The Los Angeles Angels fell 0-6 to the Toronto Blue Jays Monday night. Angels pitcher, Joe Saunders, didn’t perform his best allowing three runs, four hits and five walks over 6 1-3 innings.

“It’s not really frustrating. It’s a good positive for me, knowing that I’m starting to get back to what I know I can do. But team-wise, it’s frustrating that we can’t pull out more wins. We just need to stay positive, and we need to execute better. We need to play the way we’re capable of playing. We just haven’t been doing that consistently this year,” said Saunders.

Confident athletes stay positive after losses, benefiting their performance. Positive thinking will help you bounce back from losses quickly. Instead of losing confidence after a poor performance, notice what you did well. You might have reacted quickly to a fly out or had a good strategy when you were down in the count. Then, take a look at what you didn’t do as well. Use that information to work on your weaknesses in practice and improve as a player. Above all, look at your weaknesses as opportunities for improvement rather than a sign of inadequacy.

Confident athletes are also patient. Many players tend to expect results too quickly. When you become impatient with your performance, you can speed through your routine, lose confidence and focus on the wrong things. Patient players are focused on execution and trust that a good performance will eventually come. Their confidence isn’t thrashed around by results. Patient players are focused on gaining their confidence from more stable sources, such as their preparation and practice.

Your baseball psychology tip is to bounce back quickly from losses by staying positive and patient about your performance. Take an objective look at your game after your performances and work to improve your weaknesses. Stay patient with your results and eventually things will fall into place.

Doubt isn’t the only challenge for baseball players though. Many players have fragile self-confidence. When you have fragile self-confidence, your confidence varies widely based on what’s happening during a game. When you get a hit, your confidence goes up. On the other hand, when you make a mistake, your confidence drops. We call this the confidence rollercoaster. Your confidence changes from moment to moment depending on your immediate performance.

Monday night’s game with the L.A. Dodgers and Houston Astros is a prime example of how self-confidence can benefit your game. Dodgers’ pitcher, John Ely, in his fourth career start, gave up one run and five hits striking out eight batters. Ely contributed to the 6-2 Dodgers win over the Astros.

“I’m just out here doing what I have always done. I just have complete confidence in what I bring to the table and the fact that if I execute my pitches the way I want to, I feel like I have the advantage. That is the way you have to feel every time out. If you doubt yourself, you’re going to give up hits,” said Ely.

Every time you go to the field, you want to have confidence in your game. Your confidence must not waver because of your opponent or the quality of your practice that week. A stable level of confidence is developed over years of practice and training.

Use your practice, training and preparation to develop the foundation of your confidence. After mistakes, you’ll want to remind yourself of why you deserve to feel confident. Is it your work ethic, your improved curve ball or your ability to come back after mistakes? Remember your strengths to help you feel confident.

“Ely’s going to make you hit it; he’s going to make them do the work. He changes speeds so well, I think that’s really the biggest reason why he’s had the success early on. He’s not afraid to throw the fastball any time. And behind in the count, he’s not afraid to take a little off,” said Dodgers’ manager Joe Torre.

Your mental game of baseball tip is to base your confidence over years of practice and play. Don’t wait until something good happens in the first inning to feel confident. Likewise, don’t allow a single mistake to shake your confidence. Rely on what you can control, such as your practice and preparation to keep your confidence when things don’t go according to plan.

When you make assumptions about what others might be thinking about your game, you engage in “mind reading.” You don’t really know what others are thinking about you. Mind reading is just a distraction to playing your best. And it can cause you to avoid making mistakes and play tentatively.

LA Dodgers rookie pitcher Clayton Kershaw’s game started to go downhill in the second inning against the Milwaukee Brewers. The LA Dodgers were unable to rebound losing the game 11-6.

“It was kind of a snowball effect. It stings, it hurts, I didn’t give our team any kind of chance. It’s just not a good feeling to let your teammates down, to let everybody down. But it’s one game,” Kershaw said.

As a pitcher, you can feel that your team depends on you. Even though your position is important, keep in mind that each player on the team plays an important role. Worrying about what will happen is you let down your team doesn’t help you perform.

“The way I always think of it is, you pitch good, you can soak it in that night. You pitch bad and it’s going to hurt tonight. That’s the great thing about baseball: You play every day. Tomorrow is a new day,” said Kershaw.

You’ll have good days and bad days on the mound, just like any other pitch who is human. The key is not to lose confidence after a poor outing. Find something positive from each game and move onto the next. You’ll want to assess your performance objectively without emotion. Don’t beat yourself up for poor pitching or a loss. A better option is to assess what needs to improve the next game and move forward with a healthy dose of confidence.

Want to learn how to keep your confidence at a high level? Check out The Confident Athlete CD program at Peaksports.com

The goal in baseball is to win, score runs, and get a hit every time at-bat. This is obvious. If you dwell too much on winning or getting a hit, you can lose focus on execution. In addition, if you worry too much about the outcome, you can’t focus on what you need to do to get a hit. Results come from focusing on the process of execution. Focusing on the process is a simple concept to talk about, but one of the most difficult things for athletes to do consistently.

A key lesson I teach to baseball players is how to maintain a present focus. I often need to repeat myself several times and say the same thing in different ways to get the point across. Good results such as getting a hit and winning games comes from focusing on the process or paying attention to one play at a time; one at-bat at a time. You should “see” a positive result in your mind as you settle into the batter’s box. But you don’t want to become so fixated on getting a hit–”I need to get a hit”–that you worry about not getting a hit, going 0 for 4, and tighten up.

Some sport psychologists would say that choking is caused by not paying attention to what’s important —execution. When you focus on execution, it helps keep your calm and free of result-induced pressure. What do I mean when I say focus on execution? Execution is not focusing on the mechanics of hitting. You want to have a plan for each at-bat and stay committed to that plan.

By immersing yourself in your preparation—set-up, balance, visualizing a good at-bat, and focusing only on the pitcher, you put yourself in a position to get a hit. You can’t alter the outcome after the bat makes contact with the ball or the ball is in the catcher’s glove. Plan your at-bat, rehearse it in your mind, prepare your body, and react to the pitcher. What happens next is out of your control. You control your mental focus and you want to use this to your advantage when thinking about your mental game of baseball.

This is an important lesson I teach–to get a hit or to get an out, you must pay attention to task-relevant cues. This simple concept is easy to forget when you care too much about winning or what winning means. “Don’t strike out,” “Don’t walk this hitter,” “Don’t miss this pop up ball” are examples of what you might say to yourself with a result-focus. A result-focus–worry about the consequences of your actions–does not help you perform; it only creates tension and leads to worry. This is when you have to refocus your mind on the current pitch.

How do you stay focused on the process? Focusing on the process means knowing what performance cues are in baseball and keeping your mind focused on those task-relevant cues. You need to define what is relevant to performing the task. In baseball, the batter has specific cues for each task he must attend to. Some of the task-relevant cues are: studying the pitcher, knowing the count, setting up in the batter’s box, visualizing success, feeling confident, and focusing on the ball as the pitcher releases it.

If your mind wanders off task, that means you are not “on-task” and you are too focused on results or some other distraction. It’s OK if your mind wanders momentarily, but you want to be able to catch yourself and refocus on the current pitch as soon as possible. In this example, I would ask the baseball player to stop his at-bat routine, clear his mind, and restart his routine from the beginning.

To improve your mental game for baseball or softball, define the cues that are relevant to baseball execution and success–one pitch at a time. Also, know when you get off-task, and be able to stop and refocus on the task when you wander to results or are distracted!

To keep practice interesting and exciting, practice goals are important. Set goals to challenge yourself during batting practice. For example, you can challenge yourself to hit 7 out of 10 solid shots. Imagine yourself in a game situation and try to hit the ball in play 7 of 10 tries. Play an entire 9 innings in batting practice. The more “games” you can play to make practice interesting, the better your focus. Reward yourself for meeting your practice goals.

Creating competition in practice is another great way to keep the fun and excitement in practice. Be creative with your practice, challenge yourself or play a game with a friend. Have a batting contest with a friend or teammate. One game I like is “call your shot.” Two players are needed to play this game. Each person takes 10 pitches. One person starts by calling his shot such as hard line drive down the center. The other player calls the next pitch and you alternate until you finish the 10 shots.

Next time you get bored and lose focus, try the “two-minute drill.” The goal of this drill is to sharply focus attention on practice for just two minutes. I know you can focus for two minutes! See how keenly you can focus for those two minutes. When the two minutes are over you can relax and space out if you want. The goal is to practice with focus and intensity for short periods. Short bursts of intense focus with periods of rest or inactivity is better than practicing with 50% focus for the entire practice. What you will find is that you can stretch it out to four or five minutes instead of just two minutes at a time.

Coping with failure

Mariano Rivera, relief pitcher for the Yankees says, “the secret is not so much confidence as focus.”

Focus and the ability to concentrate in the now is important to develop a strong mental game. To be able to perform, you have to be able to focus on performance cues. You can’t throw a good pitch or get a hit without focusing your mind on execution. The good news is that every ball player has the ability to focus. But sometimes your focus can get displaced.

Ball players can lose focus by letting negative emotions, such as frustration or anger, get the best of them. Mistakes can cause you to feel frustrated, such as missing a fly ball or walking a batter. When players become frustrated or angry, they spend too much energy and attention on mistakes. You’re essentially focused on the past, which hinders your ability to focus on the current pitch or play.

Mariano Rivera is a good example of keeping his emotions in check and staying focused one pitch at a time.

“Nothing derails him, Chad Gaudin says. “No emotions get in the way. Ever. He is able to take all that energy of the moment and channel it into everything he has to do. Why doesn’t everybody do that? Not everybody has the power or self-discipline.”

Even though there will be times when you’re frustrated with your performance, the key is to catch yourself before your performance spins out of control. You’ll want to think of the times where you are most likely to become frustrated. Do you become frustrated when you’re down in the count? Or maybe you get frustrated when you’re not performing up to your expectations. The first step is to be aware of mistakes that can trigger frustration so you can develop a plan to bounce back from them quicker.

Failure is a part of sports, especially in baseball. The key is to not demand perfection and to be more accepting of your mistakes. You certainly don’t want to dwell on your mistakes or beat yourself up. Save your analysis of errors for after the game. Use mistakes as a way to improve your game. Think of your mistakes as learning opportunity to better your game in the future.

What does it mean to choke? Choking is a response to pressure and starts with worry about what others think. Your mind gets sidetracked from the real task. The mind races with thoughts of negative outcomes or screwing up a big lead. “What if we blow a three run lead?” the pitcher says to himself. Then anxiety sets in… Your mouth gets dry, your hands sweat, your breathing becomes faster, and you feel like someone is strangling you. If you feel like choking when under pressure, here are some suggestions to control yourself.

Challenge Yourself
Many players take a defensive approach to their game when they’re under pressure. Instead of trying to not strike out and embarrass yourself, challenge yourself to see the ball well. Take a positive approach. Be aggressive  instead of avoiding mistakes. If you try to avoid striking out, most likely you will focus more on striking out than hitting a solid ball.

Play Like You Don’t Care
When you care too much about winning, you try too hard to make it happen. PGA Tour star Bob Tway said, “You need to play golf like you don’t care, but if you work at something your whole life, it’s hard not to care. But that is the way you need to play golf. You need to sit on the first tee and not care, just let the ball go. That’s how you play your greatest golf.” The same concept applies to baseball.

Tame the Demons from the Past
Memories from the past can also haunt you. Past memories of failure pop into your head when faced with a challenging situation. If you don’t stay grounded in the present, those memories of the past will haunt you. Use the past only if it’s to your advantage.

Be Your Own Coach
What you say to yourself can have a big effect on how you feel and behave. Positive self-talk can be one of your most powerful assets on the field. Your self-talk should always be encouraging and supportive, just like a good coach. You don’t want to tell yourself , “You will never get a hit if you keep playing like this”!

Stay Task-Focused
Most fear relates to outcomes such as striking out. The fear causes you to get ahead of yourself rather than focus on the task. Focus on what you can control, which is execution and staying in the present. For example, your task is to focus on your set up and seeing the ball well. Focus on that. Don’t think about what will happen if you strike out.

I know from my experience as a mental coach that athletes tighten up because they worry too much about the outcome, which leads to trying too hard or playing with a tentative mindset. When you’re tense about outcomes and not focused on the current play, pitch, or shot, you can’t step up your performance in big games…

Playing in a big game or the playoffs should be the most fun for athletes. It’s your season-end reward. It’s the fruit of all your hard work during the season. However, in order to enjoy the big game, you must have faith or trust in what you have practiced all season. Justin Verlander, Detroit Tigers pitcher, is a good example of this…

Read how Justin Verlander steps up in big games…

You might worry about their team’s record against another team or feel that you aren’t as good as your teammates. This can cause you to perform tentatively, fear making mistakes, doubt your ability and lose focus on what’s important.

Self-intimidation can come in many forms such as…

• Feeling pressure to perform your best or win.
• Worry about performing against other players or teams who are just as skilled.
• Comparing yourself to other players or teammates who you think are better.
• Worry about competing against a good team.
• Get caught up in the hoopla or importance of a game

Confident and composed ball players don’t intimidate themselves. Confident baseball players are able to manage their emotions and enjoy the challenge of a close game.

How do you know if you are intimidating yourself?

Here are some signs that you are intimidated:

• You give too much energy to your competition during pregame.
• You have doubts about playing well against a certain team.
• You are in awe of the situation or hoopla of the competitive environment.
• You feel inferior to the competition or teammates and make comparisons to others.

A few mental game strategies can help you overcome your intimidation. One strategy is to develop a pregame routine. A pregame routine can help you focus your mind on what’s important before competition such as reviewing your game plan. Without a consistent pregame routine, you will be more likely to become distracted, which may include focusing on your competition.

You’ll also want to give yourself a boost of confidence before competition. You can think about past successful performances or use positive self-talk to improve your confidence. You’ll want to stop putting your opponents or teammates on a pestle and realize that you deserve to be there just as much as your opponents.