“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” – Michael Jordan

You spend every free and waking moment working on your 3 point shooting, driving to the bucket, building stamina and running a few scrimmages with your teammates. Satisfied with your preparation and performance in team practices, your basketball mental toughness takes a much needed momentary boost.

Come game time, all that hard work now seems a distant and pointless memory as everything is falling apart around you. Your team is currently down by ten; you have already missed your first four open 3 point shots and have given the ball away three times. Fear of failure and self-doubt starts creeping into your head. Your mind starts racing as you now start focusing on the possibility of not making the playoffs, that you failed to make a difference in the game and that you let everyone down.

In terms of sports psychology for basketball the mental traps faced here are due to the fact that the athlete is operating on a fear driven mindset. One of the problems associated with the fear of failure is an intense need to avoid failure. This results in thinking too much about not making mistakes, avoiding pain and performing in a cautious, scared or too defensive manner.

The fear driven mindset is the polar opposite of a success driven athlete. Fear results in the focusing of failure, which further results in the by-products of mental anxiety and loss of emotional control.

Performing with a positive success driven mindset is something that can be taught and that is critical for success. Athletes must embrace a positive success driven mindset in order to excel in competition. A success driven mindset helps athletes focus on the process of completing a task successfully, the positive outcomes and being optimistic instead of pessimistic. It also helps athletes have a present focus which in turn, allows them to attend to the performance cues and triggers that aid them in performing fearlessly and successfully.

Possessing a success driven mindset enables an athlete to focus on what needs to be done and learning to accept that there is no option other than being successful and to strive towards success.

It is possible to get a handle on fear by determining what type of fear is holding an athlete back. This could be the fear of having the work they put in not paying off. By working towards simple and manageable objectives the athlete is taught to focus on what they want to accomplish or make happen in order to achieve success one step at a time.

A few of the ways in which this can be done is by focusing on the present moment, on the current play, on the current shot, by separating one play at a time and by focusing only on their execution.
By focusing on the process and thereby, boosting an athlete’s competitive mental game in basketball, this brings the desired result, as opposed to athletes that focus on the end result which has been shown not to be helpful.

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