Choosing Your Focus

     The ability to focus is very important to athletic performance. Choosing to focus on things that are in your control and on cues that are relevant to your performance takes discipline and also practice. Focus pretty much plays a part in every aspect of your performance. Cheadle says," The ability to focus means keeping your mind occupied with the task at hand. (121)" Many people spend time focusing on things that have no benefit to themselves.

     Anxiety and stress are factors that influence your ability to process information but the amount of focus you have depends on whether or not you are under stress.  Cheadle explains that," When you are feeling performance anxiety you are much more likely to be distracted and tune into irrelevant issues." and that," This distraction can impact how quickly you are able to make decisions and your ability to see and capitalize on alternative options. (Cheadle 125)" I have noticed that where you choose to focus can contribute to feelings of anxiety and Cheadle also mentions that anxiety can also contribute to "inappropriate focus."

     The biggest opposition to focus are distractions. According to Cheadle, there are two types of distractions. Internal distractions and external distractions. Internal distractions usually take the form of thoughts or worries. These come from your own thoughts and it can make you lose focus. One example of this could be how you were thinking about how bad you played the game before, and this caused you to lose focus and play bad again. External Distractions will take the form of things that are outside of you that are irrelevant to your performance. You could be distracted by the woman yelling while you are shooting free-throws, the opposing team's student section, or trash talk from players on the other team. One way that Cheadle mentions so that you can get rid of these distractions are to accept what is happening and shift your focus back to where it needs to be. Another way is to just focus on the outcome. She notes that you should be focused on what is happening "right now" and not worry about what is happening after the game. Lastly, she says that you should not focus on past mistakes but rather picture in your mind what you can do better.

 Lately my main goals have been to focus in games and also during practice. I have noticed that I think about many things during games that don't really matter and that by pushing them out of my thoughts I actually tend to play better. Lately I haven't been getting distracted so easily by others, and also have been able to pay attention to things that help me contribute more to my team. Reading about focus has really helped me not only in basketball, but during school and working on homework at home which has been very helpful.

What do you do to focus on tasks and how do you stay from getting distracted?

   
Citation: Cheadle, Carrie. On Top Of Your Game. Petaluma: Feed The Athlete, 2013. Print.