The mental muscle or mental strength aspects of focus have three key traits or behaviors:

1. Ambition - Do you want to excel? Do you have the killer instinct?
2. Ego - Healthy ego Vs Bloated ego, which one is yours?
3. Motivation - What makes you tick?

We will talk about the first two in this article.

¨ Ambition - Killer ambition, Killer instinct

Ambition is the need to excel at what you do and to reach the pinnacle of success in your profession. Killer ambition is an all-consuming need to achieve - you eat, sleep, and dream victory and success. You work at a feverish pace to achieve your goals.

Killer instinct is good if it is not vicious, but rather it is actually channeled toward the use of techniques and method to overpower an opponent. Killer instinct has to be focused and intuitive enough to make use of the best techniques, at the right moment, with the right level of intensity to completely vanquish your opponent. However, the killer instinct or heightened aggressiveness has to be sustained throughout the round. Piecemeal aggression will not work. Piecemeal aggression is a result of reactive behavior. For aggression to truly work, you have to initiate the aggressive moves and continue your stance through the length of the bout.

When you have a burning desire to achieve, every win becomes important to you and you will not let up in your assault. Killer instinct is a high level of aggression channeled in an intelligent manner to seize the moment and ensure a win.

Aim High: The ability to reach for the stars is another facet of ambition, but aims have to tempered with abilities and training. You or your coach will know when you are ready for the next level, when you begin to operate at a higher performance level and outdo the requirements of your current level. More importantly, don't be afraid to dream. It is important to covet championship titles and to try to pick up all the important belts that define success in grappling and combat athletics. But, nothing is ever achieved overnight. A constant endeavor toward a cherished dream will take you places, the places you want to be.

¨ Ego

Your ego is your sense of self-worth. It is easy to let yourself get carried away by the attention you get from squealing fans into imagining yourself with an inflated state of self-importance. You may start thinking too highly of yourself and begin to consider your capabilities way above those of your opponent. You can end up developing an inflated sense of pride and superiority complex over others. While a good self-image and self-esteem are the backbone of a healthy ego, never rest on your laurels, never get carried away by a win, no matter how important it was.

You also have to guard against having your ego bruised too easily. You must learn from lapses or errors and move on; your ego is healthy if you are aware of your capabilities, strengths, and standing in the grappling or combat athletics community and take pride in it without throwing your weight around.

If you display a super ego, chances are that your opponents will train even harder, since they fear you or just to put you in your place. This will actually make matches extremely difficult for you. This, it is in your best interest that you appear balanced and down to earth.

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