Mental Game - Relaxed Table Tennis

Here are some of mine - I don't really have a serve ritual or any of that stuff, though that will probably change with time.

1.  Avoid frustration over the result of a point - mild disappointment or elation is fine, but excessive emotion, especially negative, can put you out of balance.  On the other hand, only you know what is excessive, because I have seen people tell me that I need to calm down when I am perfectly fine internally.

2.  Practice the same way you would play a match for the most part in terms of emotional level.  In fact, as much as possible, play all your opponents, including those 1000 points below you and those 1000 pts above you, with the same internal emotional state.  

Yes, those below you will give you balls that you can likely finish off, but the key is not to finish them off or to mess around (which is actually ruining your ability to become more consistent in your approach to the game), but to play a stroke that is part of your usual repertoire or to pick a strategy for playing them and to feel the same way playing it as you would if you played it against a better player, though a better player could bring it back and the lower rated player might not.  It doesn't mean you should physically exert every sinew in your body - it just means you should keep your mental and physical effort consistent with how you would play most of your opponents.  Given the balls will be slower, you should require less physical/srtoke effort and that effort should be mostly the same if you get that quality of ball from someone you are rated the same as.

Those above you might give you serves you are unable to read, loop every third ball etc. and put you under pressure, and that is when the relaxed player simply plays the same way against these players as he does against everyone else (as in execute a strategy), while the frustrated player goes for more and complains when he is getting creamed and by and missing balls from a player who he realistically has no chance against.  While you might feel the need to play harder and do things at a perfect level, this should have been determined by the level you had in practice matches - if you feel the need to play harder now, you will probably overhit the ball as you are now playing too consciously.  

This approach will actually help you when playing matches against players who are high rated that you can beat, because your attitude to those matches will stay level no matter the result as long as you can read what your opponents are doing and how they are adapting (or your coach can).  Think more of your level as being what you showed in practice, not something that magically happens at the table.

3.  If there are things you know interfere with your mental state, try to develop strategies to handle them, ideally from within but if necessary from without.  One of the biggest things that used to affect my game was having people cheer for my opponents, because it felt like they were cheering for my mistakes.  In that case, if I had a friend cheer for me, it was helpful, but what I also started doing was getting louder after points I won in those situations because cheering myself kept me involved.

4.  Apply a strategy to the match/points.  Treat every point as a mini-match because that is where the level impact occurs.  Too many players rush to restart the next point after the previous point was over when playing a player where their approach to the point, especially the early stages, can actually make a huge difference.  Usually, this means that these players don't believe in the tactical variety of their game or have never really considered it.  Really, should you be doing the same serve regardless of where your opponent is standing? Should you be standing in the same spot to receive regardless where your opponent is serving?  Are you adjusting to the service patterns that his game has revealed?  Are you adjusting your serve to his position and return patterns?  Again, most of this stuff shows up in practice/matches.

These are the things I work through so far.

You listed some good stuff, thanks.