Mind Games...

I have re-learned the effects of confidence and mental outlook in a number of different areas recently...

1) Skiing (its been a few entries since I've mentioned skiing) - As I believe I've gotten better this season from going skiing at least once a week since Thanksgiving, its amazing how much the mental mindset it starting to come into play. I've started going a lot faster and on more difficult terrain than I usually do, but for whatever reason I had a bad day skiing about two weeks ago. I haven't fallen too many times this season, but on that day I had my worst fall of yet. I was going fast and somehow my skis got crossed, and I immediately hit the ground hard. I wasn't injured, but it certainly shook my confidence a little bit. Later that day, that little chink in my confidence coupled with my legs starting to get tired, caused my whole skiing to go down the toilet. My balance was off, I couldn't turn, I fell some more, and in general it wasn't very fun. My next time out, it still carried over -- I was really cautious all day and I think I was letting my mind play tricks on me a little bit by overthinking what I was doing. It reminded me of this book I read in college that talks about trusting Self 2 (unconscience thoughts/actions) instead of Self 1 (conscience thoughts) in sports. The basic theory is that in most sports activities, if consciously thinking doesn't help that much if at all, your best comes out when you get to the point where you can just react. Fortunately by the time Sarah and I went this weekend my confidence has returned and I was trusting my instincts more -- which made for much more fun skiing.

2) Volleyball -- We started another volleyball season (in a different league) and we have had quite a contrast in our first two games. In the first game, to be blunt, we played a team that just plain sucked. Most times the opposing team could barely get the ball over the net, so the level of competition was considerably out of whack. After it was obvious that we should have no trouble finishing off this team, it was amazing how quickly I mentally checked-out. For our whole team, we really were (excuse the sports cliche) playing down to the competition. I was missing serves and spikes that I'd normally hit, and without the usual adrenilane rush I wasn't even hustling. We won all three games, but they actually started to come close in the last game because of our sloppiness. Our game last Thursday, was the complete opposite. We played great and the other team was really good. We won 2 out of 3 close games, and there were several intense rallies. The sloppiness from last week was gone in an instant, just based on how much better the other team was.

3) Football Prediction - Apparently my mental outlook for my prognostications last week was a little off. I was 1-2 (I'm still counting my Denver over Carolina Super Bowl pick, it would have been right had things gone differently), missing both games on Sunday. My theory on this is that Football games are much more random than anyone in sports would ever admit. Certainly there are some teams that are clearly better than others, but it most cases I'd say a win or loss is at least 20% luck. Case in point with turnovers, probably one of the biggest indicators of a team's success besides points scored. A week ago, the Broncos beat a good New England team, mainly because of 5 New England turnovers, 3 of which were fumbles that could have been recovered by either team depending upon which way they bounced. The luck went Denver's way and they collected all three fumbles. On the other hand, yesterday the Broncos couldn't get a break and lost two key fumbles. When you combine turnovers, with the randomness of refs (especially this playoff season), and many other factors...I didn't make poor football picks, I just got unlucky.