How to bring your focus back when your mind starts to drift

Heeyyyyy gaels, this is Emily, hope everyone is having a lovely stress free day.

Today we are going to talk about how you bring your focus back in a game when your mind starts to drift.

Have you ever felt physically ready for a game but your mind feels all over the place? Does your mind jump from one thing to another? Are you telling yourself one minute that you got this, you’re ready, you’re fit… and the next you’re thinking what if I miss a goal or a point? What if I’m not fit enough? What if my marker is better than me?

And then the game starts and you’re never fully in it. You’re in the wrong positions when the ball is coming down your side, you’re trying to look like you’re doing something but really you’re just running in circles. Then when the ball does get into your hands, you don’t know what to do with it. You have that one second delay where you’re trying to decide… and then you get blocked down and it’s gone.

This is not random. This isn’t luck of the draw on the day as to who plays well and who doesn’t.

It’s how your mind and your attention works under pressure.

This can show up at different levels for different players. One person’s mind might drift at a lower level of pressure than someone else’s. You might even catch yourself thinking, why are other players so consistent and I’m up and down? Or feeling a bit jealous because they seem to just perform every day.

That is completely normal. Everyone experiences this. Even the big dogs.

What separates players isn’t whether their mind drifts… it’s how they deal with it when it does.

[TO FILL IN — STRUGGLE / MOMENT OF REALISATION]

Add a real example from your playing career where you noticed your mind drifting badly in a match or training session. This could be a game where you felt overwhelmed, a moment you hesitated and it cost a score or turnover, a time you questioned yourself mid-game, or how it felt emotionally (pressure, frustration, confusion).

And I’ll be honest, I am not coming at this as someone who always had it figured out. Over the last couple of seasons, I was consistent… but consistent in struggling mentally rather than performing well. I genuinely thought at one point that I might have to quit. I felt like I was a burden, like I was letting my team down, and that they’d be better off without me.

But at the same time, I loved playing. The thought of stepping away made me really sad. So I was stuck in this horrible loop of anxiety and doubt, mixed with not wanting to give up the game.

[TO FILL IN — LOW POINT]

Add something very honest and human here. A specific breakdown moment after a match, driving home after a game thinking you were done, feeling like you didn’t belong on the pitch, or the physical/emotional signs of anxiety (nausea, shaking, overthinking).

It took a lot of reflection and learning about my own mind to understand what was actually going on.

And what I found is this:

When pressure increases, your brain starts prioritising what feels important, not what actually is important.

So instead of focusing on the game, your attention goes to things like: don’t mess up, people are watching, what if I miss, what if I let my team down.

And even though you’re still playing, part of your attention is gone from the moment you’re in.

What Attention Control Theory says

This is where something called Attention Control Theory comes in.

Without getting too technical, it basically explains that when anxiety kicks in, your attention gets pulled away from what you’re trying to do and towards anything that feels like a threat. That could be external things like the crowd or your opponent, or internal things like your own thoughts and worries.

So instead of being locked into the play, your mind is split.

And this is why performance starts to feel harder.

One of the biggest things to understand is that anxiety doesn’t always make you play badly. It just makes everything less efficient. You might still make the right decisions, still get on the ball, still do good things… but it feels like so much more effort. You’re thinking more, reacting slower, and everything feels less natural.

That hesitation you feel? That split second delay?

That’s your attention being pulled in two directions.

[TO FILL IN — HESITATION / IN-GAME MOMENT]

Add a real moment where you clearly remember: having time but freezing, taking too long to decide, being blocked or tackled or losing possession, knowing immediately that you hesitated.

You see the option, but at the same time there’s doubt or worry creeping in. And in a game as quick as ladies Gaelic football, that half a second is the difference between getting a shot away or getting blocked down.

It’s not that you don’t have the skill. It’s that your mind isn’t fully on the play.

Your body feels it too

Another thing that’s important, and something I didn’t realise for a long time, is that anxiety doesn’t just affect your thoughts. It affects your body as well. You can become more tense, your timing can be slightly off, your touch mightn’t feel as clean. So you might mis-hit a pass or mistime a tackle, and you think it’s your ability, but it’s not. It’s your system under pressure.

This is why those big moments feel the hardest. Taking a free, having a shot, making that final pass. They require precision. They require you to be fully present. And when your attention drifts, even slightly, you feel it straight away.

[TO FILL IN — PRESSURE MOMENT]

A powerful one. You could include a missed free or shot under pressure, a big game moment where execution didn’t match ability, or how your body felt (tight, rushed, shaky).

Another big one, and I know so many of you will relate to this, is becoming very aware of yourself during the game. You start thinking about how you’re playing, what people think of you, whether you’re doing enough. You’re not just playing anymore, you’re watching yourself play.

That self-focus pulls you even further away from the game.

Instead of reading what’s happening around you, you’re stuck in your own head. And that slows everything down. Your decisions, your reactions, your movement.

Mental energy matters

Something else that plays into all of this is your mental energy. Some days you can deal with pressure better than others, and that’s not random. If you’re tired, stressed, or mentally drained, you have less capacity to control your attention. So when anxiety kicks in, it hits harder and it’s more difficult to bring yourself back.

So when you put all of this together, it explains a lot.

It explains why you can train really well but struggle in matches. It explains why you can know exactly what to do but not do it in the moment. It explains why some players look so composed. Not because they don’t feel pressure, but because they’re better at keeping their attention on the right things.

The most important takeaway

You do not need to quit. You do not need to remove pressure to feel okay again.

The goal is to become aware of where your attention is, and bring it back to something you can control.

Because losing focus under pressure is normal. It’s part of being human and part of competing.

The difference is getting quicker at catching it and having something to bring yourself back.

You are not aiming to be perfect. There is no such thing as a perfect player. Your attention will drift, especially under pressure. The aim is to recognise it and bring it back quicker each time.

That is what separates players.

I’ll also be breaking a few of these down over on Instagram, not all of them, just a few to get you started 😉

References

Eysenck, M. W., Derakshan, N., Santos, R., & Calvo, M. G. (2007). Anxiety and Cognitive Performance: Attentional Control Theory.
Wong, I. (2013). The Impact of Anxiety on Processing Efficiency: Implications for Attentional Control Theory. The Open Behavioral Science Journal, 6, 7–15.
Coombes, S. A., Higgins, T., Gamble, K. M., Cauraugh, J. H., & Janelle, C. M. Attentional Control Theory: Anxiety, Emotion, and Motor Planning.
Judah, M. R., Grant, D. M., Mills, A. C., & Lechner, W. V. (2013). The Neural Correlates of Impaired Attentional Control in Social Anxiety: An ERP Study of Inhibition and Shifting. Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
Englert, C., & Bertrams, A. (2015). Integrating Attentional Control Theory and the Strength Model of Self-Control. Frontiers in Psychology, 6:824.

Looking for practical tools to use this in real matches?

Go to the Gael Performance Toolkit for practical tools related to this article.

Open Gael Performance Toolkit