Why do athletes need to be good to themselves?

Why is it important to be good to yourself when competing? 

Do you know what ‘being good to yourself’ looks and feels like? When you understand how much easier it is to boost your confidence in training & matches when you are kinder to yourself, then it becomes easier to be a good parent to yourself in the heat of the battle. 

Think about it:  How well do children respond if you shout at them whenever they make a mistake, or keep telling them they are useless? 

Yet as adults, we somehow think it will help us succeed if we treat ourselves like shit, that somehow, we will respond better and be more motivated by insults than kids?

Looking for different Methods

I have always been interested in sport because of what it did for me psychologically during stressful times, whether that was playing or watching. This interest led me to seek different methods to help me compete better and later on as a coach to help athletes maintain mentally healthy thinking while competing at an elite level. 

Experimenting

This took me to experimenting with meditation, yoga, breathing techniques, inner game, and countless other books and methods to improve my performance under pressure. All this study and interest led to life benefits outside of sport, such as learning how to express my feelings towards anxiety or conflict in healthy ways or being able to tell people why I need space instead of just saying I’m stressed with no explanation. 

Impact of Sport

This is good because it has enabled me to understand the impact sport has had on my life beyond the field of battle. The lessons that the intensity of competition teaches is something all athletes should draw from, because clarifying what you know, about how you think and perform under pressure can improve performance and lead to a happier life.

Some of the key takeaways I learnt are:

• I built mental strength and resilience by continuously rebounding from setbacks and defeats.
• Gained a strong understanding of why it is important to do things with a calm and positive attitude. If you rebound with a moaning and complaining attitude, it is not effective.
• Learnt what ‘being good to myself’ looks and feels like by learning to speak to myself with the right tone and messages, especially when stressed and nervous.
• I learned it is more important to believe in processes than yourself.
• Learnt to build a team around me that is both competent and supportive.
• Learnt patience, as results rarely come when you expect them.
• I got relaxed and accepted that I can only do my best which kept me humble enough to respect the performance of others and that there is no shame in being outperformed and that learning that all I had to do was continue my work to become better after any defeat.

These lessons are all incorporated into The Mindset College Programme.

Here are some steps to maintain a positive mindset and to help you be good to yourself whilst competing:

• Identify the problem to tackle negativity by finding out where the negativity is coming from. If there are negative thoughts that are disturbing your performance, then write them down, along with the feelings they evoke in you and the triggers (the situation that leads to these thoughts). 
• See if you can reconfigure these thoughts and feelings in ways that can help move you to thinking about opportunities rather than disasters.
• Keep your body language relaxed and positive. Relaxing the muscles in your face and keeping your chin up with good posture helps a lot.

Fun through your mistakes

You can still have fun through your mistakes and losses if you remember you are growing as a person and athlete, learning from them, instead of the experience of fun just happening if you are winning. Sport gives you no choice but to win or lose, so work hard to not make losing matches a miserable experience. Losing teaches you how to cope with losing and get back up and try again, so when the wins come, they are so much sweeter, especially if you see them as a reward for being good to yourself.

 Link and associate winning as a reward for being good to yourself when you are losing.

Less Stress 

This will help you become mentally good to yourself and have a healthier life because of it. When your language to yourself is encouraging, you will have less stress and perform better overall. This does not mean that you never give yourself a kick up the proverbial butt. Self-talk needs to be positive, kind, and looking forward to opportunities, no matter how bad things are, rather than constantly berating yourself about how terrible you are.

Think about how to become a better player and competitor, instead of what you did wrong.

Written by 

David Sammel