Session eight: Constructively dealing with worry and debilitative thoughts (loss

to ensue plausibly requires effectively managing the ideas and attitudes one conveys to oneself. As conveyed during the theoretical input phase (Murdock, 2012h), to foster optimal mental performance, one’s internal dialogue ought to be performance and self- enhancing. In this session, emphasis was placed on emulating one’s desired mental strength

as a means to facilitate thoughts and behaviours conducive to building the confident focus characteristic of optimal performance states.

3.8.8.1 Fake it until you make it. The common North American adage talk the talk

but one’s non-verbal behaviour, and posture in particular, can effectively instil confidence (Cuddy, Wilmuth, & Carney, 2012). To allow those notions to become self-evident through a practical task, first, students were asked to walk around the seminar room aimlessly with their heads and eyes down, shoulders hunched, and feet dragging. After approximately 60 seconds, the students were asked to give a one-word report indicative of what feelings the exercise, and their body language in particular, evoked in them; confident, high-power expressions were not anticipated. Next, students were instructed to take a short walk, consisting of three laps, around the hallway, designed with a circular plan, outside of the seminar room. Specifically, they were instructed to adopt a confident posture—albeit with over exaggerated pomp for illustrative purposes—“with [their] head high, chin up, eyes forward, and shoulders back” (Murdock, 2012h, p. 15) for each of the three laps. The first lap served to acquaint the student-athletes with the desired confident posture and strut. In advance, two signs had been prepared and were held up as the participants passed the starting point of the second and third laps. The first read I just can’t do this while the second message revealed I’m a terrible _____ athlete/player. During the second

and third laps, students were asked to maintain the desired self-confident strut, however, continuously repeat the respective message held up for them as they commenced the respective lap. The intention of the task was to demonstrate the inherent relationship between nonverbal behaviour and performance whilst also providing a foundation for the planned follow up discussion.

To open the discussion, students were once again asked to give a one-word report indicative of what feelings the second exercise evoked in them and/or to indicate a numeric value on a scale of one to 10 (10 being the high score) of how confident they felt while completing each respective task. As demonstrated by Cuddy et al. (2012), it is difficult to feel completely elevated, positive, and confident while actively reciting self-defeating thoughts. Conversely, it is challenging to feel and think negatively while strutting with sheer confidence. Thus, progressing forward in the instructional cycle, after the individual needs assessment, the student-athletes were asked to formulate a self-empowering statement which they could use is their sport to foster absolute confidence. The statement, moreover, ought to replicate the dauntlessly zealous communicative style of self-talk, or positive autosuggestion (Orlick, 2000), incarnated by the late U.S. boxer Muhammad Ali. Thereafter, the second acquisition and practice task required students to emulate Jamaican track and field athlete Usain Bolt and assume his customary expansive, high-power posture (Cuddy et al., 2012). While maintaining their pose, students were asked to repeat their self-empowering statement in their head for 60 seconds. It was presupposed that the aforementioned cognitive-behavioural strategies, which required the student-athletes to

act as if they had trained their “butterflies to fly in formation” (Hanton & Jones, 1999, p.

22), would allow the students to physically and mentally experience the self-confident trust required to overcome debilitative internal thoughts. Then, drawing on the foundational information conveyed in the seminar to date, students were reminded that the trust underlying the loss of self-consciousness emanates from an awareness of what

works best for oneself and actually employing the strategies one deems most facilitative. As

the presumed tangible result of such ideal preparation is the ability to—confidently (without anxiety or self-consciousness)—exercise control over one’s performance.

Before engaging in individual goal setting, students were asked to discuss in teams which debilitative thoughts they face during performance (as was done during session seven; sense of control). Using the Control the Controllable Self-Regulation Checklist once again,

in their teams, the participants were expected to confer which mental training strategies would be beneficial for fostering a loss of self-consciousness whilst managing the concern put forth. Here, too, requiring the students to reiterate and actively reflect on the various techniques available to them was a means of reinforcing their knowledge of not only the techniques, but when and how they could be used effectively. Finally, because a combination of goal setting, imagery, and self-talk is demonstrably beneficial for effectively managing debilitative thoughts and anxiety (Hanton & Jones, 1999), the individual goal setting taskscombined the three strategies. First, adopted from the framework outlined by Hardy, Gammage, and Hall (2001) and Hardy, Hall, and Alexander (2001), the student- athletes were asked to determine at least four self-enhancing statements reflective of four specific types of self-talk: self-encouragement, effort control, performance goal achievement, and general positive self-talk. The associated Talk the Talk handout (provided

in the enclosed CD-ROM; see document 11) required students to set goals for where and when to use each type of self-talk. Moreover, it entailed a protocol with which the athletes were required to track their progress as homework. Further, the Walk the Walk goal setting

task (provided in the enclosed CD-ROM; please see document 12) encouraged the participants to plan how they would behave and feel by notating goals for how they would purposefully carry themselves pre, during, and post-performance. While Usain Bolt was the model given, where desired, students were encouraged to emulate a paragon from their own sport. As a segue to the final centring imagery and relaxation phase, students were asked to spend 90 seconds visualising how they would carry themselves during their next pre, during, and post- practice phases. Furthermore, they were additionally instructed to combine their images with an appropriate self-enhancing statement as determined in the previous Talk the Talk in-class exercise. Thus, after using one-breath relaxation as a centring

technique, students were guided through 30 seconds of envisioning (seeing and feeling) how

they will talk the talk and walk the walk during their next (a) pre-performance, (b) performance, and (c) post-performance phases, respectively. The seminar was brought to a close with the stress control audio exercise Reminders for Feeling Good (Orlick, 2003a).

Indubitably, to foster optimal mental performance states, athletes must increase their awareness of and take control over both how they carry themselves and their internal dialogue. Similarly, one must cultivate an equally mindful and intentional attitude towards focusing on making time work in one’s favour both within and outside of one’s performance domain.

3.8.9 Session nine: Freeing oneself from the tyranny of time while performing