Coaching Years
Before I got into coaching, I found my old journal from my freshman year and read it over. Realizing that I knew so much about myself from this book alone and it was a shame that I never picked it back up. I didn't want to do that to the kids that I was coaching. So, I took a deep dive into the mental side of sports and sports psychology to learn as much as possible.
Every year I would start off with the same lessons talking about journaling and having discipline to keep at it. With coaching these kids, some kept doing it, some did it for a week and stopped, the big this was that they had no structure to keep up with it. I would hand them a blank journal and say make it yourself. Well, that doesn't really work with a 15 year old...
Over the last year I have started to develop and make these journals by hand to use with my players. The goal is to have them learn about themselves so much through sports (which are usually high failure) to be able to take these lessons, make them more consistent, learn their patters, understand their mind, and make them better people in the real world.
Journaling
The reason I don't have an app for this is becuase it is well documented that physically writing something down will help you remember it more.
Discipline
Discipline to me is the ability to do something right, even when you don't wan to. Keep journaling even though you had a bad game and want to stop, that's having discipline.
Pattern Recognition
Reread what you have written down. Learn what bring you to even, learn your triggers, learn how your mind works through pattern recognition.
Honesty
No matter what, be honest with what you were thinking. If you aren't honest with yourself, you won't get anything out of a journal. No one is perfect, keep learning about yourself.
How It All Started
I was pretty good at baseball. I was good enough to play Division II baseball at Wayne State University. Getting to play in 166 games in my career, while finishing my B.S. in Finance and eventually going on to get my M.B.A. in Finance and Management.
But it wasn't always good for me. My freshman year, I played very well, and I had a coach that really helped me get into the mental side of sports. He taught me about the color system, and I took that an implemented it into my own journal that I made. That journal helped me be a consistent player and helped lead me to batting over .320 as a freshman playing in over 30 games.
I got hurt during my freshman year, obtaining a stress fracture in my shin. So, the recovery process started. From there I let the recovery process get to me and really mess me up mentally. I stopped journaling, and my game suffered. I ended up batting only .190 my sophomore year. I never picked it back up, and I suffered for it. I ended up with a .260 career average, no shot of going pro, and went into the work force and started to coach on the side.
If you're really curious if I'm lying about my career or not, here are my college stats.