How to Change Negative Thoughts to Positive Thoughts in Sport Part 1

Dr. Dan Gould discusses how to use thought stopping, centering and refocusing in basket ball.

Okay we have talked some about focus, about motivation and we have talked about confidence and the importance of needing all those to be really prepare to play well and to execute well and turn all your hard work into practice, into good performances. We are going to do a little like a fun activity today to get us to maybe work on how to stay in a positive productive tone when you are struggling maybe when things wrong because we all kind of have sometime or another a bad day. Shots don't drop, we don't -- for swimmer the water doesn't feel fast. I don't execute very well and it's pretty hard not to have some negative self thoughts, negative self statements. So the way we are going to start this exercise is I am going to give everybody a three by five card here and a pencil and I am going ask you while I am passing that out to think about your sport and your situation. A place where you get negative pretty easy like maybe its missing a shot or striking out in softball or baseball and you get down on your self and I want to you to kind of just describe the self statement you make to yourself like, "Oh my God! I can't believe I did in again" that type of thing. So right out a self statement for me that's very -- that you get into, that's real, that's negative. Now if you are using some curse word sometimes in a formal meeting like this you don't want to mention them, so you can just put all xxx and then we don't have say it. But what's really important with this is for this to work. We need what you actually say to yourself on the field, on the court, in the gym. When you are in that kind of situation that's not going well. Okay, now what we are going to do is we are going to do a -- we got some of the negative statements. Let me read some, I will just kind of mix them up a little. Here we go again. So something went wrong with this person and here we go again. We have probably see head shaking, we have all been there. Missing an open shot you think that you know, I suck. That's probably one that everybody and a lot of athletes say, I suck, this stinks. Again some of the curse, I don't what the hell is wrong with me. That's a pretty good one. Damn why didn't I take it sooner and faster. Someone tells me damn is probably not the word this person uses but that type of word. Here is somebody that just has xxxx, it's an easy skill. Okay, here is our version one we already had I totally suck. Okay, so now the importance is these are real. These came from the people in the group here and that occurs in sports. Sports is not easy, mistakes are part of the game and part of being a really good champion is keeping your motivation up, stand positive in the face all this frustration and mistakes trying to get better. I don't want to sit here and make it sound like, oh just be positive, everything will be great. It's a fight; you have got to fight through those negative situations and stay positive and productive. But I mean its not going to be perfect day; you just have to fight through them and kind of stay in a good place.