Our minds are constantly chattering away with an internal dialogue, or “self talk.” Our self talk can be helpful, and can help to increase our confidence, mood or performance, or at times, self talk can be negative, which can lead to decreased confidence, performance difficulties and low mood.
Do you use positive thinking to help you get through tough situations, like public speaking, performances or even social situations? Does it work for you? Using positive affirmations or “positive self talk” is often praised as a key strategy to increase performance, and even to change our moods…but is self talk actually effective? Could simply replacing a negative thought with a positive one actually change how we feel and help us to perform better?
Some people like to use positive affirmations to increase their confidence (eg, “I’m great at X, I’m amazing!!” etc), but it’s important to use such affirmations with caution. If you don’t actually believe the content of a positive affirmation to be true, then it could backfire. A study by Wood, Perunovic & Lee (2003) evaluated the effectiveness of positive self statements. The results concluded that for people with low self esteem, positive self statements can be ineffective and can cause the person’s feelings about themselves and their mood to feel worse!! For people with high self esteem, positive self statements were shown to lead to a small increase in positive feelings and mood. The authors of the study outline that “Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, but backfire for the very people who ‘‘need’’ them the most.”
Self talk is a popular technique in the field of sports psychology, but there is surprisingly little evidence to support its benefit… however, Moran (2004) outlines that self talk may be useful in performances, as it can direct our attention to focus on key cues and demands related to a performance.
So with all this confusion, how can you best use self talk to support your performance in any given situation? Try the following tips:
- Keep self talk positively phrased, emphasising what you should do, instead of what you should avoid. For example, “I can choose healthy food options”, rather than “don’t eat junk food!”, or “relax my shoulders and breath deeply” rather than “don’t make any mistakes!.”
- Don’t use positive affirmations you don’t believe to be true – instead, find a statement that focuses your attention on something you can control or focus on.
- Keep positive statements focused on things within your control, for example “Take a deep breath to relax,” “soft grip,” “focus on your posture,” “if I make a mistake, take a breath and start again” etc.
- Keep it short and simple, and as vivid as possible, to focus your attention on cues relevant to the task. Try a trigger word related to performance cues like “relax”, “energise!” “soft tone” etc.
- Use past successes to boost your confidence – rather than a general positive affirmation “I rock at public speaking!,” you could focus your self talk on a past successful performance “I felt confident when I gave a speech at last month’s team meeting and received great feedback!”
Do you ever use self talk to help you to focus at work, during sports, or when giving performances? Would you try this?
Why is this? Why is it ok for others to make mistakes, but not ourselves? If you feel that you’re your own toughest judge, it may be because of your cognitive schemas (“your what!?”). Schemas are like a roadmap that help us understand and make sense of the world, and include our underlying beliefs and assumptions. Those schemas, or road maps, can shape which road we take (our behaviours) and effect how we think about the road we’re on (our thoughts). We may have schemas related to perfectionism, and unrelenting standards, which can then lead to feelings of pressure, and thoughts around nothing being good enough. These thoughts and feelings can then affect our behaviour, (for example, working longer hours or avoiding relaxing).