2.1 Essential Basic Concepts

ESSENTIAL BASIC CONCEPTS

Before seeing the most important variable for the mental training and how to work them, we are going to review 3 basic concepts that are key to being prepared.

2.1.1 THE THOUGHT-EMOTION-BEHAVIOR TRILOGY

Sports Psychology studies the thoughts, emotions and behaviors related to the sports field. In your case, soccer.

These 3 concepts are interrelated, and are bidirectional. They influence each other.

For example, your thoughts can modify your emotions, but your emotions also influence your thoughts.

Source: own elaboration 

When working on these factors (thought, emotion and  behavior), the easiest aspect to change is the “thought” because the emotion/attitude depends on the thought which is consider the basis of behavior. Anything you do depends on a thought.

Thought – Emotion – Action/Behavior

Source: own elaboration 

Managing your thoughts is the path you must focus on the most. We generate between 20,000 and 50,000 thoughts per day. Although we cannot control all our thoughts, you have the freedom to choose which thoughts to focus on and which to ignore. Keep in mind that useful thoughts allow us to solve or perform better in what we do, depending on those things that depend on yourself.

*** Not highlighted boxes are un-controlled thoughts and highlighted boxes are controlled thoughts.

Source: own elaboration 

2.2.2 PAST – PRESENT – FUTURE

Another important concept that will be very useful to you is closely related to the previous which has a lot to do with attention and concentration. It is very important that you learn to identify where your thoughts are in time.

The mind is continuously “traveling” between past, present and future, depending on the thoughts to which we pay attention to. If you are able to distinguish what tense your thoughts are and you learn to manage your attention to take it where it best suits you, you will learn to manage your thoughts along with improving your performance.

It’s always been said to think about being in the present for a very simple reason. We cannot attend to two things at the same time and we cannot think of two things at the same time. We can change our focus, but not think about two things at the same time. Either I think about the task or I think about the failure, about the problems.

Source: own elaboration 

The emotion of sadness is related to the past and the emotion of anxiety to the future. If the player is able to stay focused as long as possible on the present (the next play, what do I have to do now…) then it will help in avoiding thinking about past situations (the mistake I just made) or future situations (we are going to lose because of this failure, what my coach is thinking, he is going to substitute me…).

2.2.3 WHAT YOU CONTROL VS WHAT DEPENDS ON YOU

When it comes to learning to manage your thoughts, there is a crucial concept that you must learn as well. It is learning to pay attention only to the thoughts that are useful (they help you get what you want) and let go of those that are not useful in each respective moment. And that leads us to know how to distinguish and focus on those things that depend only on you, that you can control.

Source: own elaboration