“Do not permit what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” — John Wooden

When it comes to sports psychology for basketball, expectations can be divided up into two types. Those are realistic and unrealistic expectations.

Realistic expectations can be defined as things that an athlete can achieve within the confines of their own actual ability while in pursuit of their own realistic performance goals. These types of expectations are not only healthy but most times they will also serve as necessity to reaching an athlete’s own peak performance.

The detrimental expectations are those that are unrealistic in their nature, for whatever reason, yet the athlete’s perception remains intact that they are not only expected of them but also achievable. This way of thinking can only lead to thoughts of self-doubt in one’s own ability with further ramifications on the athlete’s basketball mental toughness that will inevitably enter a downward spiral if not promptly dealt with.

The key that unlocks an athlete’s mental game in basketball is achieving the moment that results in their own awareness about how their own beliefs, attitudes and expectations about their performance hinder them in competition.

In other words, they must come to the point that they realize that their non-functional perfectionist thinking is holding them back.

This moment can result in a huge burden being lifted off the athlete as they free up their mental space and allow it to focus on things that can actually lead to improvement in their abilities and their mental game. Basketball demands its participants full mental attention if there are to achieve peak performance. Anything less will lead to mediocrity on the court, if not worse.

The perfectionist tends to worry about letting themselves and other people down or, what mental game coaches call, “the fear of failure”.

A few of the things that an athlete benefits from thinking about during competition are:

1. Technique.
2. Reading the defence / offense.
3. Taking the open or high percentage shot.
4. Calculating risk and reward at every moment.

When an athlete realizes that they are focusing on things, such as the below, then it’s time to start re-aligning their belief system.

1. Worrying about making a mistake.
2. Worrying about what others think (coach, fans, parents, friends, teammates, etc.) about them or their performance.
3. Focusing on statistics.

All this will lead to is taking the athlete’s focus away from the tangible things that they could be focusing on that can make a positive impact in the game and for their team.

Even after becoming self-aware of thoughts and behaviours that hold an athlete back the process of letting go of an old belief system in favour of adopting a more productive one usually takes time and effort.

It will ultimately become a battle of attrition of the mind over matter. The path to achieving basketball mental toughness is not an easy one but those that prevail with reap the rewards that are available to all that dare to take the personal challenge.

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