Last week, one of my athletes stood in the on-deck circle with the bases loaded.

A new pitcher had just come in, throwing well.

The kind of moment where his mind used to run wild.

This time, he told me, he just kept repeating one thing to himself.

This is my moment.
This is my moment.
I've got this.

He barreled the ball up exactly how he wanted.

Game one of that same tournament, he wasn't himself.

entative. A
step slow. S
canning the stands instead of seeing the ball.
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New field.
Unfamiliar coaches watching.

The sense that every at-bat was an audition for the rest of his life.

By the next game, something had shifted.

I asked him where that mantra came from.

He told me he came up with it himself.

Not from his parents.
Not from his coaches.
Not from me.

He built it, mid-tournament, in the exact moment he needed it.

Here's what I keep having to relearn, as a coach and as a parent.

I can make a suggestion.
But it won't stick until it's theirs.

I could hand every athlete I work with the same clean blueprint.

Half of them would forget it by the second inning.

Because it was mine.
Not theirs.

He told me something else that day, unprompted.

I'm just playing for the people who believe in me. The people who are with me 100 percent.

Not the scouts.
Not the schools watching from behind the fence.

The people who'll still be there no matter what he does in that at-bat.

He got there on his own.

I just asked him to say more about it.

That's the difference between a kid reciting a mental-game cliché and a kid who actually believes what he's telling himself in the box.

One collapses the first time it's tested.

The other doesn't, because he built it, and he knows exactly why it's true.

If your young athlete is white-knuckling their way through the big moments, here's the honest version of what I'd tell you.

The goal isn't to program them with the right mindset.

It's to help them find the one that's actually theirs.

That's the only kind that holds up when it matters.

Thank you,

Mike

P.S.

If this resonates, I wrote more about why the simplest approach is often the right one: Could Mental Performance Coaching Be Simpler Than You Think?​
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