Now hold that's an easy one. It's performance anxiety. Believe it or not, 99% of all athletes experience anxiety in sports, even world-class athletes. Well the answer is different for each athlete, but it usually boils down to this. Thinking about something bad or negative that could happen in the future is what causes anxiety. And our bodies respond to it as if we were in real physical danger. Now to get the athletes out of that fear, I ask them questions like, well if you don't win this upcoming match or game, will you lose all your friends? Will you lose your home? Will you be begging on the streets for food? And this gets them laughing and weighing the importance that they placed on the match. How much they've worked themselves up with nothing more than just a thought that isn't even reality. And they follow it up with, okay, so what are you really afraid of? That might happen if you lose or choke or make a mistake. I'm most worried that they'll fail or look stupid. So I ask, well what's failure? And as I keep asking these types of questions, they begin to realize that what they're really afraid of is feeling difficult emotions like embarrassment, disappointment, inadequacy. So the truth is they get performance anxiety because they are afraid of feeling their difficult emotions. What athletes need to do is they need to embrace their difficult emotions and it starts with understanding that all emotions are good, useful and helpful. Yeah, you heard me right. All emotions are useful. Even the difficult ones. They're nothing more than a signal from our body trying to get us to act on something that's important to us. Now most coaches and even sports psychologists, they tell the athletes, just push them away. You know, push them away if I just get out there and do it. You got to put it aside. Tell yourself you're a winner. But you know what? It's like putting a band-aid on a broken arm. Works for very few people. My mental toughness training is unique because we teach a simple process. Athletes can quickly go through whenever they're feeling a difficult emotion like fear, anxiety, frustration, youth sports athletes really build confidence when they feel ready to handle any difficult situation or emotion that could come up. That's what releases the fear of that disappointment, embarrassment or any other emotion that comes from losing choking. And then the anxiety disappears. Now this is truly unique and different than any other mental training is taught. And it makes a huge difference to your athletes in their game and how they handle life. Now this is of course also about anxiety and their sport. So in addition to teaching them my process to deal with their emotions, we also teach the athletes the best way to use making a decision and a commitment to build consistency, take charge of their thinking. You see athletes have been told what to do all their lives by parents and coaches and teens are just beginning the process of transitioning to thinking for themselves. Most athletes are not aware that the way they think and that thoughts they think about are a choice. This is huge and it may sound simple but it's very important. Athletes need to realize they have the power to decide what they think and believe. They develop their mental muscle by conditioning it with repetition and practice just like in their physical training. Well a mental block is what stops an athlete from being able to perform a skill or maneuver that they already know how to do. And for some reason just can't perform it. Something in their mind holds them back. This is where coaches and parents get very frustrated because most of the time they don't know how to help their athlete break through it. I believe all mental blocks are dissolvable and I've successfully done it with hundreds of kids and the solution is to communicate with the body's intelligence, the inner mind where the block was created. Guided visualizations work extremely well for this purpose. Using their imagination, stories, certain language patterns, metaphors. This is how we reach past that surface thinking and connect to what we call the athlete's power mind. It's also known as the unconscious mind. In the blocks they're usually created to protect the athlete from something. We teach them how to reprogram their power mind to do its job of protection in healthy ways that support the athlete. When you get rid of the interference then focus, confidence, determination or resiliency. It just comes naturally and your athlete has unbeatable mental toughness. Click on the link below and get a free guided visualization for mastering the pressure. I'm Craig Sigle, the mental toughness trainer. Welcome to the Winter Circle.