Believe in Yourself

How many times have you found yourself questioning your abilities in situations where skills are on the line? Although what you are being asked to do may be something you have performed successfully on frequent past occasions, self-doubts can still creep in and unbalance the challenge-skill equation.

"Did I prepare enough?"

"Do I really have what it takes?"

"Maybe last time I was lucky."

These are typical ways of doubting your abilities. And making these kinds of self-comments is common when the pressure you perceive is high.

Negative thinking can be a hard habit to beat. If it becomes an automatic mode of responding, it can dominate your thinking.

Negative statements, whether coming from an outside source or from within, can undo any potential for optimal experience.

Learning to control our self-talk is a key mental skill for developing confidence.

A Self-Talk Exercise

• This exercise will require you to carry a logbook around for the day.
• Choose a day when you will be practicing your sport or activity.
• Pay attention to what you say to yourself throughout the day.
• Whenever you think or say something to or about yourself, jot it down in the logbook.
• At the end of the day count up the statements you recorded. Next to each one, list whether it is a positive or negative statement by putting a "P" or "N" next to it.
• Count how many positives and negatives you have.

You will now have an idea of how frequently you use self-talk and whether it is working for or againt you.

If you found you had lots of negative statements, see if you can come up with a positive replacement for each negative and rehearse these positive statements.

When you find yourself in a situation similar to one in which your self-talk had been negative, try saying the positive alternative instead.

The process is like changing a bad technical habit in a sport. You need to identify the problem behavior, learn a more appropriate behavior, and practice this positive skill often to retrain the body to respond as you want it to.

Power of Determination

Roger Bannister, the first man to run the mile in under four minutes, had this to say about the power of determination:

"The human spirit is indomitable. No one can say you must not run faster than this or jump higher than that. There will never be a time when the human spirit will not be able to better existing world marks. Man is capable of running the mile in three-and-a-half minutes"

- excepts from Flow in Sport: The Keys to Optimal Experiences and Performances by Susan Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, pages 54-56, 87.

- Photo source: http://www.yogicarts.com/imgs/gallery/02jump1.jpg