The mind, our thoughts, and how we express ourselves can lead to our mind playing tricks on us. Experience has helped me anticipate the mind game that gets played. The tricks that your mind can play can originate from a few different places, over analysis, perception, doubt, lack of experience, seem to be the main.

There are a few options to play with this mental trickery; disregard it and just go relentlessly, meditation and visualization, or play tricks back on the mind. Today I want to talk about the last option, playing games back when your mind starts to play.

Yesterday I was teaching P.E. at my son’s kindergarten and we were doing different hula hoop play. I heard many of them say “I can’t.” It bothered me to hear that. They gave up so quickly. If they only kept trying they would find out that it’s not that hard and really fun! As our mind just says stuff we can play the game and add a word, “I can’t, yet.” Doing so acknowledges the reality, the difficulty, and speaks to the need to keep trying, embrace the process, and trust that your effort will prevail. (Cute video of our daughter hooping)

Trust is such a difficult thing, but my 6th grade teacher, Mr. Wilson used to say “trust is a must.” He believed in that phrase so much that he had it posted above the blackboard in front of the classroom. His message was clear, you don’t build trust, you give it. It’s not earned or gained, but you can lose trust in a second. So, trust the process and believe in yourself. Regardless of how a practice goes, how you feel, or how well your focus maintains, it’s essential to believe that the training you do each day makes you better. Trust the process. Realizing that doubt might seep in is the mind game that you need to understand. Continue to trust the process. The more you train the more you become aware of imperfections, subtle mistakes, body aches. Tell yourself this is a sign that the process is working. You are becoming more sensitive to yourself, the surroundings, and all you need to do is trust the process. The feeling of getting less better is actually you becoming aware of your flaws, something you were ignorant to earlier. Trust the process and choose awareness over ignorance.

Distractions from the process will keep us ignorant just like compartmentalizing yourself on and off the mat. Who you are on the mat is who you are off the mat and vice versa. Both places are a training ground to face adversity, have fun, and better realize your strengths and weaknesses. So live the life of a champion on and off the mat. Treat the obstacles you face as an opportunity to become stronger, take responsibility, and have an attitude of gratitude. When you start to consciously associate your life experiences with one another you become better at realizing when the mind is playing games. You will begin to develop better ways of playing with your tricky mind.

At the end of the day you need to realize that tricks aren’t just for kids. A peak performer has to anticipate that the mind will play games and therefore prepare for the mind games. The best of the best struggles with the same difficulties but some way or another has a schema to deal with the games. If they can do it, why can’t you?