3 STEPS TO OPTIMIZE THE INNER VOICE

By Christine Sanchez, PhD, CMPC, BCB

It’s the morning of a physical training (PT) test or selection event. You have spent months in the gym or pool, possibly even years, training for this big day. You slept well the night prior, despite some nerves or butterflies. You fuelled appropriately last night by eating a well-balanced dinner and breakfast this morning. You are properly hydrated and ready to crush this upcoming test. Why wouldn’t you be? You are physically fit and in the best shape of your life.

When operating in ambiguous and dynamic environments, your mindset is often the one thing completely under your control. What you focus your thoughts on initiates the mind-body connection and directly impacts performance outcomes. Our brain naturally focuses on the negative to protect us, it’s how we are hotwired and have evolved since caveman/woman days. However, in today’s world we typically spend most days in a non-life or death situation. Therefore, it is necessary to reframe negative or self-sabotaging thinking habits that may potentially limit our performance potential. Let’s look at the science behind how this works!

Self-talk: The inner voice

The average person verbally speaks around 150 words per minute. Our inner speech or dialogue can contain up to 4,000 words per minute (Korba, 1990). This means our inner dialogue may be up to 26x faster than our verbal speech. Our inner dialogue contains conscious and unconscious thoughts, and the ability to either energize or debilitate our performance outcomes. Think of all the possibilities left up to chance if we do not have the proper mindset tools! What you do with these thoughts directly impacts your performance outcome. Part of your mindset conditioning training includes performance tools to reframe ineffective thinking or self-limiting thinking statements. 

Effective Vs. Ineffective Thinking

What you focus your mind on is a conscious choice that can either empower you to step outside your comfort zone and direct your focus to the task at hand, or it can debilitate and sabotage you from performing up to your true potential. Let’s take a look at how the wiring or circuitry in our brain links mindset with performance.

What type of self-talk (positive or negative) were you engaging in just prior to or during the performance? Many people in this “sub-optimal performance” example may say negative self-talk. Why? There’s a direct connection between what we think about and how we perform. See Figures 1-2 for an example of this process.

Your thoughts activate the prefrontal cortex portion of the brain and then communicates via our neuropathways to the amygdala. The amygdala is a portion of the brain in charge of our emotional processing and emotional memories. A positive thought is likely to signal a positive emotional response and vice versa. Next, this signal is sent down to the brain stem, which control’s our body’s physiology (i.e., heart rate, breathing, blood flow, sweat response, etc.). The final step is to send out this information to our muscles and communicate the message throughout the entire body.

As a result, positive emotions are more likely to leave us feeling centred and ready. Negative emotions could cause our bodies to feel tenses and on edge. Our body will perform depending on our state of readiness initiated in the Thought Performance Interaction.

Combat situations can be quite serious and real. It may not be realistic to find a happy and positive thought to focus on. Instead of thinking in terms of positive versus negative thoughts, allow yourself to view thoughts as “effective” versus “ineffective”.

Effective thoughts empower us to move towards our desired performance outcome. They can help us stay focused on the task at hand and appropriately manage physical, mental, and emotional energy levels. Ineffective thoughts often self-sabotage our performance outcomes. We waste our own energy by focusing on things outside of our control.

Choose to focus on effective thoughts and create the conditions for you to perform at your best given what resources you have to work with on a given day. Some days you may find yourself operating at 100%. Other days you may be operating at 75% due to a lack of sleep, poor nutrition/hydration, or challenging work and personal life demands.

By becoming more self-aware of ineffective thoughts and reframing into more helpful, effective thoughts, you are creating the conditions to be “100% of your 75% self”. This is the best version of yourself today given what life is throwing out at you.

When experiencing negative or ineffective self-talk, try out the following Performance Tool to optimize your mindset.

Performance Tool: 3R’s to Optimize Mindset: Recognize, Reset, Refocus

1. Recognize: Become more self-aware of possible thinking traps and ineffective internal voice. Make a goal of recognising one more ineffective thought each day.

2. Reset: Utilize a cue word, action, or image to signify a hard reset to your brain for stopping the negative thought. Just like you “control-alt-delete” on your computer to reset, you can reset the brain by utilizing a cue word, action, or image.

Cue examples:

• Physical (action): Take an easy, long, slow exhale through the nose to direct your mind back to the present moment and let go of excess stress in the body.

• Verbal (word): Say the word “STOP” silently to halt an ineffective thinking pattern.

• Image: Mentally imaging a Stop or Do Not Enter sign to help reroute your thinking.

3. Refocus: Reframe to an effective thinking statement that either:
• Helps you focus on the most critical element for the task at hand. Think task-specific cue words.

• Empowers or inspires you to take action. This may be a mantra or power statement reminding you of your strengths. “I’ve earned my place to be here today.”

• Allows you to have compassion for yourself and the challenging situation you may be experiencing. “Next house run is a new opportunity.” “It’s normal to feel nervous, time to show my skills and abilities.”

Table 1 below provides an example of how to utilize the 3R’s Performance Tool with the scenarios presented during this article’s Self-Reflection 1 exercise.

Try out the following self-reflection exercise to begin integrating the 3R’s Performance Tool into your daily training and personal life routine.

Christine Sanchez, PhD, CMPC, BCB

Mental Performance Consultant

Dr. Christine Sanchez provides mental skills training and executive coaching to elite performers. She has over 16 years of experience working within a variety of performance domains, such as US Special Operations, first responders, professional sport, and executive leaders. Dr. Sanchez is best known for her work integrating biofeedback training with performance under pressure and recovery optimization. She earned her PhD in Sport and Performance Psychology from Florida State University, and currently holds the following certifications: Board Certified in Biofeedback, Certified Mental Performance Consultant, and Certified Breathing Behavioural Analyst.

References

Korba, R. J., (1990). Rate of inner speech. Perception and Motor Skills, 71(3), 1043-1052.