Biggy Neumann about mental strength

Biggy Neumann is a qualified mental trainer and a psychological adviser from Aschaffenburg. For years she was a competitive basketball player and athlete. Now-a-days she looks after professional and ambitious creational sports and gives advice with mental problems. She works with acknowledged sport psychological methods and with the methods of humanistic psychology. Mental practice for her is help to take matters in one's own hands. The sports learns to influence his/hers own mental process. Biggy shows of possible solutions and the athlete can choose what suits him/her.

If you want to know more about her here's a link to herHomepage

She starts her series of articles for darts1 with an article about mental strength.

Mental strength is based in the firm conviction that you know your stuff, no matter how bad it looks for you in the match. A mentally strong player is a fighter, strong willed, motivated, doesn't give up, gives all, struggles through, has got a lot of confidence. The basis for mental strength is self believe. Are you sure you practiced to the best possible? Do you know your strength? Do you think you can assess yourself?

The conditions during a competition are a test and straining. To call up your skills under those difficult conditions you need this mental strength. When a match will get tough without mental strength you'll show a "personal" reaction. Do you know how you'll react?

The most widely spread reaction is to (inwardly) give in. In the middle of the match you look for excuses, to protect yourself from emotional pain. You don't want to take your bad performance to heart; you don't want to answer for it. Those excuses are a possibility not to lose your nerves. Perhaps you notice that fear and nervousness can be reduced when you feel no longer emotional committed. Do you know some of the following excuses:

If I really would have wanted I could have won, but I was in a bad mood today.
This board installations were horrible, the boards were much too close together and the lights were insufficient.
Why should I try at all, it´s pointless?
I never had as much bouncer before, how could I win?
I probably did drink too much/too less today
My opponents/the spectators were irritating (unfair, incompetent), I really couldn't win.

Don't let it bother you, you are in good company! That very often happens to the most talented players. They have got thousands of excuses to justify bad performances. They don't want to take the responsibility for their failures and for the consequences. Of course this apparent indifference reduces nervousness and psychological pain, but reacting like this you'll not be able to play up to your potential. When you haven't got any energy, or motivation or commitment during a match any longer, nothing will work any more and you can't call up your skill. Take responsibility for what you do! Try to find out, why you feel stressed to use those excuses (parents, club, sponsor, and league) and think about whether not to talk over the problem could help. Ask yourself what really would happen should you fail. Often we only think it might be a drama. To look for excuses is to run away. To run away is some kind of emotional flight. Be realistically about your prospects of success. Don't expect too much from yourself! Teach yourself to see even small progress und enjoy it!

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