Sport psychologists are forever attempting to get athletes to be more positive and to rid themselves of negative thoughts. There is only one problem: That strategy doesn’t work. In fact, the evidence from all sports—including endurance events such as marathon running and triathlon—goes against the conventional wisdom that if you think happy thoughts and eliminate negative ones you will perform better on race day. As it turns out, even with lots of psychological coaching, attempting to be more optimistic and confident can have the reverse effect—it can make you realize just how unnerved you are! To really excel in the mental game, athletes are better served facing the “inconvenient truth” that the control we seek over our thoughts is weak and ineffective at best.
A new book by author Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, details the history of our American love affair with optimism. She cites Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 best seller, The Power of Positive Thinking, and Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as books that peddled the promise that you could rather easily change your thinking in a positive direction just by choosing the right mantra to repeat or through sheer willpower. If only it were that easy! Any one of us who has struggled to calm themselves on the beach before their open water swim or tried to make themselves feel good about a slower-than-expected finishing time, or, for that matter, promised themselves not to quit their training program, knows the frustration of trying to talk yourself into or out of something. In short, self-doubts do not go away (at least not for long) just because you want them to.
There is substantial evidence that even elite athletes—those we admire for their mental toughness—still struggle with self-defeating thoughts. Alberto Salazar, winner of the New York City Marathon from 1980-1982, and Nike’s running coach, puts it bluntly: “You are always going to have doubts and fears.” Salazar wishes he had known that earlier in his career. He didn’t realize that everyone had doubts, so he wasted a lot of time thinking he was “a big baby, a wimp.” Similarly, Kara Goucher, the long distance runner who Salazar coaches, admits that although she sometimes brims with confidence, at other times, she is overwhelmed by doubts. She says “it’s as if I have two voices in my head, one that says anything is possible and [the other] that tells me I am not good enough.” There are many quotable athletes, but they all acknowledge what Scott Tinley, who has competed in 400 triathlons and won close to 100 of them, said: “Self-doubt runs rampant through the ranks of even the best.” That is the dirty little secret of many
professional athletes.
Let’s call this constant parade of self-defeating thoughts “mind chatter.” To transform your mental game, consider taking a more mindfulness-based approach to quieting your mind rather than continuing to hope that you can banish bad thoughts. A quick “mind chatter” lesson: First, no matter what you say, your “mind” will continue to dream up ways to keep you physically and psychologically safe. So, despite your best efforts to pump yourself up for a big race, chant positive aphorisms, or tell yourself that an upcoming competition is just for fun, the “mind” can sniff out potential threats to your ego and turn your pre-race sleep into a fitful night of insomnia.
The mindfulness approach, unlike the traditional positive thinking strategy, wants you to also stop trying to amplify the positive or eliminate the negative. Trying to convince yourself that you really are a good runner (when you are insecure about your running) is like, as one colleague put it, trying to throw yourself a surprise party. It just doesn’t work. Instead, follow the fundamental mindfulness rule that “Whatever you resist persists and whatever you let be, lets you be.” So, when you identify thoughts in the mind chatter (“I am not a good runner. I am too slow”), just notice it, and if you like, “thank your thought” for showing up. You might say to yourself, “There’s that thought again, right on cue. Isn’t it interesting how you (the thought) show up when I need you the least?” The lesson is to not mess with your mind chatter, and be more like the Zen master who says “When thoughts come, let them come, and when thoughts go, let them go.” This approach accepts that all thoughts are legitimate, and trying to compensate for negative ones is a pointless denial of one’s true feelings.
As an alternative to the chatter, it can be helpful to think about race related specifics, such as your pacing plan, the vision of your staying in good form, or as Michael Phelps is apt to do, even imagining successfully handling an unexpected race problem, such as a cramp, a pass by a competitor, or the pain of the last mile. The chatter will absolutely attempt to interfere with your relaxation plans, but now you have a mental skills strategy to apply when the volume on your chatter dial gets turned up. Notice the chatter, greet the chatter, and then see where else you might slide your attention so that the chatter receives no more attention than it deserves.
Here’s a fitting metaphor that resonates with many athletes who find themselves mentally exhausted from trying to get on the right side of their racing jitters and doubts: Consider not feeling confident for a big race like being in a tug-of-war with a negativity monster. The monster is big, ugly, and very strong. In between you and the monster is a pit, and, so far as you can tell, it is bottomless. If you lose this tug-of-war, you will fall into this pit and be destroyed. So you pull and pull, but the harder you pull, the harder the negativity monster pulls back, and you find yourself edging closer and closer to the pit. The hardest thing to see is that your job is not to win the tug-of-war. Your job is to drop
the rope!

Mitchell Greene, Ph.D. is the sport psychology consultant to The Philadelphia Triathlon and the SheRox Triathlon Series. He is also a contributing columnist for USA Triathlon. He can be reached at www.greenepsych.com.