Sport Psychology Blog

My heart sank when I heard the news of Kobe Bryant’s death. I want to honor Kobe with a blog post dedicated to him. 
Kobe was one of my favorite athletes of all time. I’ve had so many great memories watching Kobe play basketball on TV. I still remember getting goosebumps watching Kobe score 60 points in his final NBA game. I teared up then and I teared up today. That game showed me how special and exhilarating sports can be. Sports can transcend courts and fields, and bring people together and make life that much more worth living. Kobe provided us many of these moments. That’s why he was so loved. 
But Kobe wasn’t just loved for the special moments he gave us. Kobe was also loved for the inspiration he gave us. I’ve always admired the “Mamba Mentality!” I loved how dedicated, singularly focused, intense, mentally tough, and clutch Kobe Bryant was. Kobe gave me the courage to dedicate myself to my passions without worrying what others would think. For me, Kobe made it cool to work hard …

Some of the most important times in games are the times between plays. Almost every athlete can focus decently during the time of play, when you have something obvious to pay attention to, such as the ball, but not every athlete can focus well in between plays, when it's harder to find something to attach your attention to. This is when athletes get distracted most often. During the time between plays, whether in the huddle or on the bench, your mind can get distracted. You can start to dwell in the past or think too far in the future. This overthinking can cause overconfidence or discouragement. Then once the next play begins, you're often not able to refocus in time, which can lead to mistakes. This happens very often in sports such as tennis and football, with small breaks in between lots of plays/points. It is also very prevalent in sports with longer breaks in between action, such as golf and baseball. The longer time in between action, the more time there is to get distr…

A part of being coachable is being influenceable, and allowing others to motivate and teach you. There's so many people and resources out there that can motivate you. There's your parents, relatives, coaches, teachers, pastors, and other people in you life that can help you. There's also so much motivation you can find online whether it comes from music, videos, blogs, or social media.

But none of these people and things can help you if you don't allow them to help you. If you brush your parents off when they try to motivate you, encourage you, or give you advice, then you won't benefit from what they have to say. Most of the time when their advice isn't effective, it's not because it's not good advice or motivation, but it's because you brush them off. The same goes for motivational material you find online. If you just skim through the material and not really focus on it and care about it, you won't benefit from it. In order to benefit from adv…

The best athletes and coaches are committed to their sport, but they also have perspective. They know sports aren't life. They know there's more important things in life. Having this attitude of caring about sports, but not too much is difficult, but when you find the perfect balance, your success and happiness will greatly improve.

Let's start with commitment. You need to be committed to your sport for many reasons. For one, you need to be committed to stay competitive. For those who rely on sports as their source of income, you need to be committed to feed your family. Lastly, you need to be committed to improve yourself and gain satisfaction from your sport. If you lack commitment, you lose out not only competitively and financially, but you also lose out on the sense of purpose, meaning, improvement, achievement, and happiness that commitment provides.

However, there is a point where commitment can hurt you. Caring too much about your sport, becoming too obsessive, and b…

In Mindsight, Daniel J. Siegal combines neuroscience with psychotherapy to guide people towards mental health. Siegal teaches that by developing mindsight, which is the ability to create mental representations of your own mind, to analyze and modify it, you can intergrate the different parts and functions of your brain to achieve mental wellbeing.

It sounds complicated, but in summary, the mindsight method incorporates cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfullness, talk-therapy, and brain science knowledge to achieve an integrated and harmonious inner life. The therapy techniques listed above are not new, but the way Siegel uses them to to achieve an "integrated and harmonious inner life" is what makes this book unique.

There are many insightful principles in this book that help you gain a new perspective on mental health.
One of the first thing Siegel teaches in this book is the "triangle of wellbeing," which consists of the mind, brain, and relationships, which are all…

My biggest pet-peeve in sports is when athletes give up. I believe there's rarely ever a legitimate reason to give up in games. 99.9% of the time, there's always reasons to keep trying in games. Most of the time, when athletes give up in games, it's not because they don't have reasons to keep trying, it's because they haven't given the mental effort to think of the reasons and motivate themselves to keep trying.

First of all, it's important to understand that there's levels to effort. The goal is to give 100% effort. Even when you give 80%, that is still giving up 20%. So when I say "how to never give up in games," I'm not telling you how to give 100% effort every game. That is a very hard task. Almost no athlete can truly do that. For this blog post, I just want to talk about how to never completely give up in games, meaning giving less than say, 75% effort. When you give less than 75% effort, you pretty much are giving the game away. At l…