the number five most common mental mistake jiu-jitsu competitors make is hyping opponents up one of the most common examples of hype an opponent up it's when I find out that you're going to compete against someone who has accomplished more than you it's more experienced than you maybe they have been dominating the division or maybe them lost to this person before especially now with the power of the social media and all the specialized press a lot of those competitors do you get a lot of attention and little by little this can get into some other competitors mind and start second-guessing their ability to defeat specific opponents in they start to pass like a am I good enough to to hang with him you know he won't the world you want to pan you know did it get it train hard enough and those thoughts can really bring some muscle tension anxiety and can interfere in your performance so today I like to share three strategies to cope better the situation and to avoid making this this mental mistake and the number one step it's self awareness you must recognize irrational and negative thoughts at the spot right away you need to be aware of those thoughts in your mind and how we do that that leads to the step number two which is questioning the thought you have to stop think of eight what am I thinking about is this a rational or irrational thought do I have control or no control of of this for example my opponent won the world's the pans man his on fire well this is fact he won the specific tournaments can it control someone's resume no so move on did I train hard enough well if you are on the warm-up area and you're asking yourself man did I train hard enough how the training has been done so do they have control of it no so we need to move on again you need to question whatever thought you're having at that at that point in ask yourself if I stick with this thought is this gonna help me to move towards my goal or it's going to hold me back or moving me away from my goal and that's when it comes the step number three which is make a decision make a decision of like what thought I'm going to stick with it I am going to focus on I going to focus on the irrational thought that it cannot control is going to move you away from your goal are going to focus on the rational and the positive one that's going to move you towards your goal which make you focus on your effort and your attitude that's all we can really do and focus on your in your performance so you must reframe this negative thoughts with positive ones and you can tell yourself I commit myself to perform to the best of my ability with the tools and knowledge that I have right now at this moment be my best self on a man sometimes your best self is enough so when sometimes it's not it's just part of the game I like to share something real quick in 1996 I compete at the very first world championship in 1996 the the purple belt lightweight division and ended up taking third place by the way I had no business in winning the division whatsoever the reason why is back then you had to qualify to compete at the words o o bells in I I wanted the trials the week before so when I went to the tournament I was kind of having a mode of like oh I'm here I'm happy that I'm here that I that I made it I wasn't the mind of like really going all the way because I did have doubts and next thing I'm gonna semifinal and I'm competing against the favorite that have this competitor that was was dominating the division back and back then and a lot of those thoughts those doubts to start to kind of haunt me and and end up losing by 2-0 and I was okay with it that like I just lost 2-0 this guy's being win it like it was okay you know but again I did the best I could with what I knew I didn't have the clarity to to see that and I put them in a pedestal and I'm looking at this big monster and I and I believe then I believe the hype and you know it's interesting eight months later we had a chance to train together and I still made him twice so it's it's kind of crazy but now I've got to think about are you believing the hype of other competitors or putting people in pedestal too much so if you are think about three steps that we talked about of the self-awareness and questioning the thought and make a decision which thought you're going to to focus upon like Henry Ford said whether you think you can or think you can't you are right Oh's
