What Are You Actually In Control Of?

One of the hardest things for athletes and coaches to learn is that not everything that matters is actually within your control. We spend a lot of time thinking about outcomes because outcomes are what we ultimately care about. We want to win the game, shoot the score we know we're capable of, make the right decision, have our team perform, or get the result we worked for. But the more attention we give to things we can't control, the less attention we have available for the things we can. That doesn't mean the outcome doesn't matter. It means we have to understand where our influence actually begins and ends.

Control Gets Confused With Outcome

It's easy to feel like you're in control when things are going well. You're playing well, the decisions are working, your team is responding, and the result is moving in the direction you want. But the moment something changes, you realize how little control you actually had over the outcome. An opponent makes an incredible play. A bad bounce changes the game. A referee makes a call you don't agree with. You hit what felt like a great shot and it doesn't go where you expected. None of those things mean you shouldn't care about the result. They simply remind you that caring about something and controlling it are two very different things.

I see athletes get into trouble when they start spending their mental energy trying to control the uncontrollable. They're thinking about the score, what the other team is doing, what a coach might think, whether a teammate is going to make a mistake, or what will happen if they don't perform. It feels like they're preparing themselves for the moment, but they're often just giving their attention to things they can't directly influence. The more they try to control the outcome, the further they can get from the actions that actually give them a chance to create it.

Focus On Your Part

The better question isn't, "How do I make sure this works out?" It's, "What is mine to do right now?" That question brings you back to something useful. You may not control the score, but you control how you respond to the score. You may not control what your opponent does, but you control how you prepare for the next play. You may not control whether the shot goes in, but you control the decision, the routine, and the commitment you bring to the shot.

That distinction matters because control is less about having certainty and more about knowing where to place your attention. The best competitors I've worked with aren't necessarily the people who feel the most in control. They're the people who are able to identify what belongs to them and stay committed to it even when everything around them becomes uncertain. They don't need the environment to cooperate before they can compete well.

Let Go Without Letting Go

Sometimes athletes hear "focus on what you can control" and interpret it as not caring about the outcome. I don't think that's the goal at all. You should care. You should want to win. You should want to perform well. You should want the work you've put in to produce the result you're hoping for. Letting go of control doesn't mean letting go of commitment.

It means understanding that your job is to give your best attention to the things that actually belong to you. When you do that, you aren't guaranteed a particular outcome. That's the difficult part. You can make a great decision and still get a bad result. You can prepare incredibly well and still lose. You can execute exactly what you intended and still not get the outcome you wanted. But when you consistently focus on what you can control, you give yourself the best opportunity to respond well to whatever happens next.

I think that's one of the most important parts of the mental game. We're not trying to create an environment where everything goes our way. We're learning how to compete when it doesn't. The score will change. Other people will make decisions. Things will happen that you didn't expect. The question is whether you allow those things to take your attention away from the part of the competition that still belongs to you.

You don't control everything that happens to you, but you always have some responsibility for what you do next. That's where your power is. Not in controlling the outcome, but in recognizing what is yours to control and having the discipline to stay there.