Our thoughts create how we carry ourselves. When you choose to think about instructional or positive thoughts, you're doing what Cheadle calls "feeding the athlete". When your thoughts are the opposite and you are consumed with negative thoughts, doubts, and worries you are "feeding the monster." There are thoughts that can be beneficial or negative to you performance. Cheadle also notes that athletes should take out "what ifs" from your mind because it just makes everything worse. For example," What if I drop the ball" or, "What if I miss the shot." She says that these types of worries "take you out of the moment" and take you "into the future and have you wringing your hands and wondering about what will happen. (Cheadle 100)" When you get stuck in negative thoughts they can feed into your anxiety and misery.
Every person who plays sports has to deal with their emotions at one point in their career. I know many others who are held back from their full potential just because of their emotions whether it is their confidence, attitude, or what they think about during the game. Personally, one thing that I need to work on is staying positive during the game. I know that whenever I make mistakes I am always worried about what the coach is thinking or letting my teammates down. I have been working on just staying positive and playing hard instead of always reflecting back on mistakes and having negative thoughts.
What do you do when you start to have negative thoughts towards yourself and what are different ways that you can turn them around so you can encourage and think positive about your abilities?
One thing that I like to do is focus more on doing the basic things, like breathing or running in order to take my mind off the what ifs and self criticism. Often times if I start analyzing every mistake I make out on the soccer pitch then I get myself into a downward spiral, that's why I try to pull myself out of it by giving all of my attention to something trivial and rudimentary, like breathing.
ReplyDeleteThat same exact thing used to happen to me in Basketball. Whenever I thought about all the mistakes I made, it kept on making me play worse and worse. I have never really thought of focusing on more basic things like that, but I can see how it could help.
DeleteI think that being mentally tough is the best trait an athlete could have. If an athlete is always positive then I think his teammates will feed off of that. Not only would the athlete be making himself better but he would also be lifting his teammates up. Having short-term memory is very important. For example, in at-bats when I don't get a hit, I'm not down on myself when I go back to the dugout. I think about what I did wrong and how I can fix these mistakes in order to get a hit the next at-bat. Thinking about mistakes you've made in the past is only going to hold you down.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you. Players who are always positive and lift up their teammates during games are the best kind of teammates in my opinion. They have the ability to make the whole team better just by being positive. Even though it is sometimes hard to stay positive, I think that having teammates that have your back no matter what make you a lot more confident.
Delete