Listening To Our Internal Voices

We ask our players to keep a journal and write an entry one time a week. The purpose of players writing in their journals is to become more aware of who they are--to discover things about themselves they did not know. It sounds a little silly to say that our players do not know who they are. It would appear after 18 years years of living they would have intimate awareness of their inner thoughts, but the truth is that at age 48 I am still learning who I am.

Often we don't stop to listen to our internal voices and the messages we are sending to ourselves. It is these internal messages which drive us to succeed or to fail, yet we have lived with the same voices so long we haven't taken time to digest exactly what we are saying.

Since our mind thinks in pictures, we may not be aware of the negative messages we continue to perpetuate day after day. Imagine for a moment a player going to the free throw line in a pressure situation. As she steps to the line, she tells herself that she cannot miss this shot. She repeats to herself, "Don't miss. Don't miss." When she tells herself not to miss, she cannot help but visualize the miss. Her mind pictures the miss.

What she should be saying to herself is more in the lines of "I see this shot going in. I feel it coming off my fingers exactly as I have done a thousand times before. I can make free throws anytime in any situation." Now she has visualized the shot going through the net, the thousand times she has practiced free throws and convinced herself she can make this shot now. What a different story!

Players who don't take the time to evaluate what they tell themselves will have difficulty finding the success they want. Thoughts perpetuate action. There is no other way to start an action except by thought. The thought always comes first whether we know it or not. If our players recognize what they are saying to themselves can be damaging or preventing their success, they can work on creating better thoughts.

How many players began with the thought "I can't" because they heard somebody in their past tell them they couldn't dribble with their left hand or shoot a three pointer or defend a faster player? Once they start a thought with those negative words, it is almost certain it will come true. If, however, they can think past the person who told them they couldn't, erase that vocabulary and begin with a different and more affirmative outlook, they will be able to find greater success.

By having our players write in their journals, they have the opportunity to grow in awareness. By expanding their awareness, they can impact their success by simply changing the way they speak to themselves on a daily basis.