|
Home
Steven W. Noles, Psy.D.
Biographical Sketch
Available Services
Descriptions
of available services
Testimonials
What others are saying about Dr. Noles
Mental
Training Exercises
Sample information
and strategies
Outside
the Arena
Common problems concerning
athletes
Parent's Corner
Advice for
parents of athletes
Coach's
Corner
Positive coaching strategies
FAQs
Answers
to frequently asked questions
Ask
HeadsUp Sports
|
|
POSITIVE SELF-TALK
Positive self-talk is a critical component to any
successful athlete's list of skills. Everyone talks to
him/herself. The difference between winners and losers is in what
is said. The words we use shape our feelings and our actions and
can either help us achieve our goals or get in our way. To assess
your self-talk skills and to see if you need to work on this area, take
this very simple test.
Pretend for a moment that you have
made a critical error playing your sport. If you play baseball,
pretend you made a fielding error in the 9th inning allowing a couple
of runs to score; if you play basketball, pretend you made a turnover
at a critical portion of the game; if you play golf pretend you hit an
approach shot from the fairway into the water; or if you play tennis
pretend you made an unforced error or miss hit an easy overhead
shot. You get the picture. Now, think about what you would
typically say to yourself in that situation. Don't think about
what you should say to
yourself, but rather focus on what you would
say to yourself. Now that the you have the situation and your
commentary firmly in your mind, pretend a teammate made the same error
and that you said to him or her whatever it is that you would say to
yourself. In other words, pretend your internal comments are now
said aloud for everyone, your teammate, your coach, your parents, to
hear. How would your teammate react? Are your comments
likely to help him/her perform better next time? What would your coach
say or do? What would your parents say or do? If your
answers are something like, "my comments would not help my teammate
play better," or "my coach would be mad and might bench me" you need to
work on your internal dialogue.
Changing one's self-talk is not an
easy thing to do. You have been "practicing" the way you talk to
yourself for years without even thinking about it. Therefore, the
first step in changing the way you talk to yourself is to be more aware
of what you are saying to yourself. Also, write down what you
want to say to yourself; write down a few quick comments that would
help you perform better and work on committing them to memory.
Also, eliminate certain words from your internal vocabulary. For
example, eliminate the word "hope" from your vocabulary.
Successful athletes do not "hope" they perform better or win, they
control the aspects of their game they can control and work hard.
"Hope" implies some type of divine intervention and allows people to
sit back and wait for it to happen. You can "hope" the bus comes
soon, but if you sit around and wait for a better free-throw shooting
percentage you will be sitting a long time. Another word to erase
from your dialogue is "luck." Gary Player, the great golfer from
South Africa has said that the more he practiced and the harder he
worked the luckier he got. "Luck" always favors the prepared mind
and the prepared athlete. Finally, you will also want to stop
using words like "horrible," "awful," and "terrible." These words
are too emotionally charged and tend to exaggerate the situation.
Be more aware of your internal
dialogue, work toward developing some "performance enhancing" things
you can say to yourself when things get tough, eliminate certain words,
and if you are still troubled by negative self-talk, then give me a
call or send me an e-mail and we will get started. Contact HeadsUp Sports
Consulting today!
|