mind block — the crow inside our head... (Picture by Gus Leonisky).

Sam Kerr missed a penalty shot by miles… What happened? I am not a psychologist but I know how to remove mind blocks. Subconscious mind attitudes can be a retardant or be obstacles to achievement. On TV, Sam did not appear to be in a pretty place before the kick...

The Matildas are out of the Women's World Cup after a 4-1 penalty shoot-out loss to Norway in the Round of 16, but they can justifiably feel aggrieved at the refereeing in the game.

Had all the 50-50 decisions not gone against them, they may well have booked a ticket to the quarter-finals.

"I'm not surprised because the refereeing has been questionable the whole tournament," red-card recipient Alanna Kennedy said.

"In terms of the rules and the decisions I think there needs to be more clarity around it, for everyone."

Here are the big calls by referee Riem Hussein and her team that went against the Australians in the dramatic and controversial encounter.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-23/the-matildas-were-on-the-receving...

-------------------------------------

Okay… let’s visit this annoying space where "we’re in two minds” without knowing it. See Wikipedia:

In psychology, the subconscious is the part of the mind that is not currently in focal awareness. The word subconscious represents an anglicised version of the French subconscient as coined by the psychologist Pierre Janet (1859–1947), who argued that underneath the layers of critical-thought functions of the conscious mind lay a powerful awareness that he called the subconscious mind.
Sigmund Freud first used the term "subconscious" in 1893 to describe associations and impulses that are not accessible to consciousness. He later abandoned the term in favour of unconscious, noting the following: 

"If someone talks of subconsciousness, I cannot tell whether he means the term topographically – to indicate something lying in the mind beneath consciousness – or qualitatively – to indicate another consciousness, a subterranean one, as it were. He is probably not clear about any of it. The only trustworthy antithesis is between conscious and unconscious."

In 1896, in Letter 52, Freud introduced the stratification of mental processes, noting that memory-traces are occasionally re-arranged in accordance with new circumstances. In this theory, he differentiated between Wahrnehmungszeichen ("Indication of perception"), Unbewusstein ("the unconscious") and Vorbewusstein ("the Preconscious"). From this point forward, Freud no longer used the term "subconscious" because, in his opinion, it failed to differentiate whether content and the processing occurred in the unconscious or preconscious mind.
Cripes! We could be in four mind sets at the same time! How confused we're going to be!...

--------
This is fascinating but so far it does not help in the management of “mind blocks”.
As soon as one gets a “contrariety”, one can react in a several ways. For example when Kerr was tripped (was she tripped or did she fake it?) this should have resulted in a penalty. It did not. Frustration comes in the mind. Her begging for a penalty only made the problem linger far longer.

Whether we should have been awarded or not, we feel that we’ve been hard done by. This create a cascade of emotional states in the subconscious or whatever preconscious mind we care to call it… Straight away this creates a strong hormonal response (male or female is irrelevant) which on the whole is going to be negative — and "cut our legs". It will downgrade our will to “fight” or stay positive. 

Here one of the positive attitude to adopt could be: "Fuck this, I am going to show them what I can do" and become positively angry rather than be frustrated. 
It was quite amazing that the Socceroo belles (the Matildas) managed to go to a penalty shootout. The referee had robbed them of one of their players by awarding a red card — in the same circumstances as "Kerr being tripped” (or not).

Before the Penalty shoot-out, I hoped the coaches and the Australian officials would not play Sam Kerr as their first player. I KNEW SHE WAS GOING TO MISS THE GOAL. Second, her state of mind showed on her face. She had been subconsciously frustrated since her being tripped. She looked at the ball with a subconscious mind, not a positive mind set. And she kicked the ball without care where it went. Oh, she could have cared in her conscious mind, but her subconscious had already given up!… This is typical of mind blocks, especially when one is tired after 120 minutes of relentless activity. 


How to combat this lowering of “awareness” is difficult and personal. 

For me, I would do a quick mind reset and use the last remnant of energy to reawaken POSITIVE ANGER in order to get this extra shot of adrenaline that gets us over the hump. It was my opinion that Sam needed a boost, which at this stage could not find within herself. Had another player started first and passed the Norwegian keeper, this would have pumped her up a bit more. The next one in the net would bring her counscious mind to “forget” what mental state she had been pushed into by her “subconscious”… At position 5, she would have kicked her penalty goal. At position one, she could not. For me, this is simple psychology... Coaches beware...

I could be wrong of course. Anyway, despite this, job well done. 
The crow — some people would call it the black dog erroneously — inside our head is not depression, but a negative feeling that whatever we do we're going to be defeated. This is where we need to care and make our energising hormonal reactivity care, with a strong shot of adrenalin creating our positive anger..

Oh, and a whole, psychopaths and sociopaths do not have this problem. They will maintain positive anger (action) regardless of results, including damages to others. This is why we also need "to care" positively.