The article “Mental Preparation of High- Level Athletes” by Kayt Sukel explains that a lot of sports or activities that take mental stamina are dependent on more of the mental status of the player. Meanwhile the article “The Brain- Training Secrets of Olympic Athletes” published by the Huffington Post and written by Carolyn Gregoire clarifies that this ability to be mentally prepared to face any conflict takes years to cultivate. These articles relate to the universal theme of power because these sources explain how this state of focus in the mind has the ability to influence whether or not the athlete can properly play, and this state of clearness can influence aspiring athletes to follow this example of thinking. These articles also help visualize how different conflicts can form different mental hurdles for players and cause their abilities to lack focus. So far into the research for my topic I learned that athletes don’t really “care” about the actual winning step but the anticipation for this winning step which is quite interesting to read about. During the exploration stage of the research process we changed the topic a bit. Initially we were going to have our project based on sport rivalries and how they affect communities but there wasn’t a lot of information to gather or talk about so now we’re making our topic about what it takes mentally (psychologically) to be an athlete. This change in topic isn’t too much of a set back though, in fact we’ve found a lot of informative articles on this subject and I feel like it’s a good start. Well any information that talks about mental health and it’s connections to activities that involve competitive mindsets. So far the collaboration part of the project is going quite well! We’ve made it so that work is split evenly but still in a way that we are properly communicating with one another. Of course we both have to remind each other to not procrastinate since that’s something that we don't want to do to much of since it can cause a major problem but I highly doubt it will.