Tool Box
Issue No. 31 - October/November 2006
Affirm, visualise to improve results
by Craig Stubing
There are many attributes that are shared by champion sportspeople and champion salespeople.
One of these is the ability to maintain a strong-minded, positive attitude and stick to a pre-determined routine under extreme pressure. This enables them to maintain a high level of performance in situations where others would fall apart.
You may ask, ‘How do they learn to do that?’
To find answers we should consider two well-recognised concepts used in sports psychology. They are the concepts of positive affirmations and visualisation.
Affirmations
We need to understand that we talk to ourselves all the time (not out loud hopefully!).
This self-talk often has its roots in our childhood and early career experiences. These experiences are not always pleasant and positive; because of this our self-talk can sometimes be pessimistic and harmful, destroying our attitude and our ability to perform.
Fortunately, it can sometimes be optomistic and improve our performance.
Most people’s self-talk comes in random bites; sometimes optomistic, sometimes pessimistic. If our self-talk at a point in time is pessimistic we are likely to compromise our performance. Similarly, if our self-talk is optomistic at that point in time we are likely to optimise our performance.
The positive affirmation concept involves making the conscious choice to talk to ourselves in an optimistic way all the time, including in pressure situations.
It involves finding a way to replace pessimistic scripts from the past with optomistic ones so that we can rely on them in pressure situations.
Visualisation
In the same way that we talk to ourselves constantly, we constantly have pictures rolling through our minds. Many of these pictures are of ourselves. They, also, are often pictures from the past.
As with our self-talk, some of these self-pictures are likely to be negative and destructive; others will ...
