I’m going to start this post with two quotes from a man that you need to know.
“The quantum field does not respond to what we want, it responds to who we are being.”
“How you think, how you act and how you feel is called your personality. Your personality creates your personal reality. When you change your personality, you change your personal reality.”
Who Said This?
Joe Dispenza is his name. Making you “unlimited” is his game.
After beginning his career as a chiropractor, Dr. Joe was involved in a bike-motor vehicle accident during a triathlon.
He was waved on by the race official that it was safe to merge onto the motorway when all of the sudden he was hit by a car at 55mph.
Thrown off of his bike, he landed hard, wrecking his spine, other bones, and skin in the accident.
When he was rushed to the hospital, news landed on his lap that he needed to have surgery and fast to place rods in his spine to stabilize him and “prevent certain paralysis.”
He declined emergency surgery and got opinions from other doctors.
They all said he needed to have surgery with the rods placed in his spine.
As a chiropractor, he interacted daily with patients that had the surgery. All of them are still in pain, lack mobility and most regretted getting the surgery.
Long story short, he told all of his doctors to take a hike, and he would heal his injury himself.
And that is what he did. (check out his first book, Evolve your Brain to hear the whole story)
Step out of “your box”
I’m not here to peddle any sort of religious or spiritual beliefs on your being. I’m here to open your mind as Dr. Joe did for me.
Whether you talk to God, the universe, the quantum field, a higher power, chi, etc… Real things happen inside your body.
Some say, “thoughts become things.”
Others quote Henry Ford…
“Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.”
So as an athlete or coach, we don’t want to say things that are:
self-limiting
self-defeating
Self-Limiting Examples
“That’s impossible.”
“I could never do that.”
“ My genetics will keep me from D1, NHL, etc”
Self-Defeating Examples
“ I can’t believe I made that play, I suck, my game is ruined.”
“ What a bad call, we are going to lose because of that ref.”
The Science of Self-Limit
Every thought you have produces chemicals in the body. A happy thought secretes “happy hormones.” Think endorphins or dopamine.
When you have a self-limiting thought… The body doesn’t ignore that, it produces chemicals. Stress hormones rush into the bloodstream, your brain fires in a way that a depressed person fires their brain, you get physically weaker when you speak this way to yourself. Stress hormones also affect your decision-making.
Not great when all this is happening in the middle of the second period because you’re stressing about a turnover you just made.
Great, so how do we stop it?
Catch it and Change it.
Catch
The first step is awareness. Often these thoughts go unchecked in the head of your young players… Or even you, the 30-year-old coach.
If you can’t label something as self-limiting, the thoughts are going to go unchecked. No change will occur.
It would be like TSA checking your bag through their fancy machine, but not knowing what to look for, what to flag and what to search by hand. If they let everything through, there is no benefit to airlines.
When you have a self-limiting thought, say out loud or in your head, “that’s a self-limiting thought and it doesn’t serve me.”
Then do the other “C.”
Change
You can go an extra step by immediately saying the opposite.
Instead of, “that’s impossible.”
Say, “I am unlimited.”
Like Dr. Joe says:
“When we master our emotions, we master our creations.”
When you don’t ruminate on your self-defeating behavior, you don’t turn a bad shift into a bad game. A bad game into a bad week, a bad week into a slump.
When you can change your mind, you can change your game.
Questions To-Go
Who are you being during a game?
Is that player wanting outcomes?
Or are they being someone capable of getting their intended result?
Remember you don’t get what you want, you get results based on “who you are being.”
What limited thoughts do I think?
What unlimited thoughts could replace them after catching that thought?
Coach Revak at Hockey’s Arsenal has a great resource to further your understanding of self-defeating behavior… Click the button to check it out: