How to deal with Negative Self-Talk in Sport
Do you, your kid or your athletes have negative self-talk?
“I suck, I am going to fail as usual, I don’t belong, I can’t beat him, we can’t win that game, what if I make a mistake?, I don’t feel great today”, etc…. These are all examples of negative self-talks and some may sound familiar to you.
All these negative self-talks are very a common issue with athletes. For a reason: our brain is wired in a way that tend to fear for the worse. When we are having these thoughts, we act from the amygdala in the primitive lower brain, (which triggers the fight or flight mode). This actually leads to releasing cortisol which will feed even more this reaction entering into a negative spiral. This mechanism had the human kind survive for thousands of years but is less useful when competing in a sport event and the only danger is to perform or not, to win or to lose (unless your life is at risk like in extreme sports).
Negative self-talks will have you focus on what you fear instead of what you want. And where your attention goes, your energy follows. If you keep looking at the ditch when driving, you will end up in the ditch. This is why it is important to be able to identify as soon as possible that negative spiral and break it.
Here are some suggestions on how to handle negative self-talks:
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Develop your awareness of your thoughts.
In The introduction about what mental preparation is , one of the first steps I suggest is to start noticing your thoughts and emotions without judging them, just observing them, in practice and in competition (in the days before, during warm-up, during the event and after). Journaling on a regular basis may help to get clarity and discover some tendencies. Practicing meditation is another great way to develop the awareness of thoughts. This will help to differentiate thoughts and emotions from reality, which is a necessity in order to not be a victim of them anymore. This is the foundation of mental preparation. You can’t address negative thoughts if you are into them and can’t distance yourself from them.
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Identify and isolate the negative self-talk
Once you developed your “thought awareness” muscle, you’ll be able to notice when your thoughts are negative and disempowering. You can identify the thought. For instance: “I am going to fail again”. Some might be more subtle like a swimmer thinking: “I don’t like cold water”. This will unconsciously print into the brain a message of lower performance due to cold water.
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Be specific in your self-talk
Instead of thinking “I am a failure” as a general statement, try and be specific about what you feel is not OK, for instance: “I don’t like playing this opponent”, or “today, I don’t feel at my best”. This will avoid you to see yourself as overall bad or wrong.
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Challenge your talk:
Now it’s time to make a reality check with your thought and challenge it:
- What do you know for sure?
- Is that a fact, or an interpretation?
- Can you really predict what’s going to happen? Actually no. The past doesn’t predict the future, even though your brain wants you to think so. You can for instance remember a time when you had this negative self-talk and things actually happened to go well.
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Relabel it as temporary
These are no more than thoughts. Our mind is generating tens of thousands of thoughts per day. They come and go. If you don’t feed these thoughts by ruminating them and focusing on them, they will just fade away.
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Use a specific words, gesture, or image to disarm it
For instance, imagine the negative thought is a balloon and then, in your mind, blow it up with a needle. Or if you are on a golf course, or a soccer field, grasp a handful of grass, representing the thought, and throw it away .
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Focus on the task at hand
If you focus on the process, the task at hand (your move, your technical gesture, your warm-up, etc…), you will keep your mind busy and prevent it from overthinking.
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Visualize what you want to see happen
Instead of focusing on what you fear, visualize yourself doing perfectly and see what you want to happen. And if the negative thoughts come in, with negative images for instance, pause, rewind and start again to visualize the perfect situation as you want it to be. You can find more details on visualization, also called Mental Imagery in this article.
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Use Positive affirmations
Nature doesn’t like void and our mind can’t be without thoughts, so when you get rid of some negative thoughts, you want to fill the gap created with positive thoughts as a way to prevent the negative thoughts to come back. You can do so by using power words, or Positive Affirmation, such as “I perform well under any circumstances”, or “I am fast and strong”, etc… How to create and use Positive Affirmations will be further detailed in a next article.
A good example of the use of several of these strategies was given by Taïg Khris, a rollerskater, X games winner and triple world champion in an interview: when his mind kept getting out of focus, with a lot of negative thoughts and doubts (what if I miss my figure?, what if I fall?, will I succeed?, will I get injured? etc..), he then repeated to himself only what he had to do (which figures, etc…) and positive words (It’s going to be OK, I will perform etc…), without stopping, constantly. This prevented his negative thoughts to come in by keeping his mind busy with the task at hand (the process) and the positive things he wanted to see happen. He is by the way using the same technique when speaking in front of 1000 of people (repeating what he has to say and incorporating positive words).
As a conclusion, negative self-talks are common and normal in every athlete’s life. You can learn to identify those as quickly as possible to challenge them, see them as temporary thoughts and not the reality, to disarm them and replace them with positive thoughts and with what you want to see happen.
If you want to practice these techniques with a professional mental coach, fill in our contact form and let us know what you would like some support with.