How to Optimize Mindset for Performance

To achieve peak performance an athlete must first learn to optimize their mindset.

Exposure to both acute and chronic stress through the pressures associated with performance, rigors of training and physical development and challenges of fulfilling often conflicting personal needs and athletic responsibilities can create socioemotional imbalance and psychological distress for athletes. Over time, unmitigated stress can compound and compromise one’s self concept, rending athletes vulnerable to establishing limiting beliefs, experiencing intrusive thoughts, mood swings and social isolation, increasing risk for poor outcomes in mental health.

Among students athletes, 30% of women and 25% of men report being diagnosed with anxiety. While among professionals, upwards of 35% report having experienced a mental health crisis expressed as stress, eating disorders, burnout, depression or anxiety (“Mental Health & Athletes”, 2019). Symptoms of mental illness may become normalized due to the widespread nature of its impact, rendering athletes dismissive of its significance and avoidant of treatment.

A toxic association to mental health is often sustained. The notion one must be “stronger” to not succumb to symptoms or that only the “weak” suffer from poor mental health establishes a harmful narrative that increases suffering and isolation for those most vulnerable.

Seeking to improve mental health & performance?

1. Enroll into therapy

2. Begin journaling

3. Use positive self affirmations

4. Improve sleep hygiene & nutrition

5. Increase social engagement

Targeted assignment:

1. Rewire your mindset to focus on the immediate next steps required for athletic performance. Identify and write down all existing triggers that cause symptoms on sheet of paper. Write your the psychological, emotional and behavioral outcomes resulting from those triggers.

2. Identify any limiting beliefs or maladaptive thought in the written cycle, engage in cognitive restructuring and swap out for a positive and affirming thought. Expose yourself to trigger and practice the affirming thought 5-8x, 3x per week.

Learn more:

InspiredPractice.com

By: Elijah Thompson, LCSW