“I always designed my practice plans the night before and then made tweaks a few hours before practice began” – Bob Knight

Every athlete encounters setbacks and times when things don’t go exactly according to plan.

How an athlete responds to these setbacks—whether he sees the setback as a reason for even greater effort or whether he lets it lower his motivation and spiral his into self-doubt will says a lot about that athlete’s mental toughness.

Preparation and focus is everything. What separates the successful, from the unsuccessful, is the fact that successful athletes attack their days methodically. They have a plan. And they work their plan. They don’t just dream. They write down, commit to and review progress against their goals.

Committing to goal setting exercise by writing action plans down, formulating a series of actions to support them, sharing the goals with others and reviewing them frequently and regularly all progressively improve the outcomes of action plans.

Often athletes spend lot of time developing their goals, only to forget them. They don’t take their time to access their progress towards these goals. Goals motivate you to be accountable and ensure that you are on tract to success. If you take the time to set goals, make the time to evaluate them consistently the outcome with be positive.

Setting your goals gives you clarity on what you ultimately want. It makes you crystallize and articulate the desires floating in your mind. It ensures that you are channeling your time, energy and efforts into things that really matter to you. It makes you live more consciously.

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state.

When you fixate on the problems that you’re facing, you create and prolong negative emotions and stress, which hinders performance. When you focus on actions to better yourself and your circumstances, you create a sense of personal efficacy, which produces positive emotions and improves your basketball mental toughness.

When athletes cannot stay focused it is easy for them to mentally collapse in high pressure situations.

The ability to concentrate on the task at hand and stay focused on that task is an unbelievably important skill that many cannot seem master.

It doesn’t matter how confident, focused, motivated, courageous, or composed you are, if you do not see your goal to the end then it may turn out to be pointless. Being resilient is pushing through until you reach your destination.

So write down where you want to go in life. Then outline the steps you’ll follow to get there. Write down the goals you’ll need to achieve. Then write down your plan to achieve those goals.

When you have a map; you’ll always know which road to take. And unless you choose to ignore your plan, your plan will force you to be accountable for your own success – or failure.

*Download the free mental game assessment and get started on Improving your Mental Game in Basketball