Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

All athletes use self-talk, but some use it in a way that helps them, and others use it in a way that hurts them. When an athlete uses self-talk to hurt themselves, they talk to themselves with language that drives pessimism and fear. This is negative self-talk.

Negative self-talk is always bad. While it may seem harmless to say something like “this isn’t my day“, it’s not. Negative self-talk decreases performance. As research suggests, our brains can only concentrate on one thing at a time. So, if you are focusing your brain on negative outcomes, then you are not focusing your brain on positive and neutral outcomes.

This is why negative self-talk hurts performance. The more you do it, the more your brain becomes wired for pessimistic thinking. Moreover, those who have a pessimistic mindset are far more likely to have negative outcomes.

According to a series of studies from across the U.S. and Europe:

1. Pessimists have higher blood pressure, which leads to anxiety and higher cases of cardiovascular disease.
2. In times of need, pessimists have less social support
3. Pessimists get more viral infections (i.e., pessimism impacts your immune system)
4. When it comes to overcoming adversity, pessimists are significantly more likely to get bad long-term outcomes.

Moving from Negative to Positive Self-Talk Requires Self-Awareness

To this end, as one of my mentors likes to say, old habits die hard but new habits form fast. This basically means that the best way to break old habits is to quickly replace them with new habits. A good place to start is with self-awareness.

Make sure you are not reinforcing negative self-talk by being self-aware of what you are saying to yourself. Listen to your thoughts and make sure you are not telling yourself things like:

“I’m just not a lucky person.”
“I suck at this.“
“Don’t go out there and choke this time.“
“I can’t do anything right.“
“This is just the way I am.“
“This always happens to me.”

As soon as one of these thoughts starts to form, take control of your mind. Many mental skills coaches label this technique “thought stopping”. Thought stopping is a three-step process.

1. Start listening to the thoughts flowing in and out of your mind. Specifically in stressful moments and high-pressure situations.
2. As soon as you recognize that you are having a negative thought or even when someone says something negative to you, cut the negativity off by saying “STOP!”
3. Then, clear your mind by taking a very quick deep breath and feel the void with a neutral line of thinking.

Some thoughts to feel the void with include statements like the following:

“I got this.”
“I’m stronger than I think.“
“I’m thankful for this opportunity to challenge myself, this pressure is a privilege.“
“I’m going to focus only on the process.”
“This isn’t harder than practice. My practice has prepared me.”
“This is my chance to get better.“
“One step at a time.”
“I’m ok.”
“Stick with it and I will find a way to make the situation better.“

That’s it. However, as a mental skills coach I am not going to tell you this is easy. Thought stopping takes a tremendous amount of practice, just like anything else you want to master. My suggestion is to create a habit-forming daily routine. You should do this every single day, multiple times a day. For example,

• Moments of self-doubt.
• When you’re feeling self-conscious.
• First thing in the morning when your alarm goes off and you tell yourself you still feel tired.
• When something outside of your control is making things difficult for you.

If you learn to use these everyday moments to practice your self-talk every day, overtime you will learn to control your thoughts and not let your thoughts control you.