Nice post igball. I think its alot like life. If you wake up thinking your going to have a bad day because you had a bad day yesterday your very likely to have a bad day. In fact it has already started out bad because your already thinking its going to be a bad day.
If you go into the batters box believeing your going to fail , worrying that you might fail , thinking you might fail , your more than likely to fail. And your fears will be realized and validated by your failure. Your fighting yourself.
The exact reverse is also true. If you wake up believeing your going to have a great day then your working in a positive mental state. Your expecting good things to happen to you so good things happen for you. Its already a good day because you have started it off with a positive mental state.
When you get in the batters box believeing good things are going to happen then you are more than likely to have a good ab. Understanding what a good at bat is will assist you in this as well.
Be positive and expect good things to happen. If you have a bad ab flush it and continue to expect good things to happen. The odds are in your favor when you take this approach. Confidence that you will fail will result in failure. Confidence that you will succeed will result in success. Just make sure you understand what success actually is so you dont believe you failed when you actually had success.
I have coached hitters that if they had a bad at bat in their first plate appearance of a game they were done for that game. And that same player if they got a hit in their first ab they were destined to have a great day at the plate. This is a direct result of them feeding off the positive of that first ab or feeding off the negative of that first ab. Then there are guys that can be 0-3 with 3 terrible at bats and you would never know it by looking at their approach in the box , in the field , in the dugout. Or the same guy could be 3-3 and you would never know it either by the way they acted. They were just as good in that 4th at bat regardless of what they had done in the previous at bats.
This is where you want to get to. Hitting is something that you must approach with a flat line approach imo. Remove the emotion and put 100 percent of your focus on that pitch right then and there. Anything that takes 1 percent of your focus away from where it should be needs to be flushed from your system. That includes instruction from the coaches box , stands , dugout. Good luck.