“I think I had about eight names for the one that went well” – Shane Warne
Master the words you use and you will get more results from your game. Your subconscious thinks in images and symbols, so you need to structure the language you use to create images in your mind about the good things you want to happen or what you wish for. Pay special attention to your thoughts and the words you use, since twenty percent of them have a strong emotional background and have a positive or negative effect on you.
In her book, Every Word Has Power, Yvone Oswald tells us that the overall impact of high-energy, productive words like best, great, good, great, healthy, welcome, and wealth is that they resonate at a higher frequency and give you a higher quality emotion than limiting, low-energy words like difficult, tough, unpleasant, or problem. You may start to realize how much more positively you speak when high-energy words become more liberating.
Words to be careful when using consist of the following:
Aim. Use but implies judgment. It also cancels any sentence used before. So if your coach says, ‘You played well today, but you hit too many shots without balls,’ the coach doesn’t need to have said anything. ‘You played well today and maybe you can avoid the no-balls’ is more encouraging. But he, too, is often followed by an excuse for not doing something. ‘I wanted to train, but…’ If he replaces but with and gives a much better perspective.
Can not. Whose. No. Your subconscious does not understand a negative. Don’t think about the captain of your team. That you thought? Did your captain come to mind? Don’t think of a referee with green hair. What happened? Your subconscious responds to the keywords you give it, so it has a hard time processing the negative. The subconscious mind has the maturity of a seven-year-old child. Tell a seven year old not to touch anything and see what happens. Which is the better sentence: Don’t take your eye off the ball, or Keep your eye on the ball. The first sentence makes you think about what you don’t want to happen, while the second makes you know what to do. For coaches, do everything possible to avoid telling a player what he doesn’t want.
Two more words to lose from your vocabulary are proof and hope because of the confusion they create in your subconscious. Either you do or you don’t do something. When you try or wait, you tell yourself it’s going to be hard and you set yourself up for failure. This is why. If I ask you to try to pick up a bat that is at your feet and you do, you have failed! Because? Because I didn’t ask you to pick up the bat, I asked you to try. Have you ever felt uncertain when someone asks you to try something? Now you know where the feeling of uncertainty comes from. Read these two sentences: I will try to improve my fielding. I will improve my fielding. Of the two sentences, the second one resonates with the intention of improving and sounds more convincing. Let’s put it this way, plants don’t try to grow, they grow. Birds don’t try to fly, they fly. Do you try to pay your club dues, or do you pay them yourself? When you expect something, your subconscious automatically places it in the unattainable section of your mind.
How about changing why to how or because. Use when instead of if.
It should or should give people a feeling of guilt when they ‘should’ or ‘should’ but don’t. ‘I should/must concentrate on fielding.’ ‘I should/must practice the leg twist.’ How does that make you feel in your body? Turn them into desire so they become ‘I want to focus while playing’; ‘I want to practice leg twisting.’ Is that wanting to feel different from should and must? Does it make you more determined? Does it give you a desire to achieve? The power of ‘want’ can be as good as the power of ‘will’. Every time you realize that you have made a negative statement, repeat what you said as a positive statement beginning the sentence with ‘in the past’. So ‘I’m always lbw against lefties’ can now become ‘In the past I used to be lbw for lefties’.
As I’m sure you realize by now, there are never problems when you reframe them as challenges or opportunities. You are in the process of thinking with faith.
