How To Take Control of Negative Self-Talk
Are you an emotional person? You may not think so, but the reality is you are. You’re emotional because you’re human.
Have you ever felt butterflies in your stomach before a big game or presentation?
Has your heart rate ever picked up in anticipation of an important moment?
Have you ever experienced anxiety or irritability when confronted with a difficult new task?
These are physiological effects of your emotions.
Emotions drive your behaviour, your decision-making, and your relationships (whether you realize it or not). Fail to channel them in the right direction and not only will your performance plummet (in sport and at work) but so too will your health.
But what exactly is an emotion?
While there are many scientific definitions across disciplines, Dr. John Sullivan PsyD, sport psychologist and neurophysiologist who has 14 years of experience working with the NFL, EPL, and NCAA, says experts in the field generally agree to the following:
For example, when you feel the pressure of a big game (or work event), you experience neurophysiological responses like a rise in heart rate, respiration rate, and adrenaline levels, and then you react.
High-level athletes (and executives) will typically thrive in this scenario, but when the stakes are highest many will struggle.
“How you react to your emotions,” says Dr. Sullivan, “and channel them to support your performance (rather than sabotage it) is key to unlocking your performance potential.”
Emotions, Stress & Health
Today, 75 percent of all doctor’s visits are stress-related, costing the health care system a staggering one billion dollars a year.2 Chronic stress increases the likelihood of experiencing everything from the common cold, to cardiovascular disease, to depression, to even premature death.
Long days at the office and today’s culture of constant connectivity leads to a perpetual stressful state of being “busy” or “on the run”—regardless if you’re an athlete, business person, or raising kids—and this constant state of fight or flight heavily taxes your brain, resiliency, and emotional stability.
Constant stress fundamentally impacts your brain, literally changing how your brain works.
Research in people working over 70 hours per week and faced with constant daily stress reveals an enlarged amygdala—your brain’s radar centre for threat—and weaker connections between the pre-frontal cortex and amygdala that are responsible for quieting the intense emotional responses during stressful moments.3
The stressed-out workers were unable to down-regulate their emotional reactions; their brains were stuck in a constant state of stress response overdrive.
Making matters worse, lack of sleep (and excessive stress) also impair your ability to disengage from negative thoughts.4
This is a major roadblock to channeling emotions in a purposeful direction.
How To Take Control of Negative Self-Talk
Serena Williams is arguably the greatest female tennis player of all time. Her physical strength, power, and quickness combined with her elite technical and tactical skills has made her a favorite in virtually every tournament she entered.
But that’s not only what made Serena Williams an all-time champion.
At every match Serena plays, the opposing player brings extra motivation to knock off the champion. When you’re the best, every opponent brings their “A” game against you.
It’s a daunting task legendary tennis players like Serena must endure, and physical prowess alone doesn’t lead to consistently winning year after year.
Serena uses positive self-talk – which she refers to as “power thoughts” - to dial in her focus and keep her confidence high during tennis matches.
A few years ago, Serena could be seen during the game change- overs in her matches reviewing a small notebook in her lap:
“You will move up”
“You will add spin”
“You are #1”
“You will win Wimbledon!”
Now it’s your turn to try positive self talk. Repeat the following phrases for 60s;
‘I am resilient…’
‘I embrace uncertainty…’
‘I will [fill in the blank with your own affirmation].’
If one of the greatest female tennis players, and arguably the greatest female athlete in any sport, needs regular mental practice to be the best, what does it say for the rest of us? It’s time to step up our game.
To Sum Up
In order to build a champion’s mindset, it’s important to appreciate what’s happening in your brain when you experience an emotion. Then you can fully appreciate how strategies – like positive self-talk - directly transfer to success.
If you fail to effectively channel negative emotions, you’ll never achieve your full performance potential.
If you struggle to deal with negative emotions, you’ll struggle to succeed at the highest level.
Sport (and life) is emotional; embrace it.
Dr. Marc Bubbs ND, MSc, CISSN, CSCS
ps. This blog post is taken from Chapter 11 - Emotions & Mindset of Dr. Bubbs’ best-selling book PEAK - The New Science of Athletic Performance That Is Revolutionizing Sport.
pps. Want to learn more about emotions and mindset? Listen to my interview with expert sport psychologist Dr. Peter Jensen, PhD!
References
1) Bubbs, Marc, PEAK-The New Science of Athletic Performance That Is Revolutionizing Sport. (London, UK, Chelsea Green, 2019)
2) Aditi Narurkar et al., “When physicians counsel about stress: results of a national study,” JAMA Internal Medicine 173, no. 1 (2013), https://doi.org/10.1001/2013.jamainternmed.480.
3) Armita Golkar et al., “The influence of work-related chronic stress on the regulation of emotion and functional connectivity in the brain,” PLoS ONE 9, no. 9 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1371 /journal.pone.0104550.
4) Jacob A. Nota and Meredith E. Coles, “Duration and timing of sleep are associated with repetitive negative thinking,” Cognitive Therapy and Research 39, no. 2 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1007 /s10608-014-9651-7