In the June 11th issue of Sporting News magazine there is an article about Barry Zito, a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants in major league baseball. The article is the perfect example of what happens to our performance when we start thinking the wrong way. Meaning what happens when we allow interference to enter our mindset.

I love these sorts of articles because I believe it is best to learn from the best. Yes, research is important and if you read any of my stuff you will hear me often say “research says. . .” But real life experiences, real individuals, real athletes DOING IT triumphs research for me. I will probably take a few days of posting to get through this article as I break down the psychological factors that are attributing to Barry’s performance.

First, Barry Zito signed a seven year, $126 million contract with the Giants back in December 2006. Coming from the Oakland Athletics Barry had been a star with a significant winning record and a Cy Young award (the top award for a pitcher in major league baseball). But through the first three years with the Giants he struggled terribly with mediocrity posting a 31-43 record.

This is what he described as the root of his poor performance. “I signed a big contract and put pressure on myself to deliver for the fans. It turned out to be too results oriented.” When you try to get results instead of going through the process, results don’t usually happen.” Absolutely results don’t come. When we start thinking about the outcome (results) we open the door for fear to come in. Fear only exists in the future, it doe not exist in the moment. In the moment there is only action. When we direct our attention/focus to the moment we rid ourselves of fear and anxiety. Anxiety is a watered down version of fear, and anxiety is never going to help us perform better. Anxiety alerts us to danger, but it is not helpful in allowing us to execute and perform the way we know we can.

When we allow anxiety to get a hold of us, we take our focus off of what we need to do right now and performance immediately takes a hit. Think about how much extra baggage we carry in our performances/lives when we allow ourselves to worry about all of the could’ve, should’ve in our lives. But these could’ve and should’ve are not reality, they have never happen, so why waste energy contemplating them? Our energy is better served getting busy making a difference in the present. If we can improve upon the present we will hopefully make the future a better place.