“Who’s in Charge? Me or the Devil?” The Power of Self-Talk
Have you ever wondered what athletes are thinking about or saying during competitions? Have you seen their mouth move but not heard what the words were? Do you assume they are trying to just distract their opponent?
Playing competitive sports often has its ups and downs. It’s during the downs when athletes can turn to self-talk, to motivate themselves to push through and rise up. Words have always been said to have more power than anything else and using them in the right way can motivate us to keep going. For athletes, using positive affirmations when talking to themselves is a useful tool to ground them and allow them to focus on how to do the next right thing.
Self-Talk in Action: Lessons from Darts (Littler vs Van den Bergh)
One of the most televised sports, where self-talk is most evident, is Darts. In most live streams of darts matches, the screen is split between the player and the dartboard, so their facial expressions and body language are always on show. With this, it is easy to see the words that players mutter to themselves during matches to motivate and incentivise them to keep going. It would be simple to assume that the players are muttering the calculations of their scores, and what remains, but often that is done inside their heads, and the words they utter are to encourage themselves to focus and take a breath. Some players use more traditional words to focus themselves, whilst others use strong language and harsh words, namely Ted Hankey, who famously asked himself “Who’s in charge? Me or the devil? I think I’m in charge.”
17-year-old Luke Littler was crowned the World Darts Champion at the recent Paddy Power World Darts Championship at the famous Alexandra Palace. Littler is a player known for his incredibly fast rise to the top of the PDC rankings, his amusing celebrations, and his ability to stay calm and centred during matches, even when results aren’t going his way. On the contrary, the dream maker Dimitri Van den Bergh is a player who has played the circuit for a number of years, and regularly takes breaks from throws to focus on breathing and use self-talk to calm himself down, using positive affirmations to remind himself that he can do it. Littler likes to involve the crowd and get them pumped up and excited, whilst Dimitri likes to shut out the noise of the crowd, and focus on his darts. Littler throws at a fast pace whilst Dimitri throws at a slower, more measured pace. Both players couldn’t be more different from each other, but it’s Dimitri’s recent choice to visit a sport psychologist that is the biggest difference. Littler currently holds an unbeaten record against Dimitri, with his biggest win being a 5-1 victory in the Grand Slam of Darts, where he limited Dimitri to one dart at double, on route to claiming his maiden title in the competition.
Does Having a Sport Psychologist Help?
Sport Psychology is an upcoming and new area of psychology and has started to make an impact across multiple sports. Some athletes use a sport psychologist to help them stay motivated during injury rehabilitation, whilst some use sport psychologists to provide them with calming techniques to ground them in intense moments.
Dimitri spoke in an interview with Sky Sports, telling viewers that his sport psychologist has “done wonders with me and has given me a different perspective in how I’m handling pressure.” It’s through this help that Dimitri has started taking more regular breaks in play, to stand back and compose himself before stepping forward, steadying himself, and throwing. The biggest change for the dream maker was the words he used to talk to himself during the games. Negative expressions were replaced with positive affirmations that could remind him of his ability.
The Power of Positive Affirmations for Athletes & Beyond
So the question is, does developing positive self-talk habits, by replacing negative words with positive affirmations, benefit athletes once they have progressed from their athletic career into the workplace? The answer is yes, in numerous ways.
Challenges and adversities don’t stop appearing in our journey once we stop competing. Adversity is like the childhood bully, whose voice continues to speak in our ears no matter where we go and what we do. In every journey we begin, in every road we walk, in every step we take, we have to face up to the challenges that are designed to be beaten.
Positive self-talk is centred around changing the mindset when facing a difficult task. It uses positive affirmations to reframe the thought process when looking at the task, and provides the individual with motivation and support to help them understand that they can work through the challenge and come out the other side on top. Whether it is a physical challenge in hiking a mountain, or a mental challenge of completing a work assignment before the deadline, using self-talk to encourage yourself to keep pushing forward and reach the finish is imperative. Just as athletes use self-talk to ground themselves before a decisive sporting moment, the same self-talk is useful in any workplace, as the challenges we face are not decided by our environment.
Job Interviews: a Mental Game Too
Interviews can be one of the most daunting aspects of applying for a job. The idea of having to justify to strangers why they should choose you can be terrifying at the best of times. Constant rejection after job interviews can further dent an individual’s self-esteem. So how can using positive affirmations help in those moments?
Positive affirmations help remind an individual of what they have to offer. Using these in the interview can allow the individual to compose themselves before effectively answering the question, with a sense of confidence. During difficult questions, positive affirmations can help remind the individual of what they have achieved thus far, and how they can use their experience to answer the question. Self-talk in an interview can often be perceived as thinking, so it isn’t something that needs to be hidden. Using positive affirmations can relax and calm an individual so that their mind is clear to answer the questions in the appropriate manner. Those positive affirmations can help an individual overcome rejection in the workplace by reminding them that they still have a lot to offer, and another company would be proud to utilise their skills.
What Do Ronaldo, Djokovic, and other Top Athletes Have in Common?
Outside of darts, there are other sports where athletes must talk to themselves to keep them focused on the matter at hand or find the energy to keep persevering after a long event.
4-time Olympic Gold medal winner, USA’s Sanya Richards-Ross spoke about her experience of speaking to a sport psychologist, and how they helped her shut down the “monkey chatter” (the negative voices in your head saying you aren’t good enough) by using positive imagery and goal setting. Her fight against the voice saying “You didn’t do it in 2008” involved the use of self-talk, to come back and say “That’s right, but I’m doing it today.”
Argued as one of the greatest football players to ever play the game, Cristiano Ronaldo used self-talk to compose himself before taking a deciding free kick for his country. Ronaldo said to himself “You can, cross the barrier, same as always, for you it is normal to score.” As one of the greatest goal scorers of his generation, even Ronaldo had to remind himself that scoring was normal for him, and he needed to do the same thing he always did, helping him shut out the crowd and focus on the ball and the goal. This breaking down of the situation to the bare bones, just himself, the ball and goal, allowed him to block out the negative thoughts and pressures of the situation.
Australian Cricketer Steven Waugh used symbolic imagery to help his self-talk, by imagining a positive character and a negative character having a boxing fight in his head, and he had to tell himself who was going to win the fight, who he would allow to come out victorious. The winner of the fight was the mentality he chose to use when facing the toughest challenges.
Serbian Tennis star Novak Djokovic spoke after his 2014 Wimbledon success, saying that he had to leave the court and talk “loudly” to himself in the bathroom, telling himself “Believe in yourself.” One of the most important phrases in his interview was when Djokovic explained that “it’s not a cliché, it really works.” The stigma around talking to yourself can lead athletes, often in the public eye, to avoid doing something that can be construed as weak, but a record-holding start talking about the need to compose himself and take a moment to bring himself back to the reality of the situation, was a significant effort to eliminate this stigma.
Next time you watch or participate in a sporting event, pay close attention to words you can hear athletes saying. You will recognise the positive phrases and the fight against the negative and worrying thoughts.
Jamie Smokler
Useful links & resources