The following post is an excerpt from Frank’s newest book, The Soft Science of Tennis.
Click Here to Order through Amazon
Destroying Negative Past Beliefs
Educate Choices
The old saying is “It’s not the event that shapes us, it’s how we choose to view it.” After competition, it is not healthy to focus on everything the athlete did wrong. Growth-minded individuals choose to focus on opportunities that lead to physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual growth.
Replace Negative Perceptions with Positive Affirmations
Past and present pessimistic beliefs shape an athlete’s current opinions. List their negative perceptions and discuss where they originated. Then assist the athlete in rewriting their inner dialog with positive versions to reprogram the athlete’s beliefs. Coaches, parents, and athletes, please realize that overriding and rewiring a pessimistic outlook is a very doable task given time and patience.
Educate Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance refers to the athlete’s inconsistent opposing thoughts and beliefs. It’s the natural mental discomfort or psychological stress that comes with change. Replacing an old belief with a new belief is similar to reprogramming a flawed stroke. Typically, it takes 4-6 weeks for the new motor program to override the old flawed stroke. At the beginning of the metamorphosis, the athlete owns two opposite belief systems, the old and the new. The older more comfortable version will initially overtake and resist the new. This inner war should be explained to any student suffering from their past negatives beliefs.
The time it takes to replace their disempowering belief with their new empowering belief is customized to the time and effort the individual puts into the metamorphosis. Some athletes will choose to speed up the optimistic priming process with hours of neuro priming per week, while other less committed athletes may only choose to set aside one hour a week. Obviously, the time dedicated to the project dictates the speed and effectiveness of the transformation.
Neuro Priming the New Belief System
Together the parent/coach and athlete should sit down and list the benefits of the new optimistic belief system. The athlete should be encouraged to read their list of positive affirmations list into their voice recorder app on their cell phone and listen to their recordings nightly to Neuro Prime (visualize and mentally rehearse) their optimistic beliefs. Negative past beliefs can be destroyed and replaced. Optimistic beliefs begin with the athletes vividly imagining themselves performing to perfection in competition. Persistence is key as the new empowering beliefs gain control and the disempowering beliefs die out.
“Thought patterns shape our lives and help or hinder athletic performance.”
Overriding my negative past beliefs 32 years ago contributed significantly to my change and success as a teacher, author, and human being. Re-conditioning a negative athlete is one of the most satisfying experiences a coach will ever experience.
Once the athlete becomes aware of their limiting perceptions, and they choose to destroy their negative inner dialog, they will recognize the unnecessary pain that has been holding them back. It’s incredibly gratifying to witness a struggling athlete blossom into a confident, optimistic, happier person.
While coaches and even some parents routinely spot flawed strokes, most allow their athlete’s negative self-dialog to go unchecked. Overriding the athletes past pessimistic belief systems is a critical function in The Soft Science of Tennis.
Perception Awareness
Often, athletes listen to that little pessimistic voice inside their brain all day long. This internal conversation programs their attitude, effort, and of course, their match behavior. In this case, shifting attention from stroke adjustments to an attitude adjustment is mandatory. Erasing by replacing negative voices with positive ones is essential.
“In the heat of battle, positive versus negative internal dialog is what often separates the winners from losers.”
