First, notice the language in your brain. Is it helping or hurting? Does it make you tense or loose? Awareness is a key to success.

Then, embrace controllable variables. These may enter your mind, but remember “garbage in, garbage out.” In other words, you can practice steering your thoughts to the important variables of sailing fast. You can influence your thoughts, but not control them. And over time, you can form new habits in thinking.

If you’re going to play mind games with yourself, play games that work for you, not against you. I often think of golfers who have told me, “I do great on the back 9, but I’m lousy on the front 9.” To which I respond, “Why don’t you pretend the front 9 is the back 9?” Voilà! Their game often improves.

Use imagery on and off the racecourse. Visualize steps leading to success (strategy, boatspeed, boathandling, tactics) and steps to finishing successful. Allow yourself to feel changes in your body and with your emotions as you utilize imagery. Making it “real” makes it more effective for a slew of reasons.

Picture what you want to happen, rather than what you want to avoid. Your mind programs your body for action. It’s OK for fears of failure to come and go, but allow for more repetitions of what you want. More importantly, picture the steps involved.

Practice mental skills. These are like any other skills. Could you imagine having good roll tacks without practicing them? Mental skills are no different; they should be practiced along the way without stress, so they can be better utilized under stress.

Tim Herzog is a Certified Consultant with the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. His land-locked practice, Reaching Ahead is in Bozeman, Mont., and he often works with sailors from afar, using Skype, phone, and e-mail. He’s an alumnus of St. Mary’s College and Tabor Academy, and he’s the former head coach of the Boston College Sailing Team.