What Do You Do When Positive Thinking and Positive Self-Talk Aren’t Working? - March 2021
I had recently made a post on social media regarding what to do when positive thinking does not work. Yes, for some people it can work, and, in some circumstances, it can work, but most times it is not enough. If your athlete has tried positive thinking and just can’t overcome their negative thinking, they need to approach it in a different way.
When we are faced with fear, worry, disappointment, embarrassment (many emotions that are not pleasant to feel) we usually react in one of three ways: 1) We avoid. 2) We obsess. 3) We fight against it. We are wired to worry and think negatively; from a biological perspective, it is our survival mechanism. However, survival mechanisms aren’t always helpful. Take a turtle for instance. Their survival instinct when afraid is to hide in their shell. Yes, this is effective when faced with a dangerous animal, but if it uses the same survival mechanism when crossing the road and is faced with an 18-wheeler going 50 mph, hiding in its shell will kill it. See, our survival instinct to worry and be afraid is normal, but we cannot get rid of it. For instance, try the following:
1. Don't think about ice cream. I mean really don’t think about it.
2. Try to make your leg feel numb?
It does not work, does it? We can’t avoid emotions that are innate in us. So instead of trying to fight against them, obsess over them, or avoid them, we need to learn how to perform with them. This is one of the many benefits of practicing mindfulness on a daily basis. It allows us to feel and experience our internal emotions and thoughts but accept them as just that. We can be with these thoughts and emotions and instead of spending countless hours fighting against them or avoiding them, which takes our attention away from our performance, we can accept them, hold them, but focus on our performance.
Example. I am afraid of my flight series on beam. I can avoid it by refusing to go for it. I can obsess over the fear and only think of the fear and not on what I need to do to make my flight series successful or I can notice I am afraid and say the following, “I am afraid of my flight series and I am still going to go for it.”
What I Have Been Up To!
February has been a very busy month for me. I had the honor of presenting remotely at the International Gymnastics Conference on how Mindfulness is the best training for the brain and I have had the pleasure of working with Betsy's Bootcamp in several gyms, as well as visiting some local gyms in the area.
Follow me on Instagram: @themindfulgymnast and Facebook: Ariana LeBlanc