Reminding Yourself of the Truth

Let’s be clear from the start, the boundary between our mind and our body is an imaginary line no more real than the line between my city and yours. When you think, your body has physical reactions. When you move, your brain changes.

Research shows that children learn language better when they are using their large muscle groups. Other studies show an increase in memory and cognitive function after exercise. No mystery here. Exercise baths the brain in growth hormones and that increases capacity to build new neural networks. We were designed to learn on the run.

Investigations into brain function show the physical effects of mood and thinking. Think about guilty pleasures and your brain fires up like you’re actually enjoying them. Repeat an activity and your brain develops additional capacity, quantity and quality, in related brain areas.

Imagine an activity and your brain reacts like you’re really doing it. It grows more responsive to that activity, more able to repeat the activity just as if you’ve practiced it. So contrary to what we were told as children, thinking something can sometimes make it so.

The physical structure of our brains increase or decrease our capacity to achieve and hold certain emotional or mood states and we can nudge our brains toward increasing certain moods by self-talk. This means that to a measurable degree we are in control of our moods.

I’m reminding, or telling, you this because if you’re going to make this work for you, you need to have a high level of trust that it’s true. I don’t mean you need to believe in it – thinking something is so that you haven’t personally experienced – but have enough trust in the evidence that you can motivate yourself to invest energy in trying it and learning from experience.

So, assuming that you have lapses in self-confidences, get caught doubting your abilities, experience anxiety on race day or lose track of your real goals in the midst of a competitive beat, you may want to start talking to yourself and rearranging your brain.

Now if you’re already saying, “I’m a great sailor” or “I can win any regatta I enter” I’ll just let you know that that is probably nonsense and unlikely to convince even the most distracted brain. Self-talk is most effective when it’s a reminder of what you really know to be true, if you could step outside of the self-doubts and longstanding thinking patterns you’ve rehearsed since childhood.

You are probably not the world’s greatest sailor, but you are capable of relaxing and sailing at your best. You can’t win every regatta, but you can feel one with the Laser. You aren’t invincible, but you can be fearless today.

At the highest levels of competitive sailing the differences aren’t so much about skill as about attitude. Self-doubt takes attention away from your strategic planning, interrupts your smoothly choreographed maneuvers, narrows your focus away from the entire course, exhausts your reserves of energy, impairs memory and clouds cognition.

Positive self-talk reminds you to enjoy the adventure, that you have had some great sailing moments, that you have started right up there with the best in some races, that your tacks are fluid, your jibes can be exhilarating, your senses acute and your heart full of courage.

Self-talk reminds you of the truth when self-doubt is trying to elbow its way into a fine sailing day. Self-talk teaches your brain to develop its capacity to switch to positive thoughts with a practiced ease. Negative thoughts pull our attention and self-talk makes that pull obvious so that we don’t unconsciously slide into accepting those negative thoughts as the baseline, the standard, the race-day inevitable.

Practicing positive self-talk makes it second nature, just as practicing tacks allows you to focus on the tactical and strategic aspects of sailing. And you don’t need a bit of breeze to practice. How about right now? “Practice is satisfying” “I am going to have fun dancing with my Laser in the wind and waves” “I’m gutsy when I put my mind to it.”

You do and can have a degree of control over your negative moods and emotions. I look forward to seeing you on the water and enjoying our test of abilities. I’ll be practicing to enjoy myself even when you make a great move that pulls you ahead. After all, “I can sail with the best of them.”

Let me know what you’re thinking. Jay at Lasersailing.com will contact me.

Jay Livingston