Negative Thinking can actually help your sporting performance

Throughout my teenage years, I was most certainly a pessimist; a negative thinker with a darker outlook on my sporting performance. So strap in because the point of this blog will be to show you how pessimist and negative thinking can actually help you, with an overriding sport theme of course.

 "What will you do if this goes wrong?". A challenging question that will pop into the head of most performers, whether it's based around sports, exams,work or a personal life challenge. If you're like me then you'd often overthink that very simple question to the point that it breaks down your confidence, beliefs and self-esteem. It's a natural question that can stem a prolonged self-inquisition and often stress us out and prevent us from reaching our best. It is most proven in a sporting capacity, whether it's coming off the bench, returning from injury or after missing a ‘chance’ in a game.

However, many psychologists will tell you that creating a method that allows you to overcome a challenge will help. By making a plan in your head, before or during performance, can have positive effects and boost your confidence out on the field, court, track or in the pool. An example - If I wanted to beat an opposing team player in football, I would have to plan whether I would come deep, move out wide, where I would receive the ball. If you're like me, you'll notice that many other negative questions will pop into your head during a performance such as "What if he predicts what I'm doing?", "Will he come in hard?"  these negative questions can stem into anxiety and loss of confidence. Its these negative questions that can stem into anxiety and loss of confidence in sport. 

While we puzzle ourselves over these negative outcomes, we forget that we are actually mentally preparing ourselves for different eventualities that could occur. This is crucial, as it allows us to strategise. We're making ourselves one step ahead of our opponent without knowing it.

If you can relate to my babble in this blog then you'll already be getting a loose idea for how you can turn some of these negative thoughts into tools to help enhance your performance. Just see if you can reconstruct a negative question around your performance. For example, "What can I do if it's not working out for me and my opponent is playing really well?".  

With a long winded question like that, you're actually giving yourself the opportunity to think proactively in the game, making you mentally strong. Many psychologists will tell you that this method of constructing questions during performance will make performers mentally proactive rather than reactive. This means that we have more flexibility with our problem solving during a game. 

By asking yourself negative questions before your performance then you're putting your mind in a state of readiness. You're priming your brain to be proactive so you can be more confident, focused and smarter in your performance.

Hopefully this blog has been worth a read. 

Cheers

ChippKG