Self -talk part 2
Types of Self-Talk
In the previous module we introduced you to the topic of self-talk, now let’s look in more detail at the different types of self-talk you can use.
You can separate Self-talk into three categories: positive, negative and neutral. These can be further broken down into eight sub-categories.
Let’s start with:
Positive Self-Talk
Positive self-talk is the talk that makes you feel good about yourself and the things going on in your life – think of it like having your best friend or a good coach beside you, providing you with an endless stream of positive feedback and compliments. It’s not simply about praising your achievements, but more about the efforts you’ve put it, as well as your patience, resilience and other personal qualities that have helped you to achieve what you wanted to.
There are four types of positive self-talk, all of which are useful for competition. These are self-talk for:
- Psyching yourself up
- Boosting your confidence,
- Giving yourself instructions
- Controlling your emotions
I’ll repeat those
- Psyching yourself up
- Boosting your confidence,
- Giving yourself instructions
- Controlling your emotions
Let’s take a look at each of these.
Typical self-talk for psyching yourself up will be phrases such as “come on!”, “bring it on!” and “Let’s do it!”.
To boost confidence, you might simply say to yourself “I’ve done it before and I can do it again” or “I’ve got what it takes”.
Instructional self-talk focuses on exactly what needs to be done and is most useful when broken down into very specific or technical instructions.
For example, “follow through on the shot” or “Keep your feet moving” for a tennis player, or “drive your knees up” for a sprinter. You’ll know the specific tasks for whatever it is you’re doing – and will be able to come up with the right instructional talk.
Positive instructional self-talk helps you focus on specific technical or task-related aspects of your performance in order to improve execution. This could be the most useful type of self-talk in pressurised situations when you tend to forget the basics:
a soccer player missing the target on a penalty shoot-out is a great example.
Serena Williams used the phrase
“Keep your eye on the ball”
in her tennis and even wrote this in a booklet she kept courtside, much to the amusement of the on-looking press who caught it on camera!
Interestingly, Serena and her older sister Venus grew up in Compton, California, one of the most socially deprived and crime-ridden cities in the U.S. Serena was once noted as saying
“If you can keep playing tennis when someone is shooting a gun down the street, that’s concentration!”
Another example from tennis might be a player who uses the word “contact” before hitting a shot – this could help in his concentration and keep him focussed on the here and now.
A key aspect of self-talk is to stop negative thoughts from entering your mind and to remain immersed in the moment. As I have mentioned before, what happened previously, or what the outcome of a contest might be, are not relevant to the play being contested right now.
You will likely already know the technical cues that will serve you best in your sport. These cues vary greatly from sport to sport;
in an aiming-type sport, a target might be a key focus, but in a tactical team-based sport, it might be the interaction with a particular player or even a group of players.
You can also use self-talk for controlling anxiety levels. Phrases such as “calm down” “take four breaths” or simply “relax” can be helpful verbal cues.
One of the most famous athletes to openly use self-talk was Muhammad Ali, possibly the best fighter there has ever been. He once declared “I am the astronaut of boxing Joe Lewis and Jack Dempsey were just jet pilots. I’m in a world of my own”.
Ali is also quoted as having said “I hated every minute of my training, but said to myself, ‘Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’
His self-talk was a driving force, a motivation to get through the rigours of training in order to realise his dreams of being the greatest. And do you know what – it worked!
Real Madrid and Portugal soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo has a very similar outlook on his football ability:
“I don’t have to show anything to anyone. There is nothing to prove.”
Positive self-talk typically focuses on increasing effort and improving your attitude. It can be quite general in nature, such as “come on you can do this” or “keep pushing”, or can also be very specific like “keep your arms moving fluidly” for a swimmer
Using positive and instructional self-talk has an added benefit, in that it can prevent distracting or negative thoughts from disrupting your performance. We’ll discuss this in a later module.
For now, try to gauge how often you use each of these types of self-talk—psyching yourself up, boosting your confidence, giving yourself instructions, and controlling your emotions—and ask yourself whether you might use forms of self-talk that you currently only use sparingly.
Let’s look at Negative Self-talk
Negative self-talk is the talk that can make you feel pretty damn lousy about yourself, abut significant others and about the world in general. Such self-talk can be truly demoralising and demotivating, whether the situation at hand is good or not so good.
Negative self-talk can be broadly split into three categories:
- Worries and concerns for an outcome
- Disengagement and
- Tiredness
Worrying self-talk could be quite general negative thoughts –
“I know I’m going to get this wrong again”,
“I just can’t do what the coach wants me to’ or
“I’ll never be able to win this”.
Examples of disengagement would be
“I can’t keep going”,
“I don’t feel up for this” or
“I don’t know why I do this anymore”.
For tiredness or what psychologists term somatic fatigue, examples could include
“I’m shattered”,
“I’m wasted”, or
“I’ve got no energy left”
Unfortunately, negative self-talk may well be the most common type among athletes in highly pressurised situations – it’s generally demeaning, prevents you from reaching your goal, is counterproductive and anxiety-inducing.
That’s a lot of unnecessary baggage to carry around.
Saying things like –
“That was a dumb shot”,
“you suck” or
“how can you play so badly”
will not enhance performance or create positive emotions.
What it does do is create anxiety and self-doubt, even though you might hear athletes justify their use of this type of language by claiming that ‘it fires them up’. Most of the time it doesn’t.
What is clear is that, for the most part, negative self-talk is detrimental to performance, your self-esteem and your general well-being.
Finally, neutral Self-talk
- also termed irrelevant talk – this covers anything that is neither positive nor negative
“What am I doing later tonight?”,
“I wonder how Frank is getting on?” or
“I need to go shopping later!” and so on.
A professional soccer team that I once served as a consultant, had a midfielder who was a great player and was often charged with taking free kicks. He was such a virtuoso player and free kicks came so easily to him that he would confide in me that when preparing to take the free kick he would often be telling himself which nightclub and what type of champagne he would be drinking that night in celebration.
I noticed that on numerous occasions he would hoof the ball over the crossbar or miss a teammate by a considerable distance – presumably because his mind was somewhere else and certainly not in the game at that moment.
The neutral self-talk drew his efforts away from what he should have been thinking about. This is a trap that great players can often fall into.
We will further explore neutral self-talk later in this programme.
Summary
Self-talk is such a powerful tool that it’s amazing how rarely people are taught how to use their better.
People often assume that their self-talk is automatic – that it just happens. But it doesn’t and you do have a choice in what you say to yourself – and throughout this programme, I’ll help you to improve your own day-to-day self-talk.
Look at it as a type of investment: if you want to get fit, you know you need to train. You probably go the gym three or four times a week and work hard.
Think about improving your mindset and self-talk in a similar manner
learn the right skills and keep practicing your self-talk until it serves you well both in the hotbed of competition and in life in general
Remember that your self-talk will not only have an influence on the results you achieve but also future performances.
Ultimately, your self-talk will influence how you think about yourself and your own self-worth.
In the next module
We will look at how you can start to monitor and challenge your self-talk. I will give you a number of strategies and techniques that will make your
inner voice a strong aid in your quest to improve your performance.
Your MYND Exercise today
Outside of a competitive environment, use a journal and create three columns:
One labelled positive self-talk,
One negative self-talk and
One neutral self-talk:
Under each heading, list the self-talk that you would typically use in a competitive environment. Examine the balance between the three different types. Reflect on how you can begin to reduce the negative and neutral self-talk in order that most of what you say to yourself in a competition is positive in nature.
A lot of people think that the thoughts that run through your head are just a ‘random psychological factor’ – I maintain that you can exert a lot of control over the thoughts that you allow to enter into your focal awareness.
Practise the positive self-talk thoroughly in training before carrying it into the competitive arena.