Whatever sport you play, your performance depends not only on your physical skills but also your mental skills. Whilst you are in control of your preparation for the game, you can never predict how the game will play out. Injury, the state of the pitch, the weather, bad calls by the referee, superior fitness of the opposing side are all factors that are out of your control; how well you manage such unpredictability depends very much on your mental skills.
The ability to manage mistakes is essential and having effective strategies to do this minimises the potential negative impact can have not only on individual players but on the team’s performance.
One of the most effective way of managing mistakes is through positive self-talk; instead of feeling embarrassed or guilty at missing a penalty, dropping the ball or conceding a free kick, accept that you’ve made a mistake, mentally park the mistake for analysis post-match, and say something positive to yourself, for example:
- I’m better than this
- Let it go
- Focus on now
- Move on
- Turn it around
The power of positive self-talk
Your self-talk is controlled only by you, not your team-mates, nor your coach. Your self-talk influences how you feel, and how you feel influences how you perform! There’s a direct correlation between self-talk and performance backed up by research (Gregersen et al 2017)
Flip it over
Why not spend some time thinking about recent situations when you think your self-talk was not as positive as it could be; for each example of negative self-talk come up with something you could have said to yourself which would have been more positive and would have set up more positive feelings and better performance. Physical skills take practice to learn and improve and so do mental skills such as self-talk.
Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Galanis, E., Zourbanos, N., & Theodorakis, Y. (2014). Self-talk and competitive sport performance. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 26(1), 82-95.
Need some help?
If you would like help with sports performance call me on 07899 625156 or email info@cranbrookhypnotherapy.com
Yvonne