Sportpsychologie.li

One of the hardest tasks in sports is „taking control of your emotions before they take control of you.“

The idea of „being in control of things you can control but not wasting energy on things you can’t control“ is one of the key principles in sports.

Though it is less known that emotions are controllable as well. Some athletes even feel like they are slaves of their own emotions and end up having their performances weakened by a loss of temper.

There are 5 factors that usually cause athletes to lose their emotional control during competitions:

1. Perfectionism and High Expectations
2. Worrying about what others think
3. Irrational Beliefs
4. Fear of Failure
5. Dwelling on Errors

Working on those 5 factors helps you to (re-)gain control over your emotions.
It helps you to use your emotions in your favor and thereby enhances your performance instead of sabotaging it.

💎-Note:
When you lose your temper, you lose yourself. You lose all you‘ve worked for in countless hours of training in the blink of an eye. Losing emotional control is an expensive luxury no athlete can afford permanently.

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I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from a negative experience with competent functioning.
Resilient people experience the same negative emotions and pain as others, but manage to overcome defeats, setbacks as well as injuries quicker and without developing mental illnessess as a consequence of facing highly challenging or traumatic experiences.

Resilience can be trained and can help you to deal with difficult situations in sports, as well as in life in general, in a highly effective way.

💎-Note: Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

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The cure for pain is in the pain.

The ability to use imagination to picture different ways future could enfold is one of the most amazing features of human beings.

That ability can also be used to improve your sports performance by preparing yourself for worst case scenarios.

By putting yourself in an uncomfortable spot during training you‘ll be able to find yourself strategies to deal with pain, fears and obstacles.

You may be surprised to find your performance improving when you allow yourself to experience those negative or uncomfortable situations.
💎-Note: If you picture all possible outcomes in your mind you'll be prepared for all occasions in reality.

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Competition can improve motivation.
For some athletes competition and especially rivalry (the intense desire to defeat a particular competitor) are able to boost their levels of motivation and enhance their performance.

While this won‘t work for everyone, it still can be important to realize that competition and rivalry are essential aspects of sports and do have a positive impact on ones performance.

Without opponents you wouldn‘t be your best because you wouldn‘t be forced to test your limits in a way that is needed to reach your full potential.

💎-Note: You‘re not fighting your enemies, you‘re fighting yourself.
Accept the challenges that competition and rivalry give you and turn it into opportunities to grow.
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Challenge yourself - be obsessed with improvement!
Stagnancy is the first step to regression. Even if there's maybe no opponent better than you right now - there might be one tomorrow. That‘s why there is always room for improvement.

💎-Note: It's important to realize that a former victory or defeat won't influence your future performance in the first place.
Every fight, race or game is a blank page you'll be filling with your performance that actual day. That's why everything is always possible - it's up to you.

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„I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.“

People tend to justify their behaviour by finding excuses.
In fact, the one thing that is standing between a person and the desired goal often is the story one keeps telling himself as to why the goal can't be achieved.

Being an athlete you won't be able to be successful if you always talk yourself into taking the easy road.
Instead you need to be willing to work hard, push yourself to the limit and face situations that won't be comfortable or easy at all. Great things never come from comfort zones, but stagnation does.

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Be stronger than your excuses!
Sometimes the most difficult road is the one actually leading to success and happiness, while the easy ones just lead to dreams of success and happiness.

Win in your mind and you will win in reality.

Whereas confidence is perceived as the athlete's conviction of successfully performing a task, negative thinking is the opposite.

Negative thoughts lead to reduced confidence, a lack of concentration and elevated anxiety and stress.
While the little negative voices inside of our heads strive to keep us safe by reminding us of a possible danger or a negative event from the past, they actually are sabotaging our sports performance.

If you find yourself in a spiral of negative thoughts ask yourself: "Is it really true?" "Is it logical?" "How else could it be?"
💎-Note: Your soul becomes dyed by the color of your toughts. That what consumes your mind, controls your life.

The hardest prison to escape is the human mind. None of your opponents will ever be able to weaken you as much as you are able to weaken yourself.

Your body and your mind are an inseparable team. But each team is only as strong as its weakest link, that’s why it's important to not only keep your body but also your mind(set) in shape.

Researchers found two fundamental mindsets that people use: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.
People with a fixed mindset believe they are born with a certain amount of intelligence or talent, and these abilities cannot be improved.
People that possess a growth mindset believe abilities can be improved through hard work and persistence.

It was shown that those with a growth mindset outperform those with a fixed mindset, cause they have a better way to deal with failure and thereby are more confident and successful in facing challenging tasks.

💎-Note: You either control your mind, or your mind will control you.

Hold your head up in defeat and down in victory.
Nothing is for free - and certainly not success. It's a long and rocky road that leads to the fulfillment of your dreams. There won't be achievements without constant hard work, overcomings of temporary setbacks and the refusal to quit.
If you finally make it, take time to enjoy your success but don't feel too comfortable at the top. There's neither a right for success nor for keeping it.
The life of your dreams can turn into a nightmare in the blink of an eye. That's why it's best to always hope for the best but expect and plan for the worst.
💎-Note: Everybody wants to be successful, but are you also willing to pay the price?
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The better you feel about yourself, the less you feel the need to show off.
The better you know your strengths and weaknesses the better you're able to control how others percieve you.

Never show off all you've got to offer, keep some secrets to yourself and use them as a secret weapon to create an element of surprise. Thereby you'll find yourself having an unexpected advantage in your competitions that your opponents won't see coming.

Whereas by showing off all you've got you'll end up giving your opponents an enormous advantage in case of knowledge about how to defeat you.
💎-Note: Have more than you show, speak less than you know.
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If you don't sacrifice for what you want, what you want will be the sacrifice.
To reach the top, you'll have to abstain from a lot of things. One of the main challenges you'll have to face over and over again is choosing between things that would be fun in short-term but destructive in long-term and things that are hard in short-term but effective in long-term.
Each time you're deciding to do an extra hour while others don't, each time you're running another round while others rest, each time you're trying a new trick or move while others stick to the well-known that's exactly when you'll be able to get ahead of them - one step closer to the top, one step closer to your goals.
💎-Note: Take the time to set yourself long-term goals that keep you from short-term distraction.

Champions don’t show up to get everything they want; they show up to give everything they have.

Being an athlete you won't be able to be successful if you always talk yourself into taking the easy road. Instead you need to be willing to work hard, push yourself to the limit and face situations that won't be comfortable at all.

Ask yourself: what hurts more,
the pain of hard work not paying off as planned or the pain of regret because you missed the opportunity of your lifetime cause you didn’t give it your all?

💎-Note: Sometimes the most difficult road is the one actually leading to success and happiness, while the easy one just leads to dreams of success and happiness.

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