Welcome to The Mental Arena, a newsletter where I share mental performance tools and pressure-tested insights to help you build confidence, strengthen your focus, and develop the mindset to win—in sport and life.

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How to Get Out of Your Own Head

read time 3 minutes

I can spot what an athlete needs to hear in seconds.
But when I’m in my own head? Suddenly, things feel messy.

Maybe you’ve felt it too. A teammate or colleague asks for advice, and the wisdom pours as easily as water from a faucet.
But when it’s your problem? Your mind spins like a merry-go-round, your thoughts slip away like sand through an hourglass, and your energy feels trapped—like a marathon runner training inside a closet.

We rise by lifting others. But what happens in the silence, when no one is around? When the weight left to lift is your own?

That’s Solomon’s Paradox.

King Solomon was known as one of the wisest men in history. He offered brilliant counsel to others, yet in his personal life, he fell into destructive choices. He could see clearly for others but not for himself.

We fall through the same trapdoor. And it costs us clarity under pressure.

Mental Lesson: The Observing Eye

Seventeenth-century samurai Miyamoto Musashi drew the same distinction Solomon lived.

• The perceiving eye is weak. It dramatizes, judges, and exaggerates.
• The observing eye is strong. It sees things as they are.

The first half—“this happened”—is objective.
The second—“it’s bad”—is perception.

Our perceiving eye drags in baggage, emotions, and “what it means”.
The observing eye strips it down to fact: this happened.

Musashi built this discipline to win sword fights against multiple armed opponents, sometimes without even carrying a sword. For him, clarity was survival. For us, it’s freedom from distorted thinking.

When we use the perceiving eye on our own mistakes, we collapse under judgment. When we shift to the observing eye, we gain clarity.

That’s how you escape Solomon’s Paradox: separate fact from story.

Arena Skill: Escaping the Paradox

1. Create Space

Between stimulus and response lies a choice. Viktor Frankl’s famous reminder shows us that in the pause, clarity lives.

• Pause: Delay reaction.
• Respond: Feel the emotion but don’t let it dictate action.
• Engage: Re-enter with objectivity.

The space you create between event and reaction is the difference between perceiving and observing.

2. Zoom Out

Zoom out and ask:

• If my best friend had this problem, what advice would I give them?
• How would I view this moment in 5 years? 10?
• What actually happened, stripped of story or judgment?

Zooming out helps you trade perception for observation.

3. Train the Muscle

Objectivity is a skill, and like any skill, it grows under tension and repetition.

Next Rep: From Perceiving to Observing

Practice flipping the lens:

1. Strip it to One Line Write only the fact. Example: “I missed the shot.” Everything else is perception.
2. Time Travel Technique Ask: “How will I view this in five years?” This reframes the moment as temporary instead of final.
3. Be a Scientist Describe the event like data: “An athlete attempted 10 reps, completed 6, adjusted after feedback.” Neutral language = objective lens.

Final Buzzer

Solomon’s Paradox shows up when we can’t see our own story straight. Musashi’s observing eye shows us how to fix it.

• Strip to One Line = separate fact from story
• Time Travel = zoom out
• Be a Scientist = observing eye in action

Your wisdom is already there. You just tend to lose it when you add yourself to the equation.

Challenging you head-on and always in your corner,
​— Coach VJ

Thanks for reading. Your next issue of The Mental Arena drops September 30.

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Resources:

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