referred to as “self-awareness” or “self-regulation.” We can also control our thoughts and behaviors in the same way.
Like self-awareness, self-regulation is a conscious process. Self-regulation is based on the ability to change our behavior based on our conscious desires, which are usually driven by our own self-interest. This means that we can control how we think. We can decide who we are and what our goals are. We can decide to be our best self or our worst self. We can decide to be a good team player or a bad team player.
But it’s just as important to be able to control your behavior when you’re trying to win or lose. When you play sports, you can’t win by playing your best. You can’t win by playing your worst. You can’t win by playing your best. You can’t win by playing your worst. You can’t win by playing your best. You can’t win by playing your worst.
We often hear that because we play so many individual sports, we lose track of what’s going on around us. We tend to spend way too much time worrying about what our opponents are doing and not enough worrying about what we are doing. We are too easily distracted by the sound of our fellow teammates’ jokes, the smell of their hot dogs, the color of their shirts, and the color of their socks. We are too busy thinking about our own performance and what we should be doing instead.
It’s like playing chess. We spend so much time watching the board, our opponent’s position, the movement of the pieces, and the overall strategy of the game that we lose track of what we should be doing. We are too easily distracted by the sound of the other players’ jokes, the smell of their hot dogs, the color of their shirts, and the color of their socks.
As it turns out, participating in individual sports requires a decent amount of mental focus. It would take you a week to take in all the information you need to be doing well, and that is a long time to spend on something that isn’t your primary job.
