Negative thoughts can make us more anxious as athletes and studies have shown that they can have a negative impact on performance. But how do these negative thoughts arise?
Undue pressure in many circumstances can give rise to negative thoughts such as, “She’s faster than me” or “I can’t throw that far.” These are the thoughts we need to be aware of when we’re feeling anxious about performing. We need to mentally register these thoughts and perhaps even write them in a diary.
Now that we’ve managed to acknowledge these thoughts, how do we overcome them to enhance self-belief and relieve this pressure? We do something called ‘cognitive restructuring’. This is much simpler than it sounds. Self-talk is all about using basic techniques to look at the world from different perspectives and this in turn changes the way that you think. It’s basically taking a more positive perspective on things. But it can be difficult to do this if we’re really anxious about a situation.
There are four basic techniques used in self-talk: thought stopping; changing negative thoughts into positive thoughts; countering and reframing. These techniques can be used to overcome negative thoughts and use positive thoughts to energise and motivate you into action. So let’s see how this is done!
Read more on countering negative thoughts and changing them to positive energy here.
Undue pressure in many circumstances can give rise to negative thoughts such as, “She’s faster than me” or “I can’t throw that far.” These are the thoughts we need to be aware of when we’re feeling anxious about performing. We need to mentally register these thoughts and perhaps even write them in a diary.
Now that we’ve managed to acknowledge these thoughts, how do we overcome them to enhance self-belief and relieve this pressure? We do something called ‘cognitive restructuring’. This is much simpler than it sounds. Self-talk is all about using basic techniques to look at the world from different perspectives and this in turn changes the way that you think. It’s basically taking a more positive perspective on things. But it can be difficult to do this if we’re really anxious about a situation.
There are four basic techniques used in self-talk: thought stopping; changing negative thoughts into positive thoughts; countering and reframing. These techniques can be used to overcome negative thoughts and use positive thoughts to energise and motivate you into action. So let’s see how this is done!
Read more on countering negative thoughts and changing them to positive energy here.
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