Do you struggle with getting down on yourself during games?
After a mistake, do you beat yourself up? Do your thoughts tear you down and kill any hope you have of bouncing back?
When you consistently get down on yourself during games, this will do nothing but lower your performance. And if you currently get down on yourself, you know this first hand.
To help stop this habit, I’m going to go over a strategy you can use to stop getting down on yourself during games. But first, let’s examine why getting down on yourself is so hurtful.
How Getting Down on Yourself Hurts Your Game
When do you normally get down on yourself? Is it after a mistake? After you miss a shot? Miss a tackle? Make an error?
The most common reason athletes get down on themselves is because of a mistake. Something didn’t go right for them in the game, and so that pesky voice takes over.
And they berate themselves for how stupid what they just did was.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
You didn’t want to make the mistake, right? So what’s the harm in reminding yourself that?
A common conversation I have in one-on-one mental coaching involves this very situation. The athlete will tell me that they beat themselves up because they want to remind themselves the mistake wasn’t acceptable.
I completely get that…but once a mistake is made or something doesn’t go your way, it doesn’t matter how unacceptable the mistake may have been. It happened.
It’s over.
There’s nothing you can do about it.
Well, you could learn from it, of course. But that’s rarely the frame of mind an athlete is in when they’re beating themselves up and getting down after a mistake.
Instead of learning, they are reminding themselves how awful the mistake was, how stupid it was, and how embarrassing it was.
Have you ever done that to yourself?
When you get down on yourself after mistakes, it hurts your performance moving forward. That’s what we want to pay attention to.
It’s not that we don’t care about the mistake or whatever it is you’re down on yourself about. We do care…but we also know the negative effect this has on your game moving forward.
Getting Down on Yourself Leads to Tight & Timid Play
How confident do you feel after getting down on yourself?
Is your belief at an all time high?
Or an all time low?
When you get down on yourself, your confidence will take a hit. Inevitably the negative thoughts will work against the trust you have in yourself.
Now what do you think will happen as you move forward within the game if your confidence has dropped?
You will play with less confidence. Which means you will play with more fear.
It’s easy to fear making another mistake. Especially since you got so down on yourself following the first one. The mistake and the negative feeling it caused are both things you want to avoid.
As you focus on avoiding further mistakes, your play will change.
You’ll find yourself playing timid. Meaning, you hold yourself back.
I was talking with a basketball player this past week who I’m beginning to work with and he was telling me about how this idea plays out for him.
When he gets down on himself after turning the ball over, all he thinks about is not turning the ball over again. As he does, his play begins to change.
He passes up shots. He doesn’t drive to the basket. And he stops calling for the ball as much.
His entire game changes, simply due to fear. Fear that was fueled by him initially getting down on himself after a mistake.
How Getting Down on Yourself During Games Effects You Long-Term
Not only does getting down on yourself during games cause you to play tight and timidly, but it also has a negative effect on your game long-term.
Think about it like this…if every game you play, you beat yourself up, what will happen to your confidence?
Well, we know that confidence is built through the experience of success, being prepared, having good thoughts, and so on. But one thing you will not find on the list of what builds confidence is you getting down on yourself.
That would find itself on a list of what kills your confidence.
If you beat yourself up every game, your confidence will drop.
The lower your confidence, the more fear you play with.
In the moment, getting down on yourself may not seem like a huge deal. But if we look at the compounding effect of it, we see where it truly becomes deadly.
Beliefs are built through thoughts. When you think a certain way over and over again, those thoughts form beliefs.
Beliefs don’t discriminate between good and bad beliefs. They will happily form into whichever type of belief you create through your thoughts.
If you’re getting down on yourself during games, you are building negative beliefs. Negative beliefs that do nothing but hold you back.
That’s the main reason getting down on yourself during games hurts you long-term. The negative thoughts you have build negative beliefs as time goes on.
Strategy to Stop Getting Down on Yourself During Games
Knowing how hurtful getting down on yourself during games is, both for the immediate game you’re playing as well as your long-term beliefs, what can you do to stop?
The strategy consists of two parts. The first part involves what you can do in the moment when you are getting down on yourself.
The second part of the strategy involves how you can build a mind over time that gets down on itself less and less.
Part 1: How to Stop Getting Down on Yourself in The Moment
When negative thoughts take over, you have to reclaim control of your mind.
Negative thoughts aren’t there because you want them to be. They are there because they are automatic. They explode into your mind. Welcome or not.
If you allow the negative thoughts to linger, they will feed on themselves and multiply. Until something outside of yourself (such as a good play) kicks you out of your negative loop.
But you don’t want to wait for something external to stop the negative spiral of thoughts. The goal is for you to have control over your mind in these moments.
Which begins with controlling your body.
When you get down on yourself, yes, your thoughts are negative, but what about your body language? Do you hold yourself in the same confident way as when you’re playing great?
Or do you hang your head, walk a little slower, and slouch your shoulders?
To stop getting down on yourself during games, you must first focus on your body language. Do not allow your body to mirror your thoughts. Work to have your thoughts mirror your body.
Once your body language is better, it’s time to focus on your breathing.
When you feel yourself getting down, take a few deep breaths. This will work to center your attention in the present moment and off whatever it is that’s getting you down.
Once you’ve made sure your body language is good and taken a few deep breaths, it’s time to manage your thoughts.
What would be something helpful for you to say to yourself? What would get you to move past your mistake or whatever else has you down and refocused onto the next play?
To help identify what you need to say to yourself, imagine a teammate is getting down on themselves. What would you say to them?
Once you figure that out, say the same thing to yourself!
This process works to reclaim control over your mind and help you move past the mistake or whatever else has you down on yourself during games.
- Focus on your body language.
- Take a few deep breaths.
- Change your thinking.
Part 2: Building Positive Beliefs Long-Term
Why do you get down on yourself during games? Are you trying to get down on yourself and trying to think negatively?
Or does it just happen?
When you get down on yourself during games and those negative thoughts just pop into your mind, this highlights something known as automatic thought patterns.
We all have certain patterns of thinking. Automatic thought patterns refer to the cyclical types of thoughts you have in certain situations. The automatic part means these thoughts pop into your mind without you trying to think about them.
This is why it can feel like getting down on yourself during games is out of your control. Because the thoughts themselves, at that moment, kind of are.
You didn’t choose to have the thoughts. By their nature, they are automatic. Which means they flashed into your mind from your subconscious.
In part one, we talked about an in the moment strategy to stop getting down on yourself. And what we focused on was how you respond to the negative thoughts once you notice them.
Since these negative thoughts are automatic, we aren’t going to try and not have them at all (at least not in the short-term). They are there. The best approach in the moment is to manage the thoughts once you realize they are present.
But long-term, what you can do is work to alter your automatic thought patterns.
Thought patterns are formed through repetition. Over time, the more you think a certain way, the more likely you’ll think that way automatically in the future.
For the most part, this happens without us being aware. You aren’t working day in and day out to build negative thought patterns.
They just happen.
What you can do, though, is put the work in to build positive automatic thought patterns.
You can do this through a self-talk routine.
Create a list of 10 positive statements. Thoughts you would like to have. Then, reread the list to yourself at least once a day.
This is by no means a short-term solution. Reading a self-talk routine is a long-term approach. If you stay consistent with the exercise, over time you will notice your automatic thoughts begin to change.
Final Thoughts
Getting down on yourself during games lowers your confidence and is distracting.
If you get down on yourself after a mistake, you aren’t in a good position to make the next play.
Long-term, the more you get down on yourself, the more fearful you will become and the more tight and timid you’ll play.
To stop getting down on yourself during games, there is a two part strategy you can use.
Part one is where you focus on in the moment tools to manage your negative thoughts and get yourself refocused.
Part two involves using a self-talk routine to alter your automatic thought patterns long-term.
By applying this strategy, you will be equipped with the tools to stop getting down on yourself during games. Thank you for reading and I wish you the best of success in all that you do.
