Hi there, I think I haven't posted in this thread yet but I'm reading it with much much attention, especially since these things can not only improve the game, but also life !
So first intention of this post is to tell you to keep that thread going !!
![Cheesy :D](https://www.foosball.com/forum/Smileys/ichat/cheesy.gif)
Then as you seem to be looking for comments I'll give one of my experience :
I had a league game* yesterday and things went all wrong, even though I knew I had to let it be ok and stay cool and relaxed I couldn't help but getting angry, talking *** about my game while playing and you know, finally loosing motivation...
It's something that happens to me pretty rarely (my partner was almost shocked lol), and even more rarely since I'm aware of the "mental game" !
So when I read this :
"We have all learned to play the blame game. Something happens outside of us, and if it was not something we wanted to happen, we have learned to place blame on that happening. Someone says or does something we “don’t like”, or we do something and don’t get the results we wanted, and our internal map, our “ego” has been programmed to place fault somewhere. We blame the happening, or we blame ourselves for somehow causing the happening. We react in a negative way both physically and emotionally. Our body releases chemicals in to our system that cause us to feel bad. We begin to focus on what we don’t want, with the intention of avoiding it. Basically, we suffer. This is a learned reaction!"
I saw myself a lot in yesterday's game blaming almost everything, so I'll try to list these things and then I'd like you to tell me HOW I should have reacted to these things, to keep being peaceful and even if we had eventually lost I would have been happy with it, because I would have given everything I had.
So what I THINK happened that got me out of the game :
a) Played a lot the night before, didn't sleep a lot and therefore was far from the top physically
b) I'm allergic to pollens, and it's springtime, so my allergy is sucking down a lot of my energy to fight... And it affects my general mood in general
c) The other local team had unfortunately to play there as well, so we had to play on another table in another place
d) Light sucked hard, hard to see clearly the ball while it was moving, as we switched side it got better for this point
e) Ground was not perfectly flat so it affected a lot our passing game
f) One guy of the facing team is a real ball sucker, you know the type of guy, seems whatever you do or happens on the table the ball ends up on his 3 bar 80% of the time. (Thing is usually I am that guy on the table
![Tongue :P](https://www.foosball.com/forum/Smileys/ichat/tongue.gif)
)
g) Shot really too fast without success
Well that's mainly it, what bugs me the most is that some weeks ago we had kinda the same type of match, I started bragging on myself in the first few games after each missed pass or shot, and at some point I managed to tell myself to stop being negative, to shut up and just focus on the game and it worked really really well, actually the facing team started to loose their nerves and it was really great to see the inner game working that well
![Smiley :)](https://www.foosball.com/forum/Smileys/ichat/smiley.gif)
Maybe as I was a bit down physically and mentally, I should have try to not play that hard, and change a bit my style and game plan to a more slow paced and relaxed game to let my energy last the whole match. Or maybe I should have prepared myself mentally to have those moments where I wouldn't play my best, as I wasn't on top before the match ? Like if I knew I wasn't going to play my best game it would have been easier to me to accept my misses ? Am I expecting to much of my game ? "Do I not know how good I am" ?
![Wink ;)](https://www.foosball.com/forum/Smileys/ichat/wink.gif)
*Our league is played like tennis scorewise, ie we play series of games to 6 points, first to win 6 games wins the set and first to win 2 sets win the match, so a match in 3 sets (33 games max) can last up to 4 hours...