Like a race car is designed to drive, your mind is designed to think. When coaches and others give you well-intentioned advice to stop overthinking, they don't realize how futile this directive is, because how do you stop overthinking? I guess you could go to the Himalayas and meditate with some Buddhist monks for a few years and you'd learn how to do it. Don't get me wrong, meditation is a great thing and I actually practice it regularly, but it's still very difficult for me to slow or stop overthinking. The good news is it's not even necessary for you to do that to perform well. When you're under pressure and sports, the mind likes to think even faster, and it's just activating an old survival mechanism, a mental program to consider all the things that could go wrong so that maybe you can prevent them. It's just part of the fear response. Unfortunately, this is not usually useful in sports. It ends up causing nervousness and tension and that interferes with your abilities. A very powerful solution to counter this is to keep yourself in the present moment with your thinking. Now you hear all sorts of mental coaches and sports psychologists and vice-athletes to stay present or play in the present moment. Yeah, it's good advice, however, most athletes don't have a clue why this is useful and they have even less of a clue as to how to do it. It goes right over their head when they hear it and because they don't see any benefit, they don't practice it and the advice is pretty much useless. So here's the why and the how so that you can perform in the present moment and come through brilliantly under pressure. So the reason why this is really such a powerful tool for performing under pressure is because pressure feelings, they come from a perception of fear. Now you know that's mostly fear of failure, making a mistake, choking, not coming through, right? This fear, that's the real problem, we just sometimes call that pressure. We'll get this. Fear cannot exist in the present moment. That's right. Think about this for a minute. Whenever you are experiencing fear, you are either remembering something bad that happened in the past or worrying about something bad that might happen in your future. And if the future is only a few minutes or a few seconds away, the only exception to this rule is if you're facing physical danger to your body in the present moment, like if you were being attacked by a wild animal. Therefore, when you truly get present, fear goes away. It cannot exist in the present. Now yes, there are some sports that have an element of physical danger, inherent in performing like boxing, gymnastics, wrestling, and some other dangerous sports. However, I promise you, even in those sports, it's only a tiny slice of the fear when under pressure to perform. And all the ways of dealing with physical fear as well. Next, how do you practice playing the present moment to eliminate that fear? Follow me and I'll teach you right now. Use your eyes to look around the room you're in and focus on all the things you see. Notice details, patterns, colors, textures. Focus your mind on what you see. Now go ahead and close your eyes and put your mind on all the things you hear. And yeah, you hear my voice. Maybe you hear other sounds. Put your mind completely on things you hear right now. Now, switch your mind over to what you feel in your body this very moment. What do your hands feel like? Your feet. What about your head? What about the clothes on your body? Temperature? Any pressure? Now direct your mind to what your sense of smell is doing. Now even if there isn't much going on there, put your mind there anyway. Could be pretty neutral, that's okay. Now switch your mind over to thinking about what your taste buds are doing. Probably not much, kind of neutral, that's okay. Just put your mind there. Now go back and forth between all five senses. All at once, one at a time. You are now in the present moment. Connect your thinking to what your senses are taking in right now. Fear, pressure, they cannot exist in that present moment. Now don't wait until the next time you have pressure to use this tip. Practice it everywhere in your life. I'm Craig Sagoel, your maternal toughness trainer. Let's do this.