You know what your problem is? You know why you can't land that oh-so annoying kickflip down the local 3? Do you really understand the reasons behind your failure of repeated flatground heelflips??? Well the answer is, my good friends, you're fucked in the head.

Or more to the point, you're not.

There are two modes of mind.. the "skateboarding" mode, and the "pedestrian" mode.. allow me to give an example.

Jonny Chickenballs wants to ollie this nice big five (shudder) set outside his house, it has nice runup, nice landing, and most importantly of all, it's not too big..

Little Jonny rolls up..

..little Jonny pops...

..little Jonny floats like a turd on a frozen lake..

...little Jonny is about to land...

Disaster!! He kicked the board away!! And why? Because Jonny's brain switched into pedestrian mode at juuust the wrong time..

Basically.. while you're rolling up, popping etc, you're all geared up to do the trick, right? But at some point, the realisation hits you that if you fuck up you could, and most probably will get hurt.. what would a pedestrian, a non-skateboarding regular guy do? He'd get the fuck off the skateboard and try and put his feet back on the ground where they belong, that's what he'd do.
The trick to landing tricks (hur hur) is to work your head around avoiding this switch.. (I'd like to note, that different people reach this point of no return (PONR) at different points.. some people switch as soon as they pop, others nearly make it.. only to change their mind at the last second).. basically, you have to "keep your mind on the shit you want and off the shit you don't" as a famous Mouly once said.
A common mistake is concentrating too hard.. I must admit, I do this alot.. basically, thinking if you don't catch the board at this particular height at this speed landing at this angle, that you're doomed.. well it's often not so, you can get away with more than you would believe.
I find a good way of making myself land a trick, is to look at the stairs or gap, whatever, and imagine myself doing it, go over it in my head, even down to the way my legs move and the way my shoulders will turn, and how it's gonna feel.. that way when I do it, I know what's going on and I feel in control, other ideas are playing a song in your head to take your mind off it (I find listening to music while trying something particularly scary often helps) or maybe taking a break for a few minutes, then going back and trying to get it straight away, the more you think about it, the harder it will be.
There's no hard in trying different methods either, sometimes you simply need to stand up to yourself, and brace yourself for the PONR, and when it comes simply grow some balls and think "fuckit" and just go for it, I'd say that's the all out gnarball approach..

The point of this article (I think) is to show that skateboarding is a headfuck, almost everybody that you know that skates anything from stairs to ledges to rails, will tell you that in some way or another, you will need to learn to control your mind..

I think that's all.. it's pretty fucking pointless if you ask me, but whatever, I may add a revised version later, if I'm that bored.