Mastering Negative Thinking and Self-Doubts During This Crazy Season
Mastering Negative Thinking and Self-Doubts During This Crazy Season
by Dr. Alan Goldberg//Contributor
As a swimmer, you’ve probably had your world turned upside down since COVID-19 knocked on your door last March! The end of that short course season was suddenly cancelled along with this past long course season. If you’ve been lucky enough, you may have been able to find a pool or lake to train in, but since the fall, the insanity has continued and at present, it seems to be accelerating as the virus spreads more rapidly around the country.
The result of all of this uncertainty and disruptions in your training is that it’s been really tough for most swimmers to motivate themselves to keep working hard! This makes perfect sense given that it’s so difficult to work towards your big goals when you don’t even know if you’ll have any championships meets to measure your progress!
Because of this, many swimmers have been flooded with a steady, internal stream of negative thinking and self-doubts on the way to and during their practices! “What’s the point?!” “Why bother?!!” “I’ve lost so much training time and I’m slower than I’ve ever been!” “I’ll never get to that dream of mine now!” etc. If you as a swimmer allow yourself to tune into this negative “self-talk,” it will take the motivational wind out of your sails, robbing you of your determination to keep working hard!
While you may not be able to do much about the uncertainty caused by Covid, you can certainly learn to master the accompanying negative chatter so that it doesn’t bring down the quality and intensity of your training! Here’s what you need to do:
The result of all of this uncertainty and disruptions in your training is that it’s been really tough for most swimmers to motivate themselves to keep working hard! This makes perfect sense given that it’s so difficult to work towards your big goals when you don’t even know if you’ll have any championships meets to measure your progress!
Because of this, many swimmers have been flooded with a steady, internal stream of negative thinking and self-doubts on the way to and during their practices! “What’s the point?!” “Why bother?!!” “I’ve lost so much training time and I’m slower than I’ve ever been!” “I’ll never get to that dream of mine now!” etc. If you as a swimmer allow yourself to tune into this negative “self-talk,” it will take the motivational wind out of your sails, robbing you of your determination to keep working hard!
While you may not be able to do much about the uncertainty caused by Covid, you can certainly learn to master the accompanying negative chatter so that it doesn’t bring down the quality and intensity of your training! Here’s what you need to do:
