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Monday, November 29, 2010

Controlling Negative Thoughts

Athletes regularly carry on an inner dialogue—this is called self-talk. Your self-talk can be negative and self-destructive to confidence or it can be positive and help you remain confident in challenging situations. If you want to be negative with yourself, you have plenty of opportunity to do so in sports. However, I do not think you will perform your best nor have much fun. The key point is that you have control over what you say to yourself and have to work on staying positive.

It is easy to forget someone else's criticism of you, but it's not easy to forget your own criticism of yourself. I ask the athletes I work with to monitor what they say to themselves. If you get negative with your own self-talk and cut yourself down, you have to recognize this behavior and make an effort to change. When you say to yourself "I can't win this fight," "you are the worst", or "Don't lose another match", you are hurting your own confidence. Negative thoughts lead to low self-confidence and negative outcomes. You are the only person who knows when you being negative and the only one who can turn it around.

The first step is to pay attention to what you say to yourself and notice when you begin to have negative thoughts. The goal is to quickly identifying your negative self-talk. After you finish a match, go back and think about when you were negative with yourself. Write down the negative statements and in what situations they occurred. If you have more negative than positive self-talk during a match, this indicates that you need to work on changing your self-talk.

The next step is to modify your typical negative thoughts or doubt. Write down the negative self-statements from the previous exercise. Next to each self-statement, change the negative thought to a positive statement. For example, the negative self-statement: "I can't believe he fooled you on that move, you are the worst fighter in the world" change to "You are human and will make mistakes, next time you will know better". Practice changing your negative thoughts to positive thoughts on paper.

The final step is to apply what you have done on paper to your matches. The next time you become aware of a negative thought or doubt, you will have a positive response ready to put into place and apply. Make the choice to keep your self-talk positive and confidence enhancing.

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