• Cognitive psychology (study include
memory, perception, and learning)
• Psychology of perception (the
process of recognizing and
interpreting sensory stimuli, how it
is related to the five senses and
how it differs from reality)
• Neurobiology/ neuroscience (how
the brain physically works)
• Semantics (sub-disciplines
including the study of word
meanings and word relations and
the cognitive structure of meaning)
• Pragmatics (the study of the use of
language)
• Psycholinguistics (how language is
processed in the brain)
• Neurolinguistics (how language is
computed in the brain)
• Cognitive Linguistics (how language
interacts with cognition, how
language forms our thoughts and
mindsets)
While this subject alone can look a bit confusing and complicated – it’s not once you understand the interplay. You really need to have a basic understanding of the importance of self-talk and its effective language structure because it’s the very foundation all mental skills build upon.
This article is not a full discussion on self-talk because full training involves "hands on" exercises. It will simplify and cover highlights though. It will also give a few examples so you become aware of its importance. Lastly, some things you can do right now to start optimizing your self-talk so you can go beyond what you have been taught to this point.
Words define the world
you perceive
Most think that words describe the world that you live in. This isn’t true. Your words actually define the world that you live in. There are countless studies that substantiate that our language actually helps create the world as we perceive it. The words that we say, what we say and how we say them impacts the quality of our performance on and off the field.
I’ve worked with a number of athletes over the years and have found if athletes have a particular pattern they are in, they also have a particular language pattern they are saying on a consistent basis as well. If they’re talking about losing, they’re losing a lot. If they’re talking about how they “suck at hitting”, “can’t hit” or “in a slump” they inevitably are not hitting well. Conversely, if they talk about “how well they’re seeing the ball”, they’re hitting well. Their own words are defining who they are and how they are performing.
Self-talk does provide performance enhancement
The subject of self-talk has been well documented over the years. The research concludes, “positive” (their word not mine) self-talk does provide performance enhancement while negative self-talk diminished performance, motivation or both. Now, there has been a very small percentage of people where negative self-talk didn’t diminish or negatively affect performance and a few cases it did minimally improve performance. But in those few cases it was very situational. They were the exception not the rule.
BRAIN FACT:
The unconscious processing abilities of the human brain are estimated at roughly 11 million pieces of information per second. Compare that to the estimate for conscious processing: only about 40-60 pieces per second.
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