Summer Confidence Series (Part 3 of 4): Flip Your Daughter's Negative Mindset Using This Simple Tool

Hey sports parents! Here's part three of our special summer confidence series, dedicated to you, who is juggling life while supporting your young athletes.

This episode dives deep into the mental game of helping our daughters flip their negative mindsets and build unwavering confidence.

What’s Covered:

• A practical tool for shifting negative thoughts to positive actions.
• How your own self-talk shapes your daughter’s confidence.
• Success stories from athletes like Genevieve and Lily, who transformed their performance by shifting their self-talk
• Surrounding your daughter with a supportive network of coaches, teammates, and parents. 
• Guiding your daughter through challenges.
• Building a mentally strong athlete starts with the right mindset.

Episode Highlights: 

[00:00:07] Welcome back to the Racing Elite Competitors podcast! Coach Bri introduces part three of the summer confidence series.

[00:01:39] Listener shoutout: A mom shares how the Elite Mental Game program boosted her daughter's performance.

[00:03:30] Discover the importance of mental training for both athletes and parents.

[00:05:00] The confidence self-talk process explained.

[00:09:58] Real-life examples of athletes shifting their mindset and achieving success.

[00:14:55] The impact of a parent's self-talk on their daughter's confidence.

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
• Enroll in The Elite Mental Game - our self-paced training program proven to strengthen your athlete’s mental game and confidence with a $400 discount here!
• 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'm thrilled that you are here. We are in part three of our four-part Summer Confidence series where we are giving you tangible tips and strategies to build confidence and mental strength in your girl athlete. So we're talking about the skills that she needs to show up to her sport next season with a mentally strong mindset, with confidence, so that she is not held back by those same struggles that held her back last season. So you're in the right place. Whether you are just getting going on the sports journey with your daughter maybe she's young, or maybe you have a lot of seasons under your belt, maybe you're about to launch your daughter into the next level of her athletics we're here for you and this podcast is designed for you to raise a mentally strong, confident girl athlete. Now, before we get into part three of our summer confidence series, we're talking all about how to flip her negative mindset. A couple of things. Number one make sure you rate and review and follow the podcast. If you're not already, it helps us out a lot. When you follow and subscribe to the podcast, you also get notified when a new episode drops so you're never out of the loop, and also when you rate and review. That helps us get into the ears of more people. It helps us bring on amazing guests. Another awesome thing, if you're able to, is just drop a link to one of your favorite episodes in a text message to one of your other sports mom friends or in that group, chat with other parents on your team. I hear a lot of moms are like how can I share this information with other sports parents? A great way is just drop them an episode and be like hey, this has been helpful for me. I hope it helps you. So sharing that helps us out a lot. So thank you in advance. All right, the other thing I want to do is give a shout out to a mom in our community. Her daughter's actually inside our program. The elite mental game this is our self-paced online program for girl athletes has proven to help strengthen their mental game and confidence, and this is what Sarah sent us the other day. She said big win. This weekend at a hockey tournament in Colorado, my daughter played the best she's ever played and on her way home she shared with me that she has used what she learned so far in the program throughout the weekend. I know there will still be bumps in the upcoming road, but I love the fact that she and I are both using these tools to get to a more positive place, making a difference overall. I absolutely love this, and something that Sarah mentioned at the end of here is that she said I love that, the fact that she and I are both using these tools.

Speaker 1: 2:14

So we're going to talk about this actually today on how our approach to mental training is a bit different, because it works. This is not just for your athlete, it's for you, right? There's kind of two pieces to this puzzle, right? Your daughter needs the skills to be able to navigate all of the things that come up in her sport. These are very normal things, right, like setbacks, pressure, nerves, anxiety, coach and teammate dynamics, issues with that, like those are all things that your athlete will a hundred percent face, and so she needs the tools to be able to navigate those with confidence. But then also, as parents, we need to know how to best support our athletes through this as well what to say, what to not say, how to make sure that we are showing up the best for them. So we support you and guide you in that, because that's a huge piece of this puzzle, so we're going to get into it.

Speaker 1: 2:55

Today we are talking about part three of this four-part summer confidence series. Today we are diving into how to flip your daughter's negative mindset using a simple tool that I'm about to dive into. And here's the thing flipping your daughter's negative mindset is one of the top concerns that I hear from parents inside our community and as a mom, I know, you see, the pressure that your daughter puts on herself, which often leads to some negative self-talk. Right, she's comparing herself, maybe to other players and not feeling good enough. She's like, ah, that girl gets all the playing time, or that's the coach's favorite, or I'll never be as good as her. She might have this impossible goal of being perfect, maybe in her sport, but also other areas of her life, with her body, academics. Maybe she also has some pre-performance nerves that are hindering how she's showing up and how she's playing, and all of these things are leading to some negative self-talk and you and I often say things like this stop being so hard on yourself, you don't have to be perfect, just do your best. Don't think about it, don't compare yourself. Everyone feels this way.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Right, we give her advice because we're really good at that as parents and, honestly, your advice is good, but she's not wanting to hear it. All right, and it's frustrating because the advice is likely adding to the problem. How many of you give this advice and then your daughter rolls her eyes or she shuts down or she doesn't want to talk, or she says, mom, you don't get it All right and then she continues to have that same negative self-talk, if not more than before. It's frustrating. So we're going to do things differently. We're going to use our confident self-talk process. I'm going to break this down in a second here. So we're going to go from frustration, from kind of the sadness that your daughter might be experienced, the overwhelm, to her feeling positive, confident and self-assured and well-adjusted to her surroundings.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Okay, so how do we do this? The confidence self-talk process has two steps to it. Step number one notice and shift thoughts. Okay, average athletes, average people, honestly, are not aware of the thoughts that come into their brain. They think what they think and they believe everything they think. So, as a result, they get stuck in negative spirals of thinking. So you see this in your daughter. I'll give an example in a second of her just kind of hanging on to a thought that's not helpful and then it sends her down a spiral. Now elite, confident athletes know they can accept and reject their thoughts. They can actually shift their internal self-talk from holding them back to actually empowering them. Now she can't necessarily control the thoughts that come into her head, but she can control her self-talk around those thoughts and in fact, we had a couple athletes recently text us about this entire concept, or one of them, her name, is Lily. She said hey, I've unlocked a mindset shift and it's unlocked some potential that I didn't know I had. Instead of focusing on comparing myself to other people, I'm deciding to shift what I'm thinking about Okay and I'm going to focus on enjoying myself and everything I do. This shift has not only allowed me to have more fun, I'm also noticing I'm doing better Okay. So that was from Lily. She decided to shift what she was talking about in her brain based on what was going on in her environment.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Genevieve said something similar. She said I got a win in my mental game during my soccer game on Saturday. We were losing, but I changed my Okay Read. I changed how I was talking about myself, how I was talking to myself about the situation that was happening. Okay, when it was near the end, we scored three more goals and we won the game. And I was like, yeah, genevieve, that's the power of your mind right there. Okay, it's pretty cool. And when athletes are now in control of their outcomes, we don't always know if they're going to win. So it's pretty cool that that happened to Genevieve. But empowering them with this idea that, hey, you're actually more in control of your results than you think, okay, and the tool that we teach athletes is the thought wheel, and I want you to imagine right now that there is a wheel of arrows. Okay, so the thought wheel is literally a wheel where there's five arrows that all point to each other and are in a circle, and here's how it works.

Speaker 1: 6:47

Situation is kind of what's going to kick this off. So your athlete's in situations all the time. She may or may not be able to control the situations that she's in. Genevieve was in this situation where her team was losing. She can't do anything about that. From what already happened in the past, okay, she's in that situation and she can't change what happened. Okay, other situations that your daughter will find herself in she's on a team where she's not getting the playing time she wants. She has a coach that maybe she feels like doesn't believe in her, she's not playing to her potential. Right, she's dealing with an injury. All of these situations happen to athletes and they're not going to stop.

Speaker 1: 7:19

Okay, she does get to choose what she thinks about when it comes to these situations. Now she can have thoughts that come and go. I think latest research says we think over 50,000 thoughts a day. I think latest research says we think over 50,000 thoughts a day. But what she chooses to let in as how she's going to talk to herself about the situation, so the thought that she's actually going to take for a ride really matters. So, say, your daughter is in this situation. So let's just use Genevieve for an example.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Okay, so she's in a situation where her team's losing and she's probably thinking like, okay, well, I guess we're just going to lose the game. And you know, maybe she's thinking thoughts of like well, if my teammates would have done their job. Or maybe she's thinking negative thoughts about herself, like, oh, I really screwed this up. Hey, thoughts lead to feelings. So that next arrow in this thought wheel is feelings. So we have situation. That's the first arrow thoughts or the second arrow, feelings are. Thoughts lead to feelings. So if she's thinking a thought I really screwed this up for my team or my team sucks, she's probably gonna feel unmotivated. She's not going to really have a lot of optimism about this situation.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Okay, feelings lead to actions or inaction. So if she's feeling unmotivated, she's feeling down, discouraged, she's probably not gonna play her best. She, she's probably not going to play her best. She's not going to go as hard. Whether this is happening consciously or subconsciously, it's happening. Okay. Now, if she's doing that out on the field with the court, what results is she going to get? That's the next era.

Speaker 1: 8:39

Actions lead to results. If she is not going very hard, she's maybe not taking coaching very well, she's hesitating, she's holding back, she's not going to be playing very well, she's not going to be helping out her team Okay, and that's going to keep her back in this situation of her team is not doing well and it's losing Okay. So it's really, if you've ever heard of this idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy, this is what it is. Okay, she thinks something our brain doesn't want to be wrong, so it's going to find evidence in the environment to make sure that it's right, whether that means that she's going to create this feeling for herself and she's going to do things, consciously or unconsciously, to support it and make sure that she is right, okay. But here's the good news she can actually shift her thought, she can be aware of what she's thinking and then shift to something more productive, just like Genevieve did. Okay, she changed her attitude, she changed her mindset.

Speaker 1: 9:28

So when she says that and knowing Genevieve and following up with her, it's that she's deciding to tell herself something different. So maybe it's something like I know we're losing, there's nothing I can do about it. Okay, I'm going to, in this next play, I'm going to do what I can to play my best, okay. Or like maybe she's even saying something as simple as like next play, all right. Or I'm going to encourage my teammates. Right now she is choosing to think something different. Besides, my team sucks, I suck, we're going to lose, all right. So maybe it's even something like I don't know what the outcome of this game is going to be, but I'm going to try my hardest.

Speaker 1: 10:00

And so, thinking a thought like that, so shifting to something more productive remember, thoughts lead to feelings. So she's probably going to be feeling a little more optimistic. She's going to feel a little more motivated, a little bit more like she has some autonomy in the situation rather than being a victim of the situation. If she's feeling like that remember, feelings lead to actions. Okay, if she's feeling motivated, she's feeling encouraged, she's feeling optimistic, she's probably going to be playing better. She's going to be going a little harder. She's going to be encouraging her teammates. Maybe she's going to be more vocal, and then what results is she going to get? We don't know what the outcome of the game is Like. There's a lot more that goes into that, but she's going to help her team out a lot more. Okay, because when she's communicating, she then encourages other people to communicate. We can make plays when people are communicating. When she's going hard, giving effort, taking coaching, like she's going to be playing better. Her team's going to be playing to their potential, and that may or may not lead to the scoreboard, but it's, in Genevieve's case, it did. It did result in a win. Okay, and so that is how powerful it is to empower athletes with this idea that they can actually shift their thinking when it comes to situations that they're in.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Okay, self-talk, as you know is so powerful, it can significantly shape your daughter's beliefs about herself and her abilities. And here's the thing when your daughter is thinking these negative things about herself, a lot of you are worried that this will transfer to other parts of her life. It's going to impact her belief about herself. And you have a good reason to worry about that, because the more that your daughter goes around that circle in the thought wheel, the more that those thoughts get reaffirmed they actually turn into a belief. So instead of just thinking I am the worst one on the team or I suck, and that's just a thought that comes and goes, it now becomes a belief about herself.

Speaker 1: 11:43

And beliefs live in her subconscious mind. And here's the thing about the subconscious mind it controls 90% of what your daughter does. Of what we do, really, your subconscious mind is the driver of the show. Okay, the conscious mind only controls about 10%. So the conscious, logical response to this you know what you tell your daughter is think positively or you've got to make sure that you remember the good things that you did. Like. That's all logical, but she only has about 10% brain power to actually listen to that and use it.

Speaker 1: 12:12

90% of what she does is all about her belief about herself. So she believes about herself that she's not good enough. She believes about herself that she doesn't belong on the team or that her coach doesn't like her or her teammates don't like her. If that's her belief, that will be driving everything that she does, which is why it's so important that we get ahead of this and we actually give her the tool to shift and be aware of what she's thinking and then shift to something more productive. Okay, because no matter what the conscious or logical responses, the subconscious will always win.

Speaker 1: 12:42

So she has to learn to shift that self-talk towards positivity and towards empowerment. And I'm not saying that she needs to be this positive person all the time, this toxic positivity no, okay, we're talking with humor. Productive. When Genevieve shifted herself, talk to hey, I can't do anything about the past, but all I can do is give 100% in this play right now. That's not being positive. It's not saying we're going to win this game and I'm the best one ever. No, it's very productive. It's okay, you know, I can't do anything about what happened, but all I can control is this present moment. That's productive and that will lead to better results.

Speaker 1: 13:14

Okay, that's going to support her mental health. It's going to help her reach her goals and it's going to impact her more than just her sport, because, while we want her to be using this productive self-talk in her sport to help her in those tough situations in a game or with a coach or with a teammate, really this goes beyond her sport. How is she talking to herself when it comes to her academics and her abilities in certain subjects? Is she saying to herself I'm terrible at math and I'm never going to be good at writing? Right? That's going to show up. She's going to prove that to be true with her friends and who she chooses to surround herself with and what she allows other people to influence her Okay, relationships, future career, advocating for herself, you know, standing up for herself, speaking up rather than letting people walk over her Like. All of that is tied to how she talks about herself. So her self-talk is so, so key.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Here's the other piece of this. So I said there's two parts to this confident self-talk process. The first is allowing your daughter to have the skill to be aware of what she's thinking and shift to something more productive. That's key. We have a whole process for that inside the elite mental game where athletes are identifying, becoming aware of what they're thinking, and they're empowered with mantras or empowered with other ways to shift, to be more productive in those moments. Number two is realize that your daughter's self-talk and her confidence is actually tied to your self-talk and your confidence. Okay, so we're going to.

Speaker 1: 14:33

I've said this a couple of times, but our approach to mental training is different, because it works and, honestly, if you're like most moms that we work with, maybe you don't feel a hundred percent confident yourself, maybe you also struggle with negative self-talk. I know I have and I know I do from time to time. Okay, and if you're thinking like, wait, I thought we were talking about my daughter's negative thinking, I want you to stick with me, all right, because we are. But her negative thinking and yours actually go hand in hand, right? Unfortunately, you can't be in your daughter's head shifting her thoughts. For her that would be some sort of superpower, but you know you can give her the skills to do that. That's exactly what we teach inside EMG.

Speaker 1: 15:11

But there are some things that you can do immediately. You can notice and shift your own self-talk, knowing that, just like your daughter, what you think about yourself impacts how you feel. It impacts your actions, it impacts your results. It impacts your daughter, because she interacts with you every single day.

Speaker 1: 15:27

Okay, so when we're saying to ourselves as moms things like I hate the way my legs look, or there's never enough time, I'm so lazy, okay, what you're saying about yourself out loud has a significant impact on your daughter. She's picking that up and she's building an inner voice herself based on what you're saying out loud about yourself. You're probably telling her things like you're so beautiful, you're so confident, you know I believe in you. You're probably saying a lot of really positive things to your daughter. But what are you saying about yourself? Because when she hears things like I hate the way my legs look, she builds an inner voice of well, strong legs must be bad because my legs look like my mom's. Or people say that my mom and I look alike. Am I going to look at that when I get older?

Speaker 1: 16:10

And now she has this conscious and subconscious thought about her body because she is picking that up from you and I don't want you to go to place a guilt here, because this actually is a place of empowerment and when I learned, like, wow, what I say a lot about myself really impacts my daughter's confidence. I'm like, well, that's something that I can definitely work on and for me, that's something that's empowering. Okay, we don't want our daughters saying things like I'll never figure this out, or I can't do this, or I can't do that, or I hate the way my body looks, because that's what they're picking up from us. Renee Brown says we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. All right, so, like I said, we never want to limit the amount of love, the amount of compassion, the amount of confidence that our daughters have, because we're not showing ourselves that. So I want you to think about some of those things that you say out loud about yourself. What are you saying, especially in front of your daughter? Okay, and shifting that self-talk. It doesn't take a lot of time, but it does take strategies and it does take effort.

Speaker 1: 17:03

The other thing about this is that this is simple, but it's often not easy. You're probably listening to this and you're like okay, I'm going to be really good the rest of the day. I'm not going to say anything a lot about myself negatively, I'm not going to pick apart my body anymore in front of my daughter. I'm going to be really positive, I'm going to do all this. And then you go to the gym and you see another mom who you think has better abs or legs or she's more fit than you. And then you go into this thing of, oh, she has all this and looks way better than me. Or you're like I'm going to be really kind to myself, I'm not going to say anything negative. And then your boss gives you this impossible deadline and you're like I cannot do this, this is too much, okay. And then we go back into these spirals and, honestly, it's not your fault.

Speaker 1: 17:42

You have had decades and decades. We have had. You know, I include myself in this too. I'm a mom as well. We've had decades of wiring. The good news for your daughter is that she hasn't. Okay, she hasn't. She can use learn these skills early. You know, this is what, exactly what we teach athletes. And the other great news is that when you rewire, she rewires. Okay, when you start to undo some of this decades of patterning in your thinking, when you start to become aware of this and you start to shift, she also is doing that. Okay, because when we, our kids, wire based on the relationship with us right, and that's beautiful. Because when we start to change our approach, it impacts them. Okay, but it does take some intentionality. It also takes some accountabilities, which is really cool.

Speaker 1: 18:25

Inside the program, I get messages from moms quite frequently. I love getting messages like this where they're saying things like you know, I said something negative about myself out loud and my daughter actually was the one that said hey mom, you don't need to talk about yourself like that, okay. Or they'll even say, like coach Bree would say, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, definitely, use me, that's totally fine, you know. But like, how just powerful is this? Like we're talking breaking cycles, when we can hear our daughters actually bringing this to the forefront and being aware of like hey mom, let's be kind, you know, and like those things those are the texts that I get that I'm like wow, this actually is making a generational impact.

Speaker 1: 19:01

This program, like what we're teaching moms and what we're teaching athletes is, goes well beyond their sport and it's going to impact generation after generation. This is going to impact your grandkids and their self-talk, because your daughter is being aware of what she's talking to herself about. And so when we see this like accountability of moms and daughters inside the program, again, you can promise to yourself I'm going to be really good the rest of the day, like we fall back into the cycles because it's been ingrained in us for a really, really long time. Which is why the program is so effective is that you actually have tools to be able to unwind this Cause. It's not as simple as just saying I'm not going to say that anymore. Okay, it's really getting down to where did this come from? What you know? Who told me this and what can I replace this with? What are some triggers where this comes up more often for me? You know there's a whole process that we teach inside the program and then also recruit your daughter into really making this about strengthening your relationship with her as well. So, yeah, the best part about this is that it's also quickly noticeable. You know, when you start to hear your daughter talk more productively about herself instead of down this negative spiral, it's really cool because it does show up in her sport and it does show up in her life. All right, moms, I know this one went a little bit long, but it's a topic I'm really passionate about because it just impacts everything. You know how you talk about yourself, how your daughter talks about herself. It impacts her whole life and how she shows up, how you show up for her as well. So hope this was helpful.

Speaker 1: 20:22

This was part three of our summer confidence series. I'll do a little recap. Part one we talked all about the unintentional ways that we actually keep our daughter stuck in this lack of confidence. Part two we talked about the number one skill that you can teach your daughter to help her overcome mistakes. Today in this episode, we talked about flipping her negative mindset using our confident self-talk process, which the first part of that is about teaching her how to become more productive in her self-talk using the thought wheel and then also being aware of what you're saying out loud about yourself and how that impacts her.

Speaker 1: 20:52

Now part four that we're going to get into in our next episode is all about how to be her safe space and again that might sound weird. You're like well, why do we need to talk about being her safe space? This is where we're really going to dive into eliminating that what to say dilemma that you probably find yourself in a lot. So after a game, she's beating herself up and you're like what do I say to her? You know, I'm telling her to stop, but it's not really working. Or before a game when she's nervous, like what do you say? You know, I tell her not to be nervous but that makes her more nervous. So we're going to get into this like whole idea of how to be her safe space so that she can be confident after her interactions with you, instead of feeling less confident, all right. Or like my mom doesn't get me or stop talking, mom, because you don't understand. So we're going to dive into that in this next episode.

Speaker 1: 21:37

A couple of things I want to leave you with as well. If you want to go deeper into this. We go a little bit deeper inside our free training for sports moms. So that's at trainhergamecom. We go into exactly how to build your daughter's confidence and mental game and we also talk about our program, the Elite Mental Game. This is our self-paced program for girl athletes, proven to strengthen her mental game and confidence. The other thing about it is we decided that during this Summer Confidence Series we are going to leave you a link in here. If you're ready to jump inside EMG and you want your daughter to join the program and you want to also learn how you can impact her confidence in the most productive way. We are offering $400 off the program in honor of our Summer Confidence Series, so there is a $400 discount link inside the show notes for you to get started with that. All right, moms, I'm Coach Bree, a mental performance coach for girl athletes.