There you are, standing over the ball at the tee box ready to drive the ball 200+ yds down the middle of the fairway. You swing and WHACK…the ball hooks left into that nice grove of trees beyond the rough. Before you have even finished your swing, you begin to colorfully explain to the world how much you suck at golf (or is that just me?). Truth is, we’ve all been there. Maybe it wasn’t on the golf course, but we’ve all had bad self-talk on the court, the field, or the boardroom.
Recently while working with athletes at differing levels, I have realized how bad self-talk has gotten. Constantly I’ll hear athletes start cursing at themselves after they have hit a bad shot, or self-deprecate after dropping a pass, or even worse talk to themselves passive aggressively about their bad performance. It’s a terrible symphony listen to and after that first error or mistake, only seems to crescendo.
Through these experiences, and my own, I’ve realized that, many athletes don’t know how to use self-talk to their advantage. They may have heard that self talk is important, but hasn’t explained how to actually improve their self-talk. Here are 3 ways athletes can begin to work on their self-talk.
Use a Reframe Colum
Take your athletic journal (or sheet of paper if you don’t have a journal) and split it into too columns. At the top of the left column, write “Negative” and at the top of the right column, write “Positive/Effective”. Under the negative column write down the negative self-talk you find yourself using when you are practicing or competing. Then in the positive column, rephrase or reframe it to be a positive statement. Here is an example:
| NEGATIVE | POSITIVE/EFFECTIVE |
| “I suck at this!” | “Ok, I can do this!” |
Using a reframe column is helpful for two reasons. First, it helps us identify the negative statements that we almost unconsciously will say to ourselves when we compete. Secondly, reframing it to a positive statement helps us prime our brain by thinking about the positive way to talk to ourselves. So when we do get tempted to verbally beat ourselves up, we have a positive statement locked and loaded.
Get Instructional
A lot of negative self-talk revolves around results. “I suck at tennis because we can’t get a serve in.” “I suck at curve balls because the batter hits a home run every time.” All of a sudden our words have shifted our focus away from the process, to the result. Getting instructional is all about bringing us back to a process oriented focus.
Instructional self-talk is all about getting back to the basics and becomes tactical. What is the one thing you need to remember to have a good serve or a good curve ball? What is your routine? Tell yourself that simple cue, so you can focus on making the next play. If not, history may repeat itself.
Thank you for sharing!
Look, we’re human, bad self-talk creeps in from time to time as much as we try to prevent it. Can I let you in on a little secret…you don’t have to own it, its just an opinion. Even the most positive people you know have negative thoughts from time to time, but it doesn’t define them, so why would you let it define you? “Thank You For Sharing”, allows you acknowledge the self-talk as an opinion and then move on from it. It’s the same thing you would do when someone has a critical opinion about you. You say, “Thank You For Sharing”, but I’m going to go with this opinion over here. Acknowledge the thought and move forward.
Its been stated that a person has around 60,000 thoughts a day, so even when we aren’t aware of it, we are engaging in self-talk. To use self-talk to our advantage, we have to treat it just like any other skill and work at it. The goal of working at any skill is to become consistent at a high level. The 3 exercises above, Reframe Columns, Get Instructional, Thank You For Sharing are all designed to help you become more consistent with your self-talk so that you can feel more confident about handling yourself no matter the situation you may be facing. As always, these skills won’t work unless you do.
Its not just about having a game, its about being on your game.
Will Drumright, M.S. 