How to Encourage Positive Self-Talk in Your Athlete So She Can Play Confidently Without Beating Herself Up

Are you tired of seeing your athlete get stuck in those negative spirals of self-doubt? Wishing they could play with more confidence and shake off mistakes without beating themselves up? Well, today’s episode is all about changing the inner dialogue. We’re talking about how to help your athlete develop positive self-talk so they can unlock their full potential – and maybe even start enjoying their sport more!

What’s Covered

• The difference between average and elite athletes when it comes to their mindset.
• How negative thoughts turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Simple tools to notice and shift those negative thoughts before they take hold.
• What YOU can do as a parent to create a supportive environment.

Ready to help your athlete build their mental game? Dive into the full episode for all the details – you won’t want to miss this one!

Episode Highlights: 

[00:00] Helping athletes overcome negative self-talk and move past it quickly.

[02:26] Helping athletes develop positive self-talk and navigate negative thoughts. Discover the importance of positive self-talk in athletes, emphasizing its impact on their mental game and overall performance.

[07:35] Shifting thoughts to improve mental game in sports. Athletes learn to focus on enjoyment and improvement by shifting their mental attitude, leading to better performance.

[09:58] How thoughts and beliefs affect athletic performance. Learn more about the “thought wheel” and how it relates to athletes’ situations, thoughts, feelings, and actions.

[15:06] Shifting negative thoughts to productive ones in sports.

[17:12] Helping athletes shift negative thoughts and build self-trust.

[22:27] How parents’ self-talk impacts their daughters’ mental skills and physical abilities in sports. Negative self-talk from parents can contribute to a daughter’s negative self-talk and impact her athletic performance.

Next Steps:

• Join our FREE Training for Sports Moms - How to Strengthen Your Athlete Daughter's Mental Game so She Believes in Herself as Much as You Do
• Visit our podcast website for more great episodes

Thank you in advance for joining us on our mission and leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Raising Elite Competitors podcast. I'm Coach Bree, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, and I am so excited that you are here. Whether you are a sports mom or dad just getting going on this whole journey with your athlete or maybe you have a lot of seasons under your belt this podcast is for you to help how to raise a confident, mentally strong girl athlete, so you are in the right place if that is you and that is your desire. Now, today's episode is one that I actually got as a recommendation from a mom in our community talking all about how do I help my daughter have positive self-talk. Like she's so negative Everything that I say she turns into something negative. How do I get her to have more of a positive self-talk so that she's not beating herself up? And I hear you, it's so hard when they get into these spirals of negative thinking and you just want to pull them out. So we're going to be breaking all that down and how to help your daughter make those shifts. Now, before we get into this episode, I want to give a shout out to an athlete in our community. So this athlete is going through the elite mental game. That's our signature mental training program for girl athletes, but also for moms. Half the program is for athletes to build their mental game and the other half is for parents to know how to support their athlete through their athletic journey.

Speaker 1: 1:13

This is what this athlete texted us the other day. She said I've been noticing that I'm letting my feelings pass as I move through practices. When I have a rough start or I'm not feeling super motivated to give it my all, I don't stay in that space for longer than needed. I find myself moving on and focusing on the next play more. My mom has also been more helpful when discussing my feelings and emotions surrounding my sport and life in general. Okay, this is amazing. You might read this and you're like oh, there's a lot of feeling talk here. Guess what? This is actually what this podcast episode is all about this feeling of being negative and staying stuck in this spiral. Our athlete right here just said now when I have a rough start, when I'm not feeling motivated, when I'm feeling discouraged, when I'm feeling in a negative space, I don't stay there for longer than needed. It's okay for athletes to have negative feelings. You actually can't not have those feelings. We can't say like, hey, don't feel negative, don't feel nervous, don't feel scared, whatever. We can't actually say that and then have them not have that feeling. But giving athletes the skills to move past those feelings quickly, that is the game changer. So it sounds like Riley's mom this athlete's mom has also been really helpful in supporting Riley and probably validating those feelings while also helping her move past them in a productive way. So congratulations to you both, because it sounds like you're both really doing exactly what you're supposed to do in the program to get the results that you're having right now. So keep it up.

Speaker 1: 2:33

All right, let's get into today's episode. One last thing before we do if you enjoyed this podcast episode, go ahead and give us a rating and a review. It helps us out because then we can get into the ears of more and more sports parents, but also we can bring on amazing guests to help support you. So if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, do that as well. Rate and review while you're here, and you know, if you really wanna go like A plus extra credit, you can text a link to a friend of an episode that's helpful, even this one. Okay, just text it on over and say, hey, this is super helpful, that helps, helps us a lot. We will be so grateful if you do that.

Speaker 1: 3:02

All right, let's get into it how to help your athlete have positive self-talk so that she is not beating herself up. Now. There's two things that I'm going to really cover in big buckets in this episode. First is your athlete herself, and then there's you. Okay, so there's two pieces to this. Just like how we train the mental game. There's two sides to it. There's the athlete herself and the skills that she needs to develop. It's just like how we train the mental game. There's two sides to it. There's the athlete herself and the skills that she needs to develop, and then there's you as her parent, and we lean a lot into the research that tells us that our athletes self-talk comes a lot from their parents. It comes a lot from the environment that we as parents set up for them. Yes, they're influenced by coaches, by teachers, by teammates, by media, like a lot of other things, but they're with you most of the time. They have been in your household for most of the time. The environment that they're in is shaped from you and what you are saying to them and also what you're saying about yourself. So we're going to get into both sides of this, because really shifting self-talk and helping athletes have positive self-talk is something that they have to develop for themselves. It's a skill that you actually can't be in their heads like dictating their thoughts for them. That'd be weird, but so this is a skill that they have to learn for themselves. Like you can provide them with opportunities to learn this skill, you can do your part, but ultimately, they also need to do their part. That's exactly what we teach athletes in our program as well. So we're going to talk about both sides to this.

Speaker 1: 4:22

So let's start with the athlete herself, and I want to first kind of break this up into average athletes versus elite athletes. Now, when we say average versus elite, for us in our world, elite means that athletes are doing three things. They have the skills to navigate the normal parts of being an athlete. This means, like they can come back from mistakes. They can deal with pressure, comparison, like all the normal things that all athletes face. They have skills to navigate that. They're playing to their potential, whatever that is. Not every athlete has the same potential, but they're playing to theirs and they have some level of enjoyment in their sport, if you hang out in the mental toughness space for long, you'll see that there's a lot of like really tough, dare I say, masculine energy around mental toughness and pushing down your feelings and emotions and, you know, just gritting through it.

Speaker 1: 5:09

We take a very different approach, and that is that we know and, again, research also indicates that athletes who enjoy their sport actually stay in it longer, experience less stress and burn out at far smaller rates than those who are not enjoying their sport, and so we wholeheartedly believe that athletes should enjoy their sport. That does not mean that they are having fun all the time. Okay, I'm not saying that. This is not rainbows and butterflies. My daughter's soccer team is called the rainbow butterfly girls and I'm like, is this putting some sort of like you know expectation in her head that it's supposed to be fun all the time because we got to lower that or change it a little bit? No, I'm not saying that. But athletes should feel connection to their sport. They should feel like they're doing it for some reason, whether that be because they are connected to their friends, they find enjoyment in some capacity, or that they like the feeling of getting better. Whatever it is, there should be a level of enjoyment. So that's what we mean when you hear the word elite. That's what it means.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Okay, now, when we're talking about noticing and shifting thoughts. So negative self-talk, positive self-talk, basically this internal dialogue that athletes are having, that we all have, is very, very important. Okay, average athletes aren't aware of their thoughts. They believe everything they think and then, as a result, they're getting stuck in these negative spirals of thinking. So you have seen this as a parent, right? You see that she clings onto a thought of like I'm not good enough or I messed that up, I let the team down, and then she just goes in the spiral and it gets worse and worse and worse and we'll get into kind of. What we try and do as parents, you know, is get her out of that spiral and be like no, it wasn't so bad, come on, we invalidate our kids a lot in the guise of trying to help them. So it's not like we're coming from a place of bad intentions. We are all doing the best we can, but in the act of that, we are actually kind of getting them further away from where we want them to be. Okay, but average athletes aren't aware of their thoughts. They believe everything they think. They get stuck in negative spiral of thinking. Elite, confident athletes are aware that thousands of thoughts come and go a day. The latest research also says that I think it's around 50,000 thoughts that we think a day. We're thinking a lot, and at a fast pace. Elite, confident athletes know that they can accept and reject their thoughts right. They know that not everything they think is true. They know not everything they think actually has to be tried on for size and believed and, as a result, they actually. This awareness allows them to notice and shift their thoughts.

Speaker 1: 7:20

The analogy that I've heard recently is that it's kind of like you know those sushi places you go that have like the conveyor belt. We have one down the road. I go there every Friday with my husband for a date night. I don't care if that's cliche, it's amazing, okay. And you know you sit there and the conveyor belt is coming through and you look and there's this like I love the spicy tuna rolls, so they're coming through and I'm like I want to take that, I'm totally going to get that one. And then something else comes through, like the what is it? Like the sashimi, like the raw, so I don't know, I just don't not into it. And so that comes through, I'm like, not my thing. Okay, that is the analogy. That is very similar to all the thoughts that we're having. Okay, they're coming, they're going.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Some thoughts, we the thinker, we are not the thoughts. And so athletes, we teach athletes that you actually can just watch that sushi, go on by, but you don't have to pick it up, you don't have to eat it, you can just watch it go by and create a little separation between you and that thought so that you don't have to become that thought Okay. So this noticing and shifting thoughts is really important and when athletes can grasp this concept, which is very simple for them to grasp, they just haven't potentially been taught it yet. Okay, because, remember, these are skills it really is a game changer.

Speaker 1: 8:36

So one of our athletes recently texted us and her name is Lily. She said hey, I've had a mindset shift and it unlocked some potential. I didn't know I had. So a mindset shift meaning I decided to focus on something different. I shifted where my mind, I shifted where my thoughts were where my mind. I shifted where my thoughts were Okay. And she said instead of focusing on comparing myself to others, I decided to focus on enjoying myself and everything I do. This has not only allowed me to have more fun, but also I'm noticing myself doing better. So again, there's the concept, right, the way, the approach, that we do things a little differently, like, oh, she's having more fun and she's improving, she's doing better, all because she decided what she was going to think.

Speaker 1: 9:12

Genevieve, another athlete, did something similar. She said I got a win in my muscle game during my soccer game on Saturday. We were losing, but I changed my attitude, aka I decided to think about something different than what I was thinking about. In that moment. I shifted my thinking from negative to I'm not going to use the word positive right now, I'm going to use the word productive. Okay. And when it got near the end, we scored three more goals and we won the game. And I was like, oh my gosh, genevieve, see, it's as simple as that, you just got to change your thinking. But really, it can be as simple as that, and here's why. Okay, we have a concept called the thought wheel. This is a foundational concept that we also teach athletes I'm going to teach you it right now and of arrows, and they're all pointing to each other, creating a circle. Okay, because they all lead to this infinite circle that goes around and around and around. Okay, and on the part of the circle that I'm going to start is something called the situation.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Situations happen to your athlete, right. Maybe something happened to your athlete recently Like she's not getting enough playing time or getting the playing time she wants. Maybe she missed the game winning shot, she didn't play as well as she wanted to play. Maybe there's some teammates up, right, most situations that you and I are in and your athletes are in are actually out of our control. We don't get to control the situations we're in, and when we try and control it, that's when we get into this victim mindset and all this. I'm not going to talk about all that today, but the situation potentially cannot be changed.

Speaker 1: 10:28

But the next arrow is thoughts. Your daughter can choose to think what she thinks about that situation, and so I'm going to use a common one. Maybe it is that your daughter is not getting the playing time that she wants. That's her situation. She's not playing as much as she wants If she doesn't play a team sport. Maybe it's that she's not playing how she wants to play. She gets to choose her thought about that. Now she can think 50,000 thoughts. But she decides to cling onto a thought of well, I'm not playing, you know, our brain wants to create a story. I'm not playing because my coach doesn't like me. Now, whether or not that's valid, it is a common thought that athletes think when they're trying to figure out why they're not playing or why something's not panning out for them or maybe I'm just on the worst one on the team. That's why I'm not playing as good as I want to play. Okay, all right, there's the thought. We're going to cling to that Now.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Thoughts lead to feelings. That's the next arrow. Thoughts lead to feelings. Wow, and this a lot of times happening at the subconscious level. She might not be aware of the thought, but she's gonna feel discouraged, she's gonna not feel great. Okay, she's gonna go to practice feeling like that. Feelings lead to actions. Action is the next arrow. Okay, feelings lead to action. Action or inaction as a result of how she's feeling.

Speaker 1: 11:46

So she's feeling unmotivated, she's feeling discouraged, she's not feeling great. She goes feeling discouraged, she's not feeling great. She goes to practice. Maybe she's not going to be playing her best. We know that when athletes are not enjoying what they're doing and they don't want to be there. They're unmotivated, they're not going to be playing their best. Maybe she's going to go like half speed. Maybe she's even avoiding her coach. She feels like he doesn't or she doesn't like her. She's really not going to get. This is the last thing. If she is not playing very well. She's going half speed, she's avoiding coaching, she's maybe not working on her weaknesses. She's not gonna get better, right, that's just like the truth of the matter, and results lead to her situation. So she's gonna be back in this situation on the bench reaffirming that thought my coach doesn't like me, okay, so do we see how this all comes about? Right, this is another word for this.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Maybe that you're familiar with is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because our brain also doesn't like to be wrong. There's a part of our brain called the reticular activating system that picks up on cues in our environment, and so when your daughter thinks a thought my coach doesn't like me or I'm the worst on the team, her brain is going to go to work to make sure that is true. So it's going to make her feel a certain way. It's going to cause action or inaction that's going to get her results and then back in that situation confirming that thought because we don't want it to be wrong and that's going to keep going in that circle, around and around, okay, and here's the problem, the more that it goes in that circle and I know you've seen this play out because you're like stop the spiral, okay. But now that that thought is no longer a thought, it becomes a belief about herself. And a belief is really important because your daughter will never outperform her belief that she has about herself.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Beliefs live in a part of our mind called the subconscious. Okay, and the subconscious controls 90% of what we do. 90% of what your daughter does in her sport and in her life is controlled by her subconscious. It's that part of the brain that just is like on autopilot. It's where our beliefs about ourselves are held, our habits. It's that part of your brain that, like you know your drive home from work and then you get your driver and you're like, how did I even get here? Thank you, subconscious, for like getting me all the way home. You know you don't remember kind of the path because it's so second nature to you. Okay.

Speaker 1: 13:46

Now, when your daughter has that belief really seated in her subconscious mind, that is what's controlling the show. 90%, the 10% of her conscious brain is what you're hoping she's going to listen to when you're like no, your coach does like you, or who cares if your coach doesn't like you or no? You're not the worst one on the team. She hears you. That's logical. But the subconscious will always win. It's bigger.

Speaker 1: 14:06

We say it's like her elephant. We give this analogy of an elephant and a rider of like. The elephant is this big, strong elephant, it's her subconscious brain, and the rider is this conscious brain, this little tiny thing on top. And if the elephant wants to go to the right and the rider wants to go to the left, the elephant will always win. No matter like how much we try and convince it, it will always win. The subconscious is bigger, it's stronger, and no matter what the logical response is of that conscious brain, it's always gonna lose.

Speaker 1: 14:32

But here's the deal we can train your daughter's elephant. We can train her subconscious mind. That's what we do here. Actually, that's why our whole business exists, and one of the tools that we use to train our subconscious mind is visualization. Okay, so I'm not gonna get totally into visualization, but another tool that we can use before it even becomes a belief. Here's where the whole an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. Before we even get to that subconscious, to that thought becoming a belief, your daughter can actually learn a skill to shift the thought to something more productive before it becomes a belief, before it just like hardens into her subconscious mind which can be trained, it can be worked with. But what if she had a skill to be able to shift that negative thinking? Okay, so the situation doesn't change, right, she's not getting playing time or she's not playing how she wants to play.

Speaker 1: 15:20

But maybe we have automatic negative thoughts. Maybe the initial thought is my coach doesn't like me or I'm the worst on the team, but she's aware, she's aware that 50,000 thoughts come and go a day. She's aware that this is not productive, it's not helping me. Let's find something more productive. Maybe the thought is well, this is a challenge, but I'm up for a challenge. This is hard, but I can do hard things. Or it doesn't really matter if my coach likes me or not. There's an opportunity here to improve. What if she decides to think one of those thoughts Not super positive, right? I, if she decides to think one of those thoughts not super positive, right? I'm not saying like, well, no, I am the best one on the team. Or, like, my coach loves me, we're not going there, it's just what's more productive.

Speaker 1: 15:57

A thought like that will lead to feelings. Remember, thoughts lead to feelings. Okay, if she's thinking there's an opportunity here, I'm up for a challenge. Maybe her feelings are a little more motivated, she's more determined, she goes to practice feeling those feelings. Maybe she's going to be talking to her coach asking for feedback. Maybe she's going to be working on her weaknesses, watching film, like no longer in this victim place, but in this place of empowerment, like I'm going to do something about this. If she's doing those things, actions, remember, lead to results. If she is doing those actions, what results is she going to get? My athletes that are doing all those things are getting better, they are improving in their sport, they're making gains, and that's going to put her in a situation that is going to put her in a better place to get more playing time or improve in her sport. Now, ultimately, playing time is out of her control, but I'll tell you this if she is improving and she is getting better, she's going to be enjoying her sport more and she's going to feel more fulfilled and she's going to be getting better. So that's a win. And that all comes from knowing how to shift that thought and that awareness of. Hey, I've got 50,000 thoughts, the conveyor belt's going and going and I'm going to choose what's going to be productive for me to think.

Speaker 1: 16:57

The other analogy I love to give about this is or the metaphor is it's like a smoothie. Okay, I am on a smoothie kick. If you've been to any one of our live trainings, you've heard this before. I've been on a smoothie kick since like last year, so I would say that's more of a lifestyle than a kick at this point. But what happens? When I drink my smoothie and it's delicious I've got this chocolate, peanut butter situation going on I drink it and then, as soon as I'm done you know you've got like the smoothie stuff on the inside of the glass. When I go to rinse out that smoothie right away, it's gone. It's easy, I move on with my day, I don't even think about it again. But here's what happens when I forget to do that, where I'm like on calls and the smoothie glass is sitting there and all of a sudden I look at it and I'm like oh no, there's like caked on smoothie here, like I've got to go soak this in the sink. I've got to scrub it. It's like a lot harder to change.

Speaker 1: 17:43

Okay, that is the metaphor I love to give athletes and parents around the skill of shifting thoughts. If your daughter can shift a thought and be aware that it's not productive, it's like her rinsing out the smoothie glass and moving on with her day. She's like, oh, I don't need to get caught up and I don't need to be in a spiral Done moving on. If she lets that thought simmer, if she takes it along for a ride, if she continues to think it, it now becomes like that hardened smoothie inside the. To change it's possible. I mean, we do it all the time. But how much easier is it if she is first aware of like, wow, this thinking is not actually productive. I'm going to move to something more productive. So hopefully that's another helpful way to look at this.

Speaker 1: 18:20

Okay, so that's really the responsibility of your daughter, right? This is your daughter's skills that she needs to develop for herself. She needs the opportunity to develop these. Now, if you want to deeper dive into this and really how to teach your athlete these skills and provide her the opportunity to learn them for herself. That's where you need to check out our free training for sports moms. So that's at train her gamecom. In fact, we go over the thought wheel, we go over the subconscious, the conscious, like kind of all this going on in your daughter's brain, to help her flip that negative thinking and also overcome mistakes, release pressure that she's feeling. We really do a deep dive into that. So that's at trainhergamecom. Go ahead and register for that. Choose your date and time, if you have not already.

Speaker 1: 18:56

Okay, let's shift to helping your daughter in these situations because, yes, she has her skills that she needs to develop, but as parents, we also can help support her in these situations as well. So what can you do? Okay, what can you do now in those moments when she is talking negatively about herself and she is in this spiral? First of all, the one thing that you can just stop doing right now is trying to get her to think positively. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but when we come in and we're like, okay, stop saying all these things, what about all the good things you did? And we're trying to like kind of help her see the bright side, we bright side her. That actually lowers her confidence long-term. And here's why, at the root of it, confidence is self-trust.

Speaker 1: 19:37

So your daughter is actually trusting herself when she's feeling these real feelings, whether or not you agree with them, whether or not you think that the situation is valid for her to feel negative about herself, she's feeling it Okay, the Okay, the feelings she's feeling are valid in her body. They're true, they're real and she's trusting that feeling. She's communicating with you how she's feeling, which, if you have a teen or tween, hey, that's great. That's great that she's feeling comfortable enough to come to you. And so when she is saying these things based on how she's feeling, and you are shutting her down and you're saying don't feel like that, feel something different, let's get back to being positive, you're sending her the message that you actually can't trust that feeling that you're having in your body and, in fact, I need you to be positive around me. This feeling is making me uncomfortable, okay, so that's going to do two things it's going to lower the amount of trust that she has in herself, which means that she's lowering her confidence. And two, she's potentially going to think twice about sharing with you or coming to you post game when she's having disappointing feelings. We don't want either of those things to happen. So the best thing that you can do in that moment is actually just pause, let her vent. All right, and some scripts that we teach moms inside our program is just repeating back what she's saying. Okay, like repeat back like a reporter. You know, I'm hearing you say this, this and this is that accurate, okay, and just her being heard being validated is like when you're venting to your partner after a long day. Instead of your partner saying like, oh well, you know, this is what you should do or you should have done this, I'm just saying wow, it sounds like you've had a tough day. What can I do to help? Like that just feels like, oh, somebody recognizes me, somebody sees me, somebody understands who. It helps them process that feeling a lot faster.

Speaker 1: 21:11

Sometimes we think that by acknowledging our kids' feelings in these moments, we are going to make it worse, that we're like going to elongate the feeling long, like. No, we're actually doing the opposite. When we don't acknowledge their feelings, we tell them to push it down. Now it becomes something they're afraid of. It becomes something that they're like well, I shouldn't feel this, but I am, because it's very normal for them to feel that and now they're struggling with their self-trust, okay. Another really great script that I love is when they're kind of beating themselves up is you know that's not true, but it would be tough to feel that way. So kind of acknowledging that like All right, you know we're going to separate ourselves, like you and I both know that it's not true that you're the worst on the team, but I acknowledge that what you're feeling right now is real. That feeling of disappointment would be tough to feel. Okay. So those are some things you can do in the moment Now. Out of the moment really, what I want you to consider is yourself in this equation.

Speaker 1: 21:59

We talk to a lot of parents, a lot of moms, and our training is really all about what you can do to shape the environment for your athlete, because that is a hundred percent in your control. You are not the athlete herself. This is her journey. You're not the coach. If you are the coach of your daughter's team, that's a little bit of a different story, but you still are not coaching her. Giving her tips that does more to hurt your relationship and hurt her relationship with her coach than help. Okay, you're not any of those things. You are her parent, and the two things that are a hundred percent in your control are provide opportunities for her to develop these mental skills and physical skills that she's in her sport and shape the environment. And you shape the environment by how you talk to her and how you talk to yourself. Okay, and how you talk about yourself.

Speaker 1: 22:43

I said at the beginning that children pick up their inner voice from their parents' self-talk. So what you are saying about yourself is what your daughter is creating for her inner voice, and so I know that you probably are saying a lot of wonderful things to her, right? You're probably telling her she's amazing, she deserves to be on the team, she's confident, all those things, okay, our approach to mental training is very different, in the way that we know that the research shows how connected especially moms and daughters are when it comes to what you say out loud about yourself, right? So if we're saying out loud about ourself things like I'll never be able to do this, there's not enough time body image, things, picking ourselves apart in the mirror All of those things are what your daughter's picking up on and creating her inner voice, her self-talk, and so if she has really negative self-talk, I'm not saying it's your fault. It's not our fault, but we have a responsibility in the model that we are setting for our athletes. Okay, so how are we talking about challenges? How are we talking about stress? How are we talking about our physical capabilities or our body? Because whatever we're saying out loud about ourselves, likely our daughter is picking up about herself, and so we really have to start there.

Speaker 1: 23:48

And one of our moms inside our program her name's Pauline she actually mentioned this the other day inside our program she is working on her own self-talk around her daughter, and her daughter actually pointed out to her something about self-talk. I'm just going to read it to you. So Pauline said I've been taking ballet, tap jazz alongside my girls this semester and having a blast, but last night our ballet class had a chance to get on stage and feel for the space and all of that. Okay, to be honest, ballet is something that I struggled with and it definitely showed. As we were going through our dance with all the teens watching, even though they were super encouraging, my girls were cheering me on wholeheartedly and they came up to me afterwards and were super encouraging. They said mom, you were great. And the first words out of my mouth I said actually I sucked.

Speaker 1: 24:33

My 13 year old Isabella, who's working in EMG, just looked at me with a super gentle but pointed look and said that mindset stuff is harder than it looks, isn't it? Not? The dance stuff, the mindset stuff, ouch. But it's a hundred percent necessary and valid, and I told her so. My empathy for them has gotten even more real. I'm so grateful for an authentic teachable moment for them to see that I struggle with this too, even though it was a bit humbling.

Speaker 1: 24:57

So it seems I'm going to be working on figuring out some kinder self-talk right alongside with them too, maybe also some motivational and focus. I love that because what a beautiful opportunity to model this for your daughters, because your daughters are going to have negative self-talk, just like you are, but really verbally processing out loud and saying, ooh, I am not being kind to myself and that's not helpful. All right, that is what our kids are gonna pick up in their minds with their own self-talk, right. So I'm gonna leave you with that because and again, I hope you don't go to a place of guilt I go to a place of empowerment. When it comes to what I can control, when it comes to my daughter, I can't control every single thing that she does. I can provide her the opportunities which I do for mindset training and for her physical training and her sport. But also, what am I doing? My responsibility here? I can work on what I'm saying out loud and being very intentional on that, knowing that it really does impact your daughter's confidence.

Speaker 1: 25:48

Now, like I said before, if you want to go into a deeper dive around this, we talk about this and so much more inside our free training for sports moms. So that's at trainhergamecom. We break down our method of how to help your daughter flip her negative mindset, overcome mistakes and release the pressure she's feeling on herself, and we give you practical tools on how to help her do all three of those things. So trainhergamecom is where you can go to grab your dating time for that. All right, moms, I hope this is helpful. I am coach Bree, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, and I will see you in the next episode of the Raising Elite Competitors podcast.