some good points being made in here - its making for interesting reading.
I sparred yesterday and realised that my effectivness was significantly affected by my thoughts.
I found that very simple concepts could raise my game massivly depending on how immune i was to being distracted from it.
firstly i found that having a plan before i started the round automatically put me at an advantage - because i didnt have to waste reaction time thinking about what to do. the plans i am talking about are nothing special - very basic infact things you hear corner men saying all the time during fights - like get the jab working - or moveforward when hitting .
The reason i think this is so useful is because it gives the mind a direction/goal - i read a quote once from a guy called maxwell maltz which said the mind is like a bicycle - if it is moving in a direction it is very easy to balance, but if you try staying still on it ballancing is very difficult.
i think the point im making is that the mind likes goals. without them it feels lost , and will start to look for goals or threats - in sparring i guess that could equate to being so preoccupied with geting hit/hurt that you cant be proactive.
once a plan has been set - i think the next challenge is not being distracted- again the way the mind works is to follo w a plan unless it percieves that there is a threat to the bodies safety - so the struggle with the mind will be to constantly remind it to stick to the plan and not get sucked into the rhythm or plan of your opponent.
this happens to me all the time. ill start a round with the intention of throwing no less than 2 shots each exchange-to get out of the habbit of just throwing single shots, and at the end of the round ill realize that i totally abandoned my plan after 1 min and went back to just single shot counterpunching!
to put it into a nutshell - i find having a very simple plan for each round very useful. the bulk of the mind work then becomes not being distracted from it .
Theres a good book by chess grandmaster Gary Kasperov - called how chess is like life (i think) it covers a lot of mental stratergies and applications and how they can be used to increase the power and effectivness of the mind.

If i were a bit more organized i might prepare a list of plans - say for a 5 round spar that would look like this
r1 - establish the jab
r2 - change levels (head and body)
r3- work on 1-2 and 1-2-1 combos
r4- try to get on the inside
r5 - throw no less than 2 punches at a time