The quality of mind is called PRIDE

Personal pride .

All great athletes have been driven by pride, but there is a difference between ego and pride. Ego can dri ve a man to shine; to star at times. Ego drive can lift you to flashes of brilliance, particularly if everything is going well -but ego-strength compared to the strength of pride is a bubble which can pop quite easily.

Ego-strength is easily defeated by the pure and the persistent strength of pride. Pride is not an occasional thing -pride has the qual i ty of persistence -pride keeps you going even when your team is beaten .
It is a personal thing -IT IS SELF RESPECT , and it refrains to give in to self-pity. It refuses to give in to frustration; it lifts you above disappointment, it sees through pettiness -blaming the breaks -the umpire -team mates.
Pride or self-respect help you see through yourself -it makes you beat yourself and beating yourself is what sport is about. And the man that really beats himself on the playing ground of sport, beats himself on the playing ground of life .
One way to develop pride is to appreciate that fact that you already have far more potential locked away inside you than you realise. Not only in sporting abilities, but in all abilities.
If we could measure your potential, and put a ring around the size of it, and then measure your self-image, we would find that the size of the self- image would fall far short of the size of your real potential. If such a thing as the measurement of potential were possible; and in my opinion it is not. You cannot put a complete limit on potential.
Now, your self-image is the picture you have of you. This self-image has been conditioned into your mind as a result of all your experiences in life -your failures, your successes -what other people have said to you – particularly at a very young age when your cri tical faculty was not very well-developed. And it is sufficient to say that most of us see ourselves as being far less than what we have the potential to be .
However, almost fanatically we live-up’ to this picture -but it is possible through a series of successes, to enlarge this self-irnage and possible to look at ourselves objectively and undo this negative restrictive conditioning , freeing ourselves to become as great as we were intended to be. It is possible through a series of successes, to enlarge this self- image and so operate on a margin larger and more successful scale .
To do this you must develop the appreciation of the fact -this fact being that you are much bigger than you currently see yourself .
It is virtually impossible to develop great personal pride if you have a self-image which tells you that you are limited -or inferior -for the athlete who sees himself as inferior will see himself as unworthy of victory and, curiously, often subconsciously will find a way to fail, even when he could win.
Fortunately for us all, the self-image is not a thing we are born with, like the colour of our eyes or hair. But it is made or conditioned into our minds , and is therefore an attitude or a belief we have accepted and we can challenge it -undo it, change it.
We can change i t probably not overnight, though sometimes we can change instantly in some areas .
To Summarise :
( 1 ) Pride is something which separates the consistent from the inconsistent . ( 2) There is a great difference between pride and ego .
(3 Your self-image sets the boundaries of possible and impossible.
( 4) The self-image can be changed by the realisation that you have the
potential to be far greater than you presently think .
(5) Challenging your present self-limiting ideas is essential.
To achieve great heights requires also constant dedication for a great deal
of time -constant effort. Personal sacrifice is required for athletic excellence.
Dedication means devoting one’s life to a course -putting that course before anything else .
Dedication is a willingness to give everything you have in you in an effort to achieve your goals and dreams .
It was wri tten that c success is something in a jealous sui tor that will not tolerate distracting influences’ .Gi ve an ambi tion your total attention and its success is assured.
If you have too many irons in the fire, or spread yourself too thin, then you should reassess your priori ties, or something will suffer -ei ther you , or the realisation of your goals .
Having dedicated yourself you now must be prepared to work, for no-one ever became a champion without a great deal of work. And for most of us that means being willing to work just that much harder than the other fellow.
Now you must set up a daily programme of exacting and demanding practice to develop and then sharpen your skills -then you must resolve to let nothing stand in your way in your efforts to complete them.
If something very important comes up which must be met, then arrange circumstances so as you can do both .
Don’t delay, start today -if you wai t for the most convenient time to start something then you are going to gi ve other equally dedicated people as you one considerable start .
Finally, give 100% of yourself all the time in practice -in games as in anything else that prepares you to complete .

Supplied by Dr Laurie Prosser