Self Talk

Many people have running dialogues with themselves, all day long. If you actually stop and listen to these messages, you may wonder how you accomplish anything at all. How many times, in any given day, do you find yourself mentally rehearsing the worst possible outcome or telling yourself you can't do something or it's too hard?

Understanding your self-talk is one of the hardest things that many of us will attempt. In fact, developing positive self-talk is one of the strongest, most confident meditations for an athlete. Negative internal messages and thoughts are among the biggest contributors to pre-game jitters and performance anxiety.
 

The goal is to replace the negative self-talk with more positive messages. A hockey goalie who tells himself, "I can't beat this team; I'm going to let in 10 goals," will need to practice replacing that negative statement with a positive one: "I'm going to win tonight and stop everything they shoot at me." While this may not seem like it can work, over time and with repetition, an athlete can develop a new habit of thinking positive and expecting a more positive outcome.

When I was younger, I learned something that had a very big impact on my self-talk, which was "anchoring." Anchoring is self-talking positive, powerful words and relaying them with actions. For example, during a warm-up, I would simply have a shooter start with 5 shots on my glove side. Right before the shooter would shoot, I would say out loud to myself key powerful words like "you're awesome," "you're the best," and "you're fantastic" and then continue with shots to other areas of my game. With every save, I added strength to it with self-talk.
 

Everyone has a set of messages that play over and over in their minds. This inner voice too often has the pattern that we developed that is negative. We remember the negative things we were told as children by our parents, siblings, and coaches. Throughout the years, these messages have played over and over in our minds, fueling our feelings of anger, fear, guilt, and hopelessness.

When negative events or mistakes happen, positive self-talk seeks to bring the positive out of the negative to help you do better, go further, or just keep moving forward. The practice of positive self-talk is often the process that allows you to discover optimism, hope, and joy in any given situation.

 

Written by Robb Tallas and the CoachThem Team

 

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