14d • Sports Performance Zone!
What would happen if every situation in the game passed through us without obstacles?
When no personal emotion, mental noise, or internal judgment interferes, the experiences of training and competition are processed with total clarity and fluidity. The athlete’s perceptual system is designed precisely for this: to read what is happening on the field, experience it fully, and then let it go so you can be completely present for the next action.
When this system works well, you are well. Everything flows: one action after another, one reading after another. Every play, every decision, every stimulus in the match is a gift that trains you and makes you better. Just like a well-constructed play, experiences move through you, awakening your focus, your intuition, and your ability to react.
In reality, every experience on the pitch —a mistake, a success, a comment from the coach, a duel won, a controlled error— leaves a mark on you. It shapes you. It makes you grow. Your athletic mind and heart expand, and you become stronger, more stable, and more aware. If experience is the best coach, nothing compares to the power of living your matches with full attention.
The purpose of being an athlete is not to control every play, but to fully experience each moment that is happening to you, let it go, and prepare for the next one. In a match or training session, hundreds of micro-experiences appear: stimuli, sensations, decisions, emotions. They arrive, pass through you, and move on. That is the ideal system.
If you could be this present —the way truly conscious footballers play— every experience would touch you deeply. Every action would feel meaningful because you would be completely open to the information of the game, and your sporting life would flow through you without blockages.
But this is not what happens to most athletes. Most carry unprocessed emotions: frustration, fear of failing, external pressure, self-criticism, expectations. These emotions interrupt the natural flow of performance. The challenge is to return to the state where you allow each experience to train you, move through you, and free you —so you can perform with presence, lightness, and fullness.
Football-adapted text version from book ´The Unthetered Sould´.
Selena Salas
Professional Footballer & High Performance Sports Psychologist.
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What would happen if every situation in the game passed through us without obstacles?
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