To Be Unpresent

"I'm wholly unprepared, so I become unpresent."
Andre Agassi 
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As an athlete, to be "unpresent" on the field or court is probably the most significant indication that you are not mentally prepared to play your best game. To be unpresent means that you are not focused, are probably not concentrating on what you control, and are thinking or worrying about past events or future expectations. Your mind is anywhere or everywhere but where it should be; which is with what is happening right now and right in front of you.    

To be unpresent means that you can not tune out all of the irrelevant distractions surrounding you, and are unable to tune into what you clearly see and are doing at any given moment or game-time situation. Being unpresent means that you have mentally and emotionally pulled yourself out of the game. Your head and thoughts are simply not in the game.

You become unpresent when you start playing in a game and are still thinking about the last game that you lost. You become unpresent when you are thinking about a bad call that the refs made five minutes ago. You become unpresent when you are wondering if you will win the game and it's still the first half. You become unpresent when you are looking for who's on the sidelines or stands watching your game. You become unpresent when you keep looking at the scoreboard. You become unpresent when you focus on how you feel instead of what you see.

Do you have any problems with being unpresent? Do coaches or teammates talk to you, and then you ask them to repeat themselves because you weren't listening? Do you look away from the field or court and miss something that happened in the game? Do you get called for a foul or penalty because you didn't hear the ref blow his whistle to stop the game?

If you are one of those athletes who is often unpresent in practice or a game, then you need to step back and take a serious look at what you are not doing in your mental preparation to be present, and think about what could be taking you away from your mental game.

If you would like to figure out how to do this, drop me at email at risson1954@gmail.com.