Is self-talk battering your performance?

Want to improve your performance under pressure? Then pay attention to your constant ongoing inner dialogue. Self-talk plays a big part!

"Be mindful of your self-talk. It's a conversation with the universe." David James, former England goalkeeper

It is probably the number one recommendation that coaches tell their athletes. Watch your inner dialogue. Talk positively to yourself. Trust your skills!

Would be nice if it was that easy and possible to switch state within the blink of an eye, right?

In this blogpost I will go deep on what we define as “self-talk”, why it is absolutely crucial how you speak to yourself and at the end I will leave you with 3 key takeaways that will help you to improve those ongoing conversations with yourself dramatically.

So let’s get straight into it …

We all hear that very often to work on our self-talk, our inner dialogue or monologue. However you want to call it, the approach is usually to use positive affirmations for changing your thoughts.

Is it the best place to start?

Hmmm, there probably is not that single perfect place to start and if you wait and search until you’ve found it, you probably end up doing nothing. Which is the worst possible option. So why not start with improving self-talk?

What I guess we can agree on is that everybody knows how to talk, everybody talks to oneself from time to time if not all the time (even though we are not always conscious about it) and everybody knows that we are not nice to ourselves all the time. For me that sounds like a lot of potential and room for improvement.

What actually is self-talk?

Self-talk is the way we talk to ourselves, or our inner voice. This inner voice combines conscious thoughts with inbuilt beliefs and biases to create an internal monologue throughout the day. Self-talk is huge when it comes down to managing our mindsets. When we first start to think about our own thoughts, we often times are not even aware about what we are telling ourselves day in and day out. Self-talk on the one hand expresses our emotions and on the other hand influences them. It is a two-way road. Positive self-talk has been conceptualised as self-addressed statements in the form of praise and encouragement and negative self-talk has been conceptualised as statements in the form of criticism and self-preoccupation.

What influences our self-talk?

Personal development guru Tony Robbins often talks about the TRIAD and how everything that happens in your life is defined by it. As the name suggests the triad consists of three parts and the combination of those three parts define the state you are in. The state you are in leads to emotions and since emotions are the driving force in life, they highly affect the outcomes you’re getting.

So, the three parts of the Triad are:

1. Your Focus

2. Your Language

3. Your Physiology

Today we want to talk a bit about our language. Language can be seen as the dress of our thoughts. So, if we pay attention on how our thoughts are dressed and how they show up, we can estimate the quality of our thoughts underneath and therefore draw a conclusion on how our emotions are guiding us.

Turns out that it is even possible to just change the dress of our thoughts and our thoughts change themselves. So why not start at this point together? Research shows that for every single negative thought you need at least 3 positive thoughts to replace it. Negative utterances have been found to be stronger than positive utterances.

Why is that so?

1. Negative messages are more powerful due to evolutionary reasons – stay safe, stay “knowing the difference”, negativity is often associated with danger and therefore fear; Positive with security and safety. On a cognitive level we pay more attention to negativity than to positivity. This phenomenon is called negativity bias and was first mentioned in a 1991 study done by Pratto & John.

2. Negative messages are perceived as stronger at a social level. We as humans have a tendency to tell things more from the bright side of life. We don’t truly want to hurt others with messages and information and therefore even if we have to bring a negative message across, we tend to weaken it or at least make something positive out of it. So turns out we humans tendentially perceive more positive news than negative ones. This now leads to the so-called contrast effect that because we perceive positive news and, in this expectation, we out of a sudden receive an irrefutably negative message, it has way stronger impacts

So, what do we want to do with this information now?

Let us turn to an example of how negative self-talk could look like in sports. Simply considering an easy example of a basketball player who has the opportunity to equal the game in the final second with succeeding with his two free throw attempts. Let us assume he comes up with a thought where he remembers a situation when he was young, as a kid in school, and some other kids shouting loudly that he or she cannot do this. Maybe even his father put pressure on him and would be disappointed if he misses the shot. Maybe a different pressure situation comes up in his mind like a speech in front of the class or some kind of embarrassment of his past. The emotions are similar so we tend to connect them across different contexts. Do you think he’s going to succeed with his attempts on the basket?

Let’s assume the player becomes aware of those thoughts. He or she even remembers that positive self-talk might be useful to get out of this pressure and so he does practice it and starts telling himself positive statements to improve his confidence like: “You can do that!” “Trust your skills”, “Remember the times you succeeded”.

Do you think this will work? What are the chances?

Well, we always can talk about probabilities and chances. There is no perfection and this is the first important step to realise. Even with tons of visualisation, self-talk combined with endless practice there is not a single player, who will always score. And aiming for perfection literally is the crucial point in this story. So, the most powerful approach to improve the state instantly and increase probabilities to score might seem a bit counterintuitive now, but the most important thing is to lower the pressure within the athlete itself. Pressure if perceived dangerous, can really fuck up your performance!!!

How can we lower pressure now?

Let’s examine at this point where pressure does arise from in the first place. Therefore, we should ask ourselves the question what would happen if we don’t score? What would we lose? Just the game? Would that change or significantly affect our lives? Who would be upset when we lose this game? Whom would we have disappointed? Becoming aware of those thoughts will bring us more clarity to deal with those stressful situations.

Applying self-talk consciously is only one part. Researchers found that under pressure the beautiful thoughts and trained affirmations might fail. This comes down to the power of emotions. So, although self-talk can improve your results during moments of training or light competition, it can have no or even negative effects if the underlying emotions are not mastered carefully.

Self-Talk and paying attention to it helps us to gain more understanding of ourselves. To really improve our performance under pressure, we have to dig deeper and aim for solving our emotional distress. Otherwise, we can create cognitive dissonance within ourselves that totally leverage the positive effects that we are aiming for.

So, what are three things I’d suggest you to do now ...

1. Find a routine and a way to pay more attention to how you’re talking to yourself. Write your findings down daily to subconsciously gain a better knowledge around the words you use.

2. Draft your language model of how you want to talk with yourself. Write down the words and sentences you want to use. (i.e. I do say “strong shoulders” to myself whenever I have a critical exercise in the gym, since my shoulders tend to be a bit instable sometimes)

3. Practice it at least once a day for 10 minutes. Focus not only on the exact words you want to tell yourself. Focus also on the emotional state you want to be in. This is powerful and can help you automatise your thoughts to instantly chose the right words your subconscious needs to hear to perform at the highest level.

Always pay attention on what emotional states crosses your way when you are under pressure. Solving them will bring you peace and get you ready to perform at your best even if it seems difficult from the outside. It will help you stay balanced and focused.

If you want to know more about why athletes fail under pressure CLICK HERE!

Drop me a message or a comment if you have any questions around self-talk. I am happy to help!

Till then, stay blessed!

Wilhelm

p.s.: I am excited to announce, that my new E-Book “6 Reasons athletes fail under pressure and how to fix it fast” is out now. Drop me a mail or a comment with “PERFORMANCE” if you want to receive a free copy!

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References

• Moran, A.P., The Psychology of Concentration in Sport Performance, Psychology Press Publishers, East Sussex, UK, 1996

• Theodorakis, Y., Weinberg, R., Natsis P., Douma, E. and Kazakas, P., The Effects of Motivational Versus Instructional Self-Talk on Improving Motor Performance, The Sport Psychologist, 2000, 14, 253-272.