Psychology Online

Is your potential held back by fear? If you can’t break through your performance barriers and are spinning your wheels, it’s a good bet that you are limited by a wall of worry – your own fears.

Fear comes in many forms – fear of failure, fear of success, fear or embarrassment, and so on. Many of my students hit a wall of worry caused by these fears and many others.

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Sex addiction is a hot topic in the news these days. Tiger is still hitting the headlines in a big way, although this time not because of his prowess upon the golf course. Residents of Hattiesburg are all aquiver with curiosity over Tiger being in town, residing for a while at a well known clinic to cure sex addiction.
Elsewhere in the world, you cannot miss the “sex addict”    .. more …

Sports psychology experts often talk about the importance of learning mental toughness to improve your performance. However, my 15 years of teaching the mental game to students makes me think that understanding mental toughness skills is not the whole enchilada. To be successful with mental toughness training, athletes must learn how to apply it.

You can be taught to improve    .. more …

From my experience, many athletes spend too much energy worrying about things that they cannot control on the athletic field, court, or course. They waste energy on irrelevant thoughts.

Have you ever become distracted because you were arguing with an official about a bad call? Even when you knew the official was not going to change his call, you gave energy to an    .. more …

Do you ever get ?butterflies? in your stomach (pregame jitters) before you compete? Do you get really nervous before the start of a big match or game and can’t relax after the game starts? Most athletes have felt the negative effects of pressure during their athletic careers. Even the best athletes feel pressure before a big game, but they know how to channel the pressure into    .. more …

Self-confidence can be defined as the capacity to have faith in oneself and one’s unique skills and abilities. This quality is an aspect of high self-image, and required for success. A significant number of people who develop a social phobia or fail to understand how to gain self confidence struggle to become successful. The absence of self-confidence can be a hindrance to an    .. more …

For some athletes, self-confidence goes up and down like a roller coaster, changing direction with every bump and turn in the road. Over the last 15 years, I have worked with athletes who possess both high and low levels of confidence. What allows one athlete to have a brick wall of confidence and another athlete to have a Lego wall of confidence? One explanation is self-image.    .. more …

We all have different characteristics and our own unique set of general tendencies in how we behave and respond to situations.  Some people can appear aggressive or explosive in nature as they fire off sentences which are phrased like bullets, whilst others would seem to be quiet and withdrawn and totally incapable of saying “boo” to goose.
 
These, of course, are extreme    .. more …

Self-confidence is the number one mental skill that your young athlete must possess to be successful in sports and life! Self-doubt is the number one mental barrier that blocks athletes from that success. Having high levels of confidence is so important that I spend most of my time teaching students how to develop and harnesses the power of confidence. I recently received an    .. more …

Have you ever competed against an opponent who was not as dedicated as you or did not work as hard as you do, but somehow found a way to beat you in competition. Under performing can be super-frustrating for most athletes. My coaching students think it is frustrating. They says things such as, “I work at my game harder than anyone. Why do less talented or lazy athletes always    .. more …