Change your inner voice for athletic performance
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Fed up of feeling like there’s a devil on your shoulder whispering unhelpful and negative things in your ear? Unsure how to stop this negative inner voice?
The key to a successful athlete mindset is becoming proficient at stopping that unhelpful, negative inner voice and making your helpful, positive inner voice the only voice you hear and listen to.
By stopping that unhelpful voice and replacing it with a powerful, productive, positive and helpful voice you can knock minutes off your race and transform your life.
I know this first-hand from my own experience of transforming my physical health and from helping clients knock up to 40 minutes off their race time, achieve British records, qualify in Paralympic test trials and exit first out of the water for the first time in their triathlon career.
Don’t know where to start? Here are the 3 steps to changing your inner voice.
Step 1: Changing what you say re-wires your brain - fast
Changing what you say to yourself makes a huge difference to your performance and quality of life. Your brain changes, develops and grows as a result of how we use it - this is called neuroplasticity.
Your brain is like a group of muscles: if you exercise one group of muscles, they get stronger and stronger, and if you neglect another they become weaker and weaker.
Neuroplasticity means that when you talk in negatives, you are making that part of the brain more and more active, so these negative pathways become stronger, better and faster at their jobs. As a result, these pathways are more easily triggered and help you to think in negatives.
However, the less we use that negative pathway, the weaker and weaker it becomes and the harder it is to trigger that pathway.
Want the good news? You can simply and quickly change the way your brain is wired by talking in positive, productive and powerful language. This makes the positive parts of the brain more and more active, so these positive pathways become stronger, better and faster at their jobs. Subsequently, these pathways are more easily triggered and helps you to think in positives now and in the future.
Step 2: Tell yourself exactly what you want
When I first start working with clients I ask them: How would you love to feel? And what they don't realise is that their answers are actually still telling me what they don't want!
They may answer with things like:
‘I don't want to feel stressed about the world championship competition’
‘I don't want to be distracted’
‘I don't want to fall off the climbing wall’
Do you see the problem with these sentences? Sure, they know what they want, but they’re still expressing it using negative and unhelpful words/phrases.
Your brain cannot directly process negative words or phrases, such as ‘I don’t want to feel stressed’, without first getting in touch with those feelings/thoughts, so the brain understands what NOT to think or feel about.
As a result, an instruction containing a negative has the complete opposite effect to the desired outcome.
It’s therefore paramount that you instruct your brain to head in the direction you want to go in using positive, powerful, productive language.
Step 3: The Stop
My Transfer Your Inner Voice method has helped athletes, entrepreneurs, consultants and more to change their negative, unhelpful thoughts to Powerful, Productive, Positive thoughts. Empowering them to knock minutes off their races and live happier lives.
Here’s the basic principle:
When you notice you’re telling yourself something unhelpful and negative, just say ‘stop’.
Now replace that phrase with it’s Powerful, Productive, Positive counterpart - and say it with conviction.
For example, the unhelpful phrase might be: ‘I’m a slow swimmer and find it really boring.’
‘Stop’
And with a confident, uplifting voice replace it with: ‘I look forward to each swim training session and feel fast in the water by focusing on my technique.’
Do this as many times throughout the day as you need to, the more you use this method, the more you’re re-wiring your brain for positivity.
What results can you expect?
Allan Hovda (pictured in first place below) is one of Norway’s most successful endurance triathletes. Among his achievements includes three times Norseman winner.
Norseman is an extreme triathlon in Norway, which starts with jumping off the back of a ferry at 5am, then a 3.9km swim, followed by a 190km cycle and 42.2km run, and athletes gain over 5000m in elevation. It’s not for the feint hearted!
Although Allan won the 2018 Norseman race in an incredible time, he felt he’d failed. This is because in the last 20km of his race, Allan's mindset switched from a killer to victim's mindset, he was beating himself up and calculating in his head how he could come to lose, despite having a 21 minute lead.
One of the most significant factors that influenced Allan's performance, was what he was saying to himself and how he was saying it.
The words we say and use are the structure and architecture of our thoughts, feelings and experiences. They can make the difference between winning and losing, achieving our potential or falling short.
Since working with Allan, he has pushed his limits in every race and broke the Norwegian Ironman race record twice in one year.
Please share your thoughts below—I’d love to hear.
