Athletes, do you get stuck in the negative? What if spiral and does it feel like sometimes you'll never get out? You are constantly thinking about what could go wrong. Then this episode is for you. Welcome back to the Raising Elite Competitors podcast. I'm Coach Saylor, a mental performance coach for athletes in our community, and today I'm going to be sharing a mindset shift that you can make today that will help you navigate. The spiral. When you are in your head, anytime you have a negative thought that is holding you back, I'm so excited to get in today's tip. Before we do that. I wanna give a quick shout out to Isabelle. Isabelle is an athlete in the elite mental game, our mental training program for girl athletes, and she messaged us saying, hi. So I did my first heptathlon yesterday and today and holy moly, I did so amazing mentally. I got a personal best in six out of seven of my events. And I usually fall apart really bad before my 800 meter race, and I stayed so strong and went into it so positive that I ran a 23 second personal best. Thank you for everything. Isabelle, we are so incredibly proud of you. We know how hard you've worked for this and you really took control of your mindset, in this competition and it helped you perform your best. Congrats. We are so thankful you are a part of our elite mental game community as well. Okay, so now let's get into today's athlete tip. Stop the spiral and get out of your head. First things first, I want you to know that negative thoughts are normal. There's nothing wrong with you. You are human. Humans have negative thoughts, and actually as humans, we are biased to unfortunately think negatively. We have a negativity tendency. We have negative thoughts actually to protect us. Our brain's number one job is to keep us safe. So we are constantly looking out for danger for things that are unfamiliar to us in our environment, negative things happening around us. And this is often counteractive for us, right? We don't usually want to be thinking all of these negative thoughts and sports are typically a place where we are actually safe and a place where a lot of positivity and productivity happens. So your brain needs to know that it is okay to get out of your comfort zone, to fail, to make mistakes, to change, to fall short. So just know your negative thoughts are normal, but you cannot stay stuck there. You cannot let them keep you stuck and keep you from holding back from being your best. And so let's get into this strategy that I'm going to be sharing. One of the best tools is to flip the what if spiral, the what if things go wrong, mindset. And I'm going to walk you through exactly how to do that in this episode. And I bet if you are in your head, you're going down the negative. What if spiral? What if I mess up? What if my teammate gets mad at me? What if my coach pulls me outta the game and yells at me? What if I let people down? What if I embarrass myself? What if I lose? What if I don't play how I've been practicing? What if I get hurt? What if the ball gets stolen from me? What if, what if? What if? Right? That's probably what is going through your head most of the time. That negative. What if spiral. Oof. Okay. Pause if you are able to. We're gonna walk through this exercise just for you, so I would love for you to get out a journal and a pen or maybe open up the notes app on your phone. And I want you to write down whatever negative what if thoughts are coming up for you. What are you typically thinking? What is that spiral for you? And I want you to just get them out of your head and into writing. So if you're able to do this, go ahead and pause the podcast and then come back. Once you have completed that step and journaled out those negative, what if thoughts that come up for you? All right, so now we have those negative, unproductive what if thoughts? Now we're going to completely flip this. We are going to shift and transform your mindset. So instead of thinking what if things go wrong? Now I want you to think of what if things go right. What if you play with confidence? What if all the skills you've been working on in practice. Show up in your performance. What if your teammates support you and cheer you on? What if your coach gives you a high five? What if you start? What if you win? What if you make yourself and others really proud? What if you are safe? What if you take risks that work out? What if you make a great play? This is where your mindset is going to go. This is how. We start getting out of the what if spiral and we flip it and we are actually able to go on a positive what if spiral. So now same thing. If you're able to, I want you to pause the podcast in a second. I want you to make a list of everything that could go right for you and your sport. The positive what ifs that could happen. And it's probably going to be a lot of the opposite of what you just wrote down in that previous list. I want you to let your brain get creative, really come up with what success could happen for you. So pause the video, go make a new list of what could go right, and then come back when you're done. And I want you to think about both of those lists. The negative what if list, and the positive what if list, which one is more realistic, which one is more likely to actually happen? Is it more likely that everything goes wrong for you when you've been working so hard, showing up, improving day in and day out? Or is it more likely that things actually work out for you, that things go right for you, that you play to your potential or close to it? I can almost guarantee that it is more likely that things go right for you. Okay. This should give you a sense of relief, right? It is unrealistic that that worst case scenario actually happens for you. That all of those negative what ifs happen, and if the off chance that some of those things do happen that they do come true. I know that you can get through those things because you have probably gotten through all of those things that are on your list before. Yeah. Maybe you've let people down before, maybe you've made a mistake, you've lost games. Right, but guess what? You've survived all of those worst case moments and you can make it through again, okay? It is going to be more likely that the best case scenario happens for you. Trust your training. Show up with what you have, okay? You have put in the work. It is time to think of what could actually go right and stop letting your mindset hold you back. Right. Get out of your own head and start thinking of what could actually go right. So the next time you start falling into the what if things go wrong, spiral. I want you to pause to take a deep breath and to switch to thinking about what could go right. And maybe you just start by thinking of one thing that could actually go right for you. Okay? And then it's going to be like a snowball effect. What we focus on, we are going to find. So if you are focusing on what could go wrong. Yeah, you are going to find things that are gonna go wrong. It's gonna start with one thought and that negative snowball is gonna start rolling down the hill out of control. But the great news is what we focus on, we are going to find, so you can actually have one productive, positive thought. You could think of one thing that could go right and now you're gonna be on the lookout for more things that could go right. And now we're gonna have a positive snowball. That starts small. It starts rolling down that hill, and it's going to get bigger and bigger. It's gonna collect lots of evidence of everything that could go right, and now you are actually getting the outcomes that you want, and you are out of your own head. You are trusting yourself and your abilities. You control your mindset, you control your responses, you control your thoughts that you allow to have power over you. Choose the thoughts that serve you. If this hit home for you and helped you in some way, I want you to send it to a teammate, a friend, a sibling, someone else that could benefit from getting out of the negative. What if Spiral? Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode. And we will see you next time on the Raising Elite Competitors podcast.