Do positive affirmations REALLY get rid of negative self-talk?

You regularly see quotes on social media, especially from many of the self-help pages telling people to "just do it", or the classic "change 'I can't do it' to 'I can'." but how useful are these to you as riders?

I'm sure you have all experienced a moment where you didn't think you could do something... if in that moment someone (like your coach or a family member) had told you that you could do it, would it have made a difference?  If you had been asked to repeat "I can do this", or "I'm great at this" would it have made it better? 

The truth is, positive affirmations DON’T work if you don’t believe them.  If you have been thinking a negative thought (“I’m not good at this” or "I can't learn 'insert skill here'") for a while, chances are it turned into a firm belief.  The interesting thing about these firm beliefs is that they can quite often skip down from mindset to the identity level, so not only do you now not think you can do it, you believe that someone like you will never be able to do it.  This may sound extreme but it is amazing how many of my clients attach their self-worth to how good they are!

A couple of tests where they make mistakes in their changes = "I can't do changes" = "I'm not good at riding" =  "I'm never going to succeed as a professional" = "'I'm not a good person because I've let everyone down"...

 The reality of this means that when you repeat a positive affirmation (“I'm GREAT at this!”) their brain will simply NOT believe this new thought and this affirmation will be useless. 

So what can you do instead?

The first step, as always, is awareness, are you aware that you are thinking negatively?  Sometimes we shy away from focusing on the negative thoughts as we worry about giving them too much attention, but if we don't acknowledge them in the first place, we stand little chance of making any changes.  

Once you are aware of them, try to move from a negative to a neutral thought:

“I’m not good at this” —> “I’m learning to do this”. 

I'm not a good rider" —> "I am training to be better at riding".

If you repeat these neutral statements often, you can become their new automatic thoughts (replacing the negative ones), which gives better foundations to build on!