Destructive Emotions and Athletic Performance
Destructive emotions in sports such as: anger, frustration, embarrassment can be a big obstacle for athletes. These 
emotions can lead to loss of control, poor performance, injury and cause the athlete to be a big distraction to their team and others.
Destructive emotions usually come on quickly and are always automatic response. Athletes who have a problem with anger, frustration and other destructive emotions, with help, discover that because this is an emotional response, no amount of analyzing or trying to find the “whys” actually helps in creating different outcomes.
Destructive emotions are not solved by more analysis or thinking, but rather by learning how to think and feel differently.
There are usually situations and/or people who trigger an athlete to lose control over their emotions and behave in ways that are not supportive of their best performance. Often it is easy to identify a clear pattern, what triggers it and what the athlete does to create and maintain these disjunctive behaviors.
Destructive emotions can be resolved once the athlete learns how to relax in those situations that used to spark the old behavior. Once the trigger is identified then a replacement trigger is put in place, something that is more appropriate, such as focus and calmness. As a result the athlete gains greater control and flexibility of their behavior, which leads to great performance and winning.
I recently read about two athletes that had major issues around anger and competition. After a few coaching sessions, both had good control of their tempers before during and after competitions.
One of the athletes, a sprinter, found success by focusing on her strengths, and saying and remembering affirmations about these strengths, as well as a few about letting go of anger and mistakes.
She would say these things to herself several times each day. When she was competing, she would think of a single word, such as “aggressive,” or “focus.” The following are a few affirmations that were helpful to her:
- I’m a smart runner.
- I’m the best sprinter on the team.
- I’ve got a good positive attitude!
- I’m quick and fast.
- I mentally let go of mistakes easily.
- I easily forgive myself for mistakes.
The middle distance runner would get furious with himself if he started to lose or was passed. His negative self talk was cursing at himself, talking to himself saying, “Dummy, come on; what’s wrong with you! You’re running like #%$*. You can’t lose to this joker.” If he got mad, he would stay mad, and end up blowing up. Some affirmations that helped him were:
- I encourage and support myself with my talk.
- I let go anger or fear and focus on my body and my pace.
- During each lap, I let go of the last lap and think about my pace and form.
- I think positively during a race.
- I am mentally tough in each race I run.
- I love running well, and I have fun competing.
- I am calm, cool and collected in a race.
Awareness of Anger
One of the first steps in taking back control over emotions is becoming aware of them and the triggers. Here are a list of questions that can be helpful to athletes in assessing their anger. The questions can be used alone or as part of a group/team discussion with suggestions of how to deal with anger in competition.
- I get angry when …
- How I am currently dealing with my anger during competition is.…
- How I would like to constructively handle my anger in competition is…
- Five affirmations to help me handle my anger in a positive way are.…
- The meaning I put on this situation is….
In addition, self-hypnosis, visualization and mediation can all be a huge benefit in naturalizing destructive emotions. The e-book, Mental Strength Training for Athletes and the bonuses that come with it have specific scripts and audio’s to be used to achieve peak performance.
