As a sport and performance psychologist, I am frequently asked by athletes and other performers, ‘How can I control that little voice in my head, so that it helps my performance?’
The great thing about your little inner voice is that you can learn to control it. Some people seem to control it more easily than others, with less practice, but with some practice we can all learn how to use that inner voice to our advantage, in life in general, as well as in performance arenas. So, how do we do that? Well, based on the sport and performance psychology research literature, here are 8 (S.E.L.F-T.A.L.K) tips that may help you to control your inner voice.
Tips 1 & 2: One of the common problems with a negative thought is that once it is said in your mind, it seems to act ‘on-loop’, being repeated over and over in your mind. So my first tip is to actively ‘Stall’ it and ‘Evaluate’ – This is where you actively look for reasons why the thought ‘on-repeat’ in your mind may be untrue. For example, if you find yourself saying ‘I can’t do this’ repeatedly about various tasks or goals, actively seek out memories where you successfully achieved similar tasks. Once these memories start to dominate your thoughts, the unhelpful ‘can’t do’ phrase becomes replaced with ‘can do’ examples (these first 2 stages are sometimes referred to as the ‘park & replace’ strategy in the sport psychology literature).
Tips 3 & 4: ‘Let it go’ – Even if you are unsuccessful in your efforts to complete a task and that little inner voice again starts saying ‘on-loop’, ‘I told you, you couldn’t do it’, just ‘let it go’ and move on to ‘Find the lesson’ in your attempt at the task, for example. You were not successful on this attempt, so what lesson did you learn from that effort, that could enable you to be more successful on your next attempt? Very few individuals have ever been highly skilled at anything they tried to achieve on the first attempt – please remember this. Practice is what helps to create excellence. Becoming excellent at anything, including controlling your inner voice, takes time. Focus your thoughts on how you can get better in the future. Seek out support from others who can help you with your task or goal too.
Tip 5: ‘Take it easy on yourself’ – We often say things to ourselves that we would not dream of saying to a loved one or indeed a stranger. Be kinder to yourself. Too often we are preoccupied with achieving particular external goals in life. Perhaps one of your goals could be an internal, mental goal, for example, to make a conscious decision to be kinder to yourself. Practice this too by being kinder to others around you as well – family members, friends and work colleagues, for example.
Tip 6 & 7: ‘Allow yourself to fail’. One of the greatest threats to our positive self-talk is failure. But what is failure? To fail, as I have mentioned before in previous pieces here on A Lust for Life can be considered a ‘First Attempt In Learning’. Take a rest, pick yourself back up and try again. Failing at anything in life can often be a very valuable experience, especially if, in many cases, it teaches us vital life lessons for how we might be more successful in our next attempt to achieve something in life, so ‘Learn and move on’. Remember, there is not a single person on the planet who has not failed at things, many times, so you are not alone in this. No-one is perfect. You have plenty of fail-friends, embrace your failures, learn to smile about them, and see them as life-lessons, rather than as life-fails.
Tip 8: ‘Keep a few phrases handy’ – Learn off a couple of ‘go-to’ phrases that help you to ‘replace’ any unhelpful comments your inner voice says when he/she is in a ‘bad mood’. Here are a couple of phrases that might help you: ‘What’s the lesson here?’, ‘This too will pass’, ‘Excellence, not perfection’ or simply, ‘Breath-In … 1, 2, 3, 4 … and Out … 1, 2, 3, 4’.
To conclude, these are just 8 little tips that may help you to control your inner voice. There are, no doubt, other strategies that could help you too. I would recommend the text, ‘Pure Sport’, by John Kremer and Aidan Moran (2013), if you wish to read some more information on this topic. If you wish to study this, and other practical sport psychology topics too in more depth, perhaps you might consider enrolling on our Certificate in Sport Psychology in IADT. You may contact me for more details by viewing: droliviahurley.com. Best wishes to you all!
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