As an athlete, performer, or competitor, your ability to control and silence that negative, destructive voice in your head is vital for your success. There are always two voices speaking to you. Listening to the critical one can hinder your ability to perform — it’s one of the major mental blocks.
I operate under this principle: Performance = Potential – Interference × Awareness. In other words, you perform at your best when there’s no interference — no mental or emotional blocks.
To clear these mental blocks — especially the negative mind — it helps immensely to understand them first. Once you understand them, you can dismantle them. Let me introduce you to a solution using my R.A.C.E. formula for mental toughness, developed from years of working with hundreds of athletes and performers. It’s the one tool I now use for everything to help clients build lasting mental resilience.
You must be relentless in your desire and belief that you can change your automatic negative thought patterns. These responses may seem out of your control, but they’re not. I give you the tools to take that control back. It’s not about trying once and giving up — it’s about committing to the process. And I promise: that inner critic can be silenced.
Let’s talk about awareness. The negative mind can be destructive to your performance, even though it originates from a normally helpful mental function: your analytical mind — the part that solves problems.
For some, especially high performers, this function becomes overactive. It gets “corrupted,” like a virus on your computer. Once that mental virus takes hold, it turns your greatest strength against you. You can’t out-will it, no matter how hard you try. It’s just too powerful — as you may have noticed.
Most coaches or sports psychologists offer surface-level advice like:
And you’re thinking: “Yeah, no kidding — I know that already. But how?”
You need to go to the source of the problem. That’s where the real change begins.
Mental toughness is abnormal — just like physical strength is. No one is born with muscles; they build them. Same goes for mental grit. Most people never train themselves to replace negative thinking with performance-focused thoughts.
In my view, the essence of mental toughness is this: The ability to replace negative thoughts with focused cues that enhance performance and build confidence.
If you regularly replace negative thoughts with positive performance cues, you will become more mentally tough. An athlete’s body listens to what the mind says. If your brain is generating 60,000 thoughts a day, and most of them are filled with doubt, it has a massive impact on your game.
That’s why it’s crucial to identify which thoughts consistently fuel your best performances — and train your mind to focus on those during competition.
This is one of the most helpful tools. Decide what outcome you want, and then train your brain to focus on that. Replace doubt with vision.
For best results, pre-plan specific positive self-talk cues before competition or adversity hits. This way, you’re not caught off guard — your mind is trained and ready.
Clear the root cause. There is always a reason why you respond or react the way you do. That goes for your negative mind too. To overcome this, you have to reprogram it from the inside — not just think differently, but feel and believe differently. This is inner-mind programming — your body's bio-operating system.
The mental virus I mentioned earlier? It's a belief or belief structure. Once embedded, you must form a counter-belief powerful enough to override it.
Examples I’ve helped young athletes break:
To dismantle these, you need body-level change — not just mental. The best way to reach the inner mind is with intention and repeated practice. I guide my clients with visualization, breathwork, and meditation to embed that counter-belief into the body.
Here’s the twist: your negative mind wants you to succeed. It just goes about it the wrong way — trying to “solve” problems by flooding you with thoughts and energy.
But peak performance comes from stillness — from being in the Ideal Performance State (IPS), also known as flow. When you're in flow, your thoughts are sharp, your body is synced, and your limiting beliefs disappear. Time slows down. This is where the magic happens.
For many young athletes, mastering their emotions is the breakthrough. It changes how they see themselves — and how they perform.
Your flow state is a mix of two things:
Your mind controls your body. But if your body is out of sync — either too amped or too flat — even positive thinking won’t be enough. You need both aligned.
In real-time: Beliefs → Thoughts → Emotions → Feelings → Performance
So if you want to control your performance, you must control your feelings.
If the negative mind is your challenge, the R.A.C.E. formula is your map. It works — especially when you work it.
Ask yourself:
Reflect on these questions. The answers are already within you — they just need space to come to the surface. You're closer than you think. Let’s R.A.C.E.