Welcome. Raise Your Inner Game Today. I’m David Levin. This is our Tuesday episode so we’re talking about sports and parenting teenage athletes.
So, today I want to talk about an article I read this past week. It was a beautiful piece, heartbreaking, honest. Written by Ana Marie Cox, published online in The Cut from New York Magazine. The piece was called, “The Voice In My Head Doesn’t Want Me To Be Sober.”
So, obviously, it’s about alcoholism and addiction. I don’t want to talk about those, specifically, and I’m not qualified, really, to talk about those.
But the “Voice In My Head” part, well, I DO feel qualified to talk about, and her experience and observations were very interesting so I thought it would be helpful to talk about them in the context of helping our kids boost their mental game.
So, first I’m going to walk through some of her comments and talk about those. And then I’ll share some suggestions for things you can do to help your child boost their mental game.
So she starts out talking about her own inner voice and some of her struggles. And I’m taking her comments out of context, so if they seem disconnected from each other, that’s my fault.
But one of the first things she says is,
“That same voice that had been with me since childhood was suddenly extremely loud and extremely convincing. “You’re a fuck-up, You’re stupid. You can’t take care of yourself. You’re going to die poor and alone.”
So first, it just breaks my heart to think about the kind of abuse we take from our own inner voice. I mean, hers is a little extreme, but not that much. Right? I mean haven’t we all heard similar things? I know I have. And the emotional pain and burden of that is just so hard and awful.
So first is just a big statement of empathy and understanding for the burden we all carry with this kind of thing.
And by the way, it really is everyone. Everyone has an inner voice like this that talks them down, pretty much constantly. Mine says different things than yours does. And the struggle is harder for some than for others. But it’s there for all of us. It’s part of our human wiring. So a big connection point there, too. We’re all dealing with a similar struggle. We can give each other a bit more benefit of the doubt and grace. Life is hard, and this is big part of why.
Back to the article, next up, she’s describing a particular scene. “I was driving down the highway, I heard that voice and I agreed. “I’m a piece of shit.’”
That is a really key observation. And that is exactly what we tend to do. Our inner voice says something negative about us, and we just agree with it. “You’re right. I’m no good. I’m a loser.” and so on.
One of the most powerful things we can do is to start to break that cycle, to stop believing the negative things our inner voice says about us.
I heard another beautiful story. It was a teenage boy talking about his own mental health journey. And he shared something his therapist said to him that really helped him, and I’ve never forgotten it.
She said, “Those things you’re hearing in your head, they’re not necessarily true. That’s just your teenage brain doing what teenage brains do. Those are the kind of things they say. But you don’t have to believe them.”
That’s so powerful. Just to start to be able to step back, and notice the things you’re hearing, and rather than just reflexively agree with them, instead to think, Hang on, Is that really true? Do I actually believe that?” It is just hugely powerful.
Later, she starts to talk about working with various therapists. And there are a couple of interesting things in there.
She says, Multiple therapists over the years tried to help me with it. It’s a common struggle.
One challenged me to keep track of it; literally tick off on a piece of paper every time it happened. Turned out it happened a lot.
She says, The pervasiveness of my negative self-talk shocked me.
That is another very helpful observation. And it’s not a sign that there’s anything wrong with us. It’s just the nature of our big, thinking brains. They are thought-generating machines that go and go and go.
And when you first start to become aware of that, like she did, you can think, my god, there really is something wrong with me. But there really isn’t. This is just what our brains do. They go and go and go.
So then, talking about one therapist in particular, she says,
She, like other therapists before her, recommended affirmations as a coping mechanism. I told her they wouldn’t work. “I’ll know I’m lying. I won’t believe myself.”
So now we get to my approach for dealing with negative self-talk, and it’s different from what you’ll typically hear.
Most of the time, you will hear what she heard. Affirmations. Very common. Visualization also, especially in sports. Meditation. And I don’t mean to say that they’re not helpful. They definitely can be. But they’re very limited, especially for athletes.
Here’s the thing. And you may have heard me say this elsewhere.
But peak performance as an athlete comes when you are fully focused and present in the moment rather than being off in your head somewhere.
So, when you are using an affirmation, you’re saying something positive to yourself to counter a negative thought, even if it’s the perfect thing to think, by definition, you’re still in your head.
So right in the moment, when you’re in competition, and you most need to shut down that negative thought, affirmations are simply not helpful. Nor are visualizations or meditation. They have their place. But in the moment, they are not the help you need.
What you need are two things.
First, you need to have the Ah Ha moment like I talk about I had in Raise Your Inner Game and Timothy Galwey talks about in his classic book, The Inner Game of Tennis. He was observing his players beating themselves up for making a mistake, just like we’re talking about. And all of sudden he thought, Wait. Who are they talking to? There are TWO PEOPLE in there!
That’s step one. You have to see that for yourself.
Your inner voice is NOT YOU. It’s someone else. YOU are the person who HEARS what they’re saying. Two different people. And the other person is not your friend.
Then, once you experience that for yourself and you see it and feel it in your life, the second thing is to practice telling them to stop.
You’re here. Focused. Present. You hear them start to say those things to you. Rather than agreeing with them. Or even thinking about what they’re saying, because that means you’re still in your head. Instead you say, Nope. Not going there. You shut it down and come back to where you want to be.
That is how you raise your inner game. And by the way, that is exactly what we teach in the Sports Academy.
So now, what can you do with this? How can you help your child deal with their negative self-talk?
Well, it depends a bit on the nature of your relationship. If you can talk to them about things like this and they will be open with you, you can ask them about their inner game. “Do you have trouble with negative self talk? What kinds of things do you hear? Gosh, that’s hard. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that. You know, I heard this great story, you don’t have to agree with those thoughts. That’s just your teenage brain doing what it does.” You can share that story. That could be very helpful.
If you’ve read the Raise Your Inner Game book, you could talk about some of the specifics in there — the framework, the exercises, the skills and tools.
If the relationship means a conversation like that might not work, you could maybe point them to this podcast episode, tell them you thought it was interesting and they might find it helpful. Hi, if you’re hear because of that. You could encourage them to read the book themselves. Raise Your Inner Game. It’s not framed in a sports context, but all the core concepts are in there.
Of course the next level would be to take the training, work with me, have their coach get certified to train the whole team. There are many different things you could do.
But just getting them started to see this basic idea, that the negative thoughts they hear are not necessarily true. They don’t have to believe them. They don’t even have to listen to them. They can just shut them down. That is the most powerful thing. If you can somehow help them start to see that, it will put them on a great new path with their mental game.
All right, that’s it for this episode. “The Voice In My Head (doesn’t want me to succeed)” I hope that was helpful.
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Either way, thank you for listening. Keep up the good work. We’ll see you next time.
