Most of us know that we can perform at a higher level. We know we can be better. We've become frustrated with under performing. The most significant challenges we usually face are the mental ones and not the physical ones. We know that we sometimes sabotage and limit ourselves. We also suspect that there are ways in which we unconsciously sabotage ourselves because we don't know what we don't know. The key challenge is that we don't know how to stop sabotaging ourselves. Intellectual knowledge is helpful, but isn't sufficient to make deep changes. We've tried everything we know and it isn't enough. We need something deeper and more powerful.

There's a deeper way of knowing and a deeper self-knowledge that we find when we develop a meditation practice. We find our center where we are in touch with our deep wisdom and passion. When we live, train, and compete from our center, we find more clarity about our strengths and weaknesses. We learn that the barriers that appear to be holding us back are actually invitations to develop, change, improve, and tap into the deep strength that we find inside in order to follow through on what will help us more forward as athletes and people.

The root word for "inspired" is "spirit." Our spirit is the deepest part of us that invites us to train and compete with passion and skill. When we learn to meditate effectively, we gain access to powerful resources that reside in our subconscious mind. In time, we learn to follow our spirit and its wisdom. We learn to unleash our potential and perform with all of our ability. When we perform as inspired athletes, we begin a journey of self-discovery to find out just how good we can be.

This book is based on Mind Games: Daily Meditations for Great Athletes. Rather than being organized by calendar, this book is reorganized by topic and chapter. This book includes new chapters on motivation and leadership for athletes.

There's a crucial difference between reading about our mental game and improving our mental game. Having knowledge is useful, but it isn't sufficient to cause change. We need to apply our essential knowledge to make important changes and develop ourself so that we can be the athletes we desire to be. This book gives you a powerful way of bridging the gap between knowledge and effective action.

For many of us athletes, performing at a high level or "in the zone" is an unpredictable event. We don't know when or why it happens. After we have learned to meditate effectively, we recognize that the experiences that we have while meditating are similar to the experiences we have while performing in the zone. That's because performing in the zone is a meditative state. We can learn to perform in the zone more often by learning to meditate in the right ways. When we learn to meditate, we learn to manage ourself in ways that are conducive to optimal performance. That's what this book teaches you to do.

This book assumes that you don't have experience with meditation. This form of meditation might be different than you think. This form of meditation is simple to learn and practice. Each of the meditations in the book has some thoughts for your reflection and has a unique affirmation at the end, which you use for your meditation. You mindfully read the reflection and then meditate on the affirmation. With this book, you have a program for developing your mental approach to sports in as little as 15 minutes per day.