How To Turn Around A Bad Day
What do you do when you have a meet coming up, but suddenly
find that you cannot think one positive thought?
Plus, what do you do if you don't BELIEVE that you can swim a particular time,
or beat a certain competitor?
The answer lies in your thoughts, and surprisingly, your 'reasons'.
What I am talking about is: the reasons why you think you CAN, versus the
reasons why you think you can't.
It's a constant battle between the two every day you get out of bed. It really
is a case of "which one will win today?
For instance, if you find yourself feeling a little down about a meet
this weekend - all this means is that your mind has found more reasons why
you CAN'T do well, than positive reasons why you CAN! Your negative reasons
could be a whole range of possibilities - "I won't do well because
of........the water temperature, sickness, recent slow times, I don't like the
pool, I never been Ian, my dog died last week...!" and so on.
This is quite simply a case of: Negative defeated Positive - by 10 reasons to
3 !
Needless to say, when this happens, you don't feel very motivated to go out
there and show the world what you can do! In fact, it usually makes you feel
unmotivated, tired, slow, depressed, etc etc.
So all you have to do to change this all around is to reverse the process,
and start coming up with heaps of reasons why you WILL succeed!
Now here is the secret:
As soon as you can think of MORE REASONS why you will succeed, than reasons
why you might fail, you will succeed. Your motivation and positive energy will
come back and you should put in a fine performance.
The trick is to programme your mind by focusing on the positive reasons,
not the negative - and at first this can be very difficult!
When you are feeling negative, you often cannot think of any good reasons at
all why you'll succeed! This is very common, so don't worry, just continue
to focus upon the positive reasons, and eventually a few small positive reasons
will come to mind. eg. "I will succeed because I've done well in the
past" - not a world-beating reason but at least this is a start!
Then, continue to do this, and the longer you do, the more you will find that
these positive thoughts will appear more and more until your mind becomes
flooded with thoughts of success. Soon you'll have a whole bag of reasons why
you will succeed:
"I'll swim great because.....I feel great today,
and...... I've done some good times in training, and...... I beat (Ian / Mary)
here last year, and....my coach thinks I can do it, and.....these are my best
events, and.....I'm going to show them what I can do......." etc.
Once your mind is thinking this way, you are programming your
inner computer for success.
Remember, your mind works just like a computer, and so your swim is the computer
'printout' - yet your computer can only print out the data YOU put into it -
garbage in, garbage out, as they say.
So feed your mind great reasons why you'll succeed and you will bring out the
best in yourself!
"The
Mind controls the body, and the mind is unlimited".
The best of success, Craig Townsend