15 Steps to Mental Strength in Sports – Part 2
Step 3 – Mastering Negative Thinking and Self Doubt
As you begin your mental strength training you will run into situations that will test you mentally, especially at crunch time…these are negative thinking and self doubts.
In this post I’m going to go over two strategies and specific tactics to help with each strategy.
The two strategies will address:
- Negativity before event. This will address how you handle negative thinking over the course of your season that will help you in your athletic performance.
- Neutralizing negative thinking and self-doubt immediately before and during a competition. This will address what do you when you’re flooded with negative thinking before and during my event so that you can reach your peak performance.
Being negative feels like you got the flu. You feel blah, lack of energy, the world looks gray and you just don’t care. You have a “why bother” attitude.
Negativity thinking and self-doubt leads to failure and quitting.
There is an unbreakable mind-body connection. What you think about will show up in your body. If you are thinking that you’ll perform badly, your body will respond to this commend and your performance will suffer.
This can be best explained as GIGO (garbage in – garbage out). Garbage in, your negative thinking and self-doubt, will lead to garbage out, a poor athletic performance.
The main difference between elite athletes and the rest is the elite athletes don’t entertain the negative thinking…they know they can’t afford the luxury of a negative thought.
They don’t get down on themselves. Sure they get unsupportive thoughts, but they have trained themselves how to use them to their advantage.
Negative thinking has no place for top athletic performance. It’s a set-up for failure.
Get out of the habit of being negative. Nothing ever good comes out of being negative…nothing!
Get into the habit of being positive and thinking supportive thoughts. Negative and positive thinking are just habits and you can decide which habit you want to build.
Shake It Off And Step Up
Let me tell you a little story…
There was a farmer who had an old mule. The mule fell into a deep dry well and began to cry loudly. Hearing his mule cry, the farmer came over and assessed the situation. The well was deep and the mule was heavy. He knew it would be difficult, if not impossible, to lift the animal out.
Because the mule was old and the well was dry, the farmer decided to bury the animal in the well. In this way he could solve two problems: put the old mule out of his misery and have his well filled.
He called upon his neighbors to help him and they agreed to help. To work they went. Shovel full of dirt after shovel full of dirt began to fall on the mule’s back. He became hysterical. Then all of a sudden an idea came to the mule.
Each time they would throw a shovel full of dirt on his back he could shake it off and step up. Shovel full after shovel full, the mule would shake it off and step up. Now exhausted and dirty, but quite alive, the mule stepped over the top of the well and walked through the crowd.
This is how you can handle a negative thought, a bad practice or poor sports performance…you just shake it off and step up.
Way too often we hold on to what has happened to us.
We hold on to it for a week, a month, even years. We cannot shake it loose from our memory. It eats away at us and steals our enthusiasm for the game.
We keep allowing these emotions to be thrown on our backs and if we do nothing, we will be buried deep in the well.
It takes character to stay positive, it takes mental strength, and it takes guts!
So…how do you stay positive?
Below are the two strategies I mentioned at the beginning of the post. Follow these and you’ll be well on your way to “shaking it off and stepping up.”
Regular Daily Training:
Here we’re going to over several tactics that you can do during your practice and daily activities. Please be patience with the follow…give yourself at least one month.
Assignment One – Investigative Reporting
Spend one week being an investigative reporter. What are you going to investigate? Your negative thinking. Pay very close attention to all the practice and performance self-talk…even during your non sport times.
Keep a journal of all your negative responses to certain situations, especially sports related.
If you think this sounds crazy or difficult, think of this as your “Art of War” and your negative thoughts is your enemy that is trying to infiltrate your mind. The more you know about your enemy the better you can prepare your defense and offense.
Assignment Two – Count Your Thoughts
After you have successfully completed the above task, now simply count all the negative thoughts that go on while you’re practicing. Pick a five-minute time-frame and count all the negative thoughts.
You’ll find that just by counting them, they’ll stop.
What you want here is to do is develop an awareness of when, where, why and how these negative thoughts creep into your thinking that will eventually affect your athletic performance.
Assignment Three – Lawyer For The Defense Exercise
Most native thinking and self-doubt starts with a trigger, let’s label this letter “A.” This trigger then leads to limiting beliefs about your capabilities; let’s label this letter “B.” This in turn leads to consequences, i.e. poor athletic performance; we’ll label this letter “C.”
Most athletes stop here, not you!
What I want you to do is find all the opposing reasons to discredit the negative thinking and self-doubt. I want you to defend yourself. This will be labeled with the letter “D.”
Once you have successfully defended yourself you’ll feel energized and motivated, this is the letter “E”
So the process will look like this:
A = Negative Start with a trigger
B = Negative beliefs
C = Consequences
D = Defense – present info tons of contrary info that will discount the negative thoughts and self-talk
E = feeling energized and motivated
I want you to daily defend yourself!
Assignment Four – Thought Stopping
The instant you notice that you’re having a negative thought yell to yourself “Stop!” Then take a slow deep breath in. Then when you exhale imagine the negative thought being blown out with your breath.
Then as soon as you have exhaled, replace the thought with a thought that is 180 degrees opposite of it, a more supportive and empowering thought and return to the task at hand.
Tactics Before The Event
- Thought stopping technique (the same one as above).
- Wear an elastic band around wrist negative thought – snap it every time you have a negative thought and replace with a positive thought.
- Use an “interrupt” word, i.e. stop, cancel, no thanks, etc to stop the negative thoughts and then replace with the opposite and supportive thought.
- Make a mark or picture on your equipment that symbolizes the stopping of negative thoughts and then refocusing, i.e. a smile face, red dot, stop sign, etc.
- Write down the negative thoughts that are bothering you on a piece of paper and then destroy the paper, seeing all those thoughts being destroyed as well.
- Share your self doubts with a coach, either your sports coach or a mental strength coach to get a supportive outside perspective.
- In your imagination see the negative thoughts written on a blackboard, now see yourself going up to the blackboard and erasing all the thoughts.
- Use a volume control to turn down the volume on the voice that is telling you all the negative thoughts.
- Play circus music at the same time the negative thoughts are running around your head.
- Sing the negative thoughts to yourself as if you were an opera singer. If you have a bad voice this will really put a stop to them.
Now What?
OK…so you’ve been practicing your mental strength skills but what do you when immediately before an event you get an army of ANT’s (automotive negative thoughts) that won’t quite?
You try everything to stop them and worse yet, you start to believe them.
One after another the negative thoughts acclimate like thunder clouds and you can’t even get one ray of sunshine (a positive thought) in there.
You say to yourself, “Oh no…this is wrong…I’m not supposed to have these thoughts, I’ve been practicing, what’s wrong with me?”
This type of thinking leads to a panic state and this creates a poor athletic performance.
Well let me tell you, every athlete, yes every athlete….even top performers, suffers from this at one time or another.
The difference is the top performers don’t let the negative thoughts bother them. They don’t invite them into stay awhile by focusing on them. They go out there and perform up to and even surpass their capabilities.
How Top Performers Think
- They know this is normal and they use it as a signal that they are ready.
- They don’t jump into the content of the conversation; they don’t give the thought any meaning just like they are a foreign language
It’s just like sitting high above a river…you don’t get wet unless you jump in. If the water is cool and clean and you jump in you’ll feel great (positive thoughts).
If the water is polluted and you jump in you’ll feel like crap (negative thoughts).
You see, your mind is like a river meandering around, it can be cool and clean (positive thoughts) or it can be dirty and polluted (negative thoughts).
When negative thoughts come along don’t jump in. Instead use them as a signet to focus on your performance cues.
Basically you want to back away from the thought.
Before or during an event don’t get into a fight with the thought and don’t try to think the opposite. Just notice the thought and use it as a signal to refocus. Just take a deep breathe in, breath out the negative thought and refocus on your performance cues.
When you have become proficient at practice and controlling your negative thinking and knowing that every athlete gets pre-game jitters, you have the resources to correct and continue and turn in a peak athletic performance.
Get started today on controlling your negative thinking, self-talk and focus by picking up a copy of “Mental Strength Training for Athletes” by going HERE.
