9 Dominant Mindset Shifts Week 5 -‐ Action Plan What is the filter? The filter is a technique any player can use to keep them “in the zone” and in a positive state of mind about their game. It’s incredibly easy to let negative criticism, negative feedback, and poor performance ruin a players career. I know many friends of mine who didn’t understand how to interpret failure and criticism and it cut their career short of where their talent, potential, and work ethic would have taken them. The technique is very simple. When should I use the filter? 1. When you hear feedback or criticism from a coach, parent, player or other external factor, run it through your filter first! 2. When a negative thought pops into your head about your performance or who you are as a player, run it through your filter! How exactly do I use the filter? Whenever you hear negative feedback from a coach or parent OR whenever you hear negative feedback from your self ask yourself this question… What are the facts about the situation? Once you have the facts about the situation then you can decide the right steps of action to improve your performance. For example – if you chase 3 pitches out of the strike zone in your swing, and your coach tells you that you will never play again if you chase 3 pitches out of the strike zone. It could be easy to draw that there must be something wrong with your swing for you to chase all those pitches. Sure, there are some mechanics that will cause your head to move around and hurt your ability to read pitches. But, the correct fact to draw from that poor performance is my ability to read pitches isn’t where it needs to be for my optimal performance. In other words – stand in on bullpens and call out balls and strikes to create more awareness of the strike zone. Work on picking the ball up as early as possible from the pitchers hand. And most importantly getting negative feedback or having negative results does not mean you can’t do it, or that you “suck.” It means you are human and have skills to work on in your baseball game. That’s it!