JUST KIDDING, I wanted to write about this first before confidence because they wrap together nicely. Annnd I was sparked to write about it because of some things I noticed while watching a video game tourney on twitch (NERD!). Mentality is a killer. Watching the energy level of these pro players through multiple games. They come in SPICY, now maintaining that energy is extremely hard, but it’s what you want in a game like CoD. The tourney is decided by points gathered over multiple games. 4 people squads, kills count as 1 point, wins count as 25. The players are constantly on the move looking for more kills and trying to keep tempo. Both in game, and mentally.
SOME OF THE AREAS OF THE MAP PLAY SLOW
One of the top teams got horrible areas quite a few games in a row. You could hear how angry they were about it. Their tempo slowed, their mentaly weakened. What does this mean? In a high intensity game like CoD it means that you might be behind tempo for kills, your focus will waver a bit. Fights you would have won before, you lose. Your confidence starts to go down and you can watch teams crumble. Communication becomes less energetic and less useful. Depending on your team and everyone’s mentality you could lose the mental game way before you even know it, after that. The real game is lost (the tourney). How do you get it back? Get that mentality to win (i’ll talk about sports and normal life situations in a bit, JUST LET ME RANT jeesh). In games, hopefully one of the people in your squad can start hyping up the others. Can get the comms working again, the tempo back brings back up the mentality. The usual way that this happens is when someone “pops off” (gets a bunch of kills very fast, makes a sick play) you can immediately hear the energy in the other players raise. If they can rally off of this it’s amazing. Sometimes…. Right after the “pop off” moment. Some bull shit happens and the roller coaster drops ya. Crash in mentality.
SPORTS N STUFF
Same shit, different people. Mentality is one of the most important things in sports, keeping focused, making the right play etc. Most people at the top level are fairly even athletically, the best are separated by their mentality and how they play the game. Confidence has a HUGE impact on mentality. If you are confident, bad shit doesn’t phase you that much, you push through adversity. Especially in sports where teams have a large amount of people that need to work together and do their part. The team mentality and confidence is king. If a team has an unwavering killer mentality and confidence, I would bet on them every time. Teams have a bunch of different “default” mentalities. What I mean by this is the mentality that they naturally gravitate to in their life (Ie, killer, passive, weak, negative, etc.). Every team (to be successful) NEEDS the positive killer mentality. There are players that champion this mentality within the team, and move everyone’s average default towards them. These people are the hype men, the team captains, the people you chant “speach speech speach” at when needed. Now what about normal life?
MENTALITY IS YOUR EMOTIONAL STABILITY
Your mentality is what floats your emotions, it’s how you view things that happen to you and others. If your mentality is weak, you will be crushed by the little things. If it’s strong, you will shrug these off, no sweat, no stress. How do you change your mentality? I have no fucking idea. I’ve always had a really strong mentality, because in the end nothing really matters. I think the only way to change your mentality is to somehow realise that nothing matters, you will live and you will die. Things will happen to you, your reaction to them is one of the only things you can change, so why react negatively? Read Marcus Aurelius. He is a stoic and his little muses are very good to read once and awhile (actually everyday) to remind you of humility and what really matters in life. Championing your own ethics and being the best person you can be. What you cannot control you brush off, because you can control your reactions. Think you can’t control your emotions? True. you can’t, right now at least. People try to control their emotions, it’s impossible, but you can start to change how you react to things. LISTEN TO YOUR EMOTIONS. Do not try to push them down, or do the opposite of them, the more you give your emotions time and actually listen to them and dissect them the better off you will be. Will it suck? Yeah i’ve seen it a lot, people crying every night, really bad thoughts (you know which). The only thing that helped them was SLOWLY facing and realizing what their emotions were telling them, and working on that within themselves.
Your emotions are there to tell you something, listen to them, learn from them.
Center your edge.
Centered Edge 