Coromandel’s Collaborative Magazine

Sport Psychology applied in daily life

Part 1 – Key principles for a happier more positive life

Did you know that your thoughts influence your fate, day by day?

Albert Einstein once said: “A single thought is the smallest entity of energy.”

Up to 60% of our body is water. The water content in our brain and muscles is even as much as 75%! So, a thought is like the tiniest movement on a bucket of water and the whole content of the bucket gets moved by this vibration.

And did you know that our mind cannot understand any negation? Meaning: no, don’t, without, anti, etc. cannot be processed and are simply deleted?

I can demonstrate this to you in a small test: 

Please close your eyes and imagine NOT seeing a red dog.

What happened? How long did it take you to get rid of the red dog?

These two principles are very powerful and they are the first principles I teach an athlete or any other person who comes to see me.

It can be fatal if a gymnast thinks about NOT falling on top of the balancing beam or a marathon runner’s goal is to finish WITHOUT pain or a martial artist DOESN’T want to get injured.

Your mind simply ignores the negation and focuses on the rest of your thought. Which is, in the above examples: FALLING, PAIN and GET INJURED.

Most people, athletes included, know what they DON’T want more than what they want. Not just in sports, but also in our daily life it is much harder to find out what we really want. But it’s easy to say what we don’t want because we have experienced it.

So, for a gymnast it would be wiser to think: I stay sure-footed on the beam and land the back flip with precision. Or the marathon runner could say to themselves: I finish the marathon in good health. And the martial artist could think: I have a strong body and bones made from steel.

Our thoughts influence our body and hence our environment; our mind does not understand any negative commands.

If we apply these two powerful principles to our daily life, we might soon realise the benefit of taking a closer look at our thoughts and what we say to ourselves. 

On a personal level we might think: I don’t want this experience (job, partner, etc.) again. Or I don’t want to get sick. Or I just want this pain to go away.

But what we often get is the same job experience and the same kind of partnership or worse. We often get sick and struggle with pain.

It is much harder to find out what we really want because we might have never experienced it in our life and therefore, we don’t really know what to wish for! 

Here some examples:

Relationship: I am loving and I have a loving partner and we share a healthy loving relationship.

Job: I do what I love every day and have all my needs met and more. 

Sickness: I am healthy.

Pain: My body gets stronger every day.

Tina Turner who was in an abusive relationship for years turned around her vibration with positive chanting every day and eventually got divorced and is now in a loving relationship. (Read more in her book: Happiness Becomes You.) 

How about when we delve deeper into sensitive subjects like anti-mining or even breast cancer awareness, and see war and tragedies in the media every day – what do you think we will experience more of, when we focus on breast cancer, mining or war?

Diana Bear

Instead, we could focus on healthy bodies/boobs, sacred land, biodiversity, food for everyone and peace.

Mother Teresa was once asked if she would attend an anti-war protest. She declined and said she would attend a peace march but not an anti-war protest. She obviously knew about the principle of negation. 

Every one of us has the power to change our thinking and send out a different vibration to our body, to our community and to the world. 

Diana Baer

Mental Skills Trainer & Sport Psychologist

Swiss Olympic approved

www.dianabaer.com

-Artwork by Sebastian Pan

Make a Donation for Coromind