You’re Stronger Than You Think You Are

BY WILL JONATHAN swimswam.com

June 04th, 2018

Being human is such a complex experience. It’s by no means simple. There are times when you feel like you’re on top of the world and where you feel totally invincible. There are other times when you feel like you’re stuck at the bottom and where you feel completely vulnerable.

Swimming is also a really complex experience. Again, it’s by no means simple. There are times when you feel like you’re a fantastic swimmer who can take on anyone who steps up next to you. There are other times when you like you’re never good enough and everyone else around you is and will always be superior to you.

Swimming can lift you up and make you feel incredible things. It can show you sides of yourself that you love and give you a sense of self-worth and meaning. Swimming can also throw you down and make you feel horrible things. It can expose aspects of yourself that you hate to see and give you a sense of self-loathing and hopelessness.

No matter what you experience in swimming, it’s important to understand this: You’re stronger than you think you are.

You’ve had bad races before, haven’t you? You’ve swam races that were dreadful. You’ve performed really poorly and gotten some pretty awful times. However, no matter how badly you managed to swim a race, what happened each time you swam one of those bad races? You got back up on the block for your next race and you decided to go again.

You’ve had some really bad training sessions before too, haven’t you? You’ve had some practices where you were basically worthless and couldn’t accomplish a thing. You couldn’t hold your pace at all and seemed to miss every single turn off the wall. However, no matter how bad a practice or training session was, what did you always do? You showed up the next day and went back at it some more.

You’ve also had some really painful races, haven’t you? You’ve had some swims where the physical and mental pain and exhaustion just felt like it was swallowing you up. Your legs were burning, your arms numb, and your lungs felt like they were on the verge of collapsing. However, no matter how painful a race may have been, what were you always able to do? You were able to finish that race and get your hand to the wall.

Lastly, I’m sure you’ve experienced some miserable failures during your time as a swimmer. I’m sure you’ve gone through some excruciating losses and moments of unbelievable heartache. You somehow managed to lose a race you weren’t supposed to lose or just barely missed getting that time cut you desperately wanted to get and worked hard for. However, no matter how much you’ve failed or how painful an experience has been for you in swimming, what have you always managed to do? You’ve always managed to stick with it, believe in yourself, continue to show up, and not give it up.

There’s a real power in recognizing small feats of strength and resilience. Many times, success and accomplishment isn’t the act of holding a trophy in your hand or grasping a medal that’s been placed around your neck. More of than not, success and accomplishment is simply the small act of showing up the next day. It’s having the eagerness and the willingness to suit back up, strap on your goggles, squeeze on your cap, and jump into the water despite the disappointment and pain you’ve experienced.

Perhaps you’ve just swam the worst race you’ve ever swam in your life and you still have 3 more events to go today. Perhaps that bad race has caused you to lose confidence in yourself and doubt whether or not you can swim your best in your next event. If so, just remember that you’ve always managed to bounce back from a bad race before and climb back up onto the block to go again. You’re stronger than you think you are.

Perhaps you’ve just had the worst meet you’ve ever had, where every single event you swam was really poor and the times were equally as awful. Perhaps that bad meet has caused you to doubt yourself, to think that something must be wrong, and to think that you’re going to have a bad remainder of the season. If so, just remember that you’ve had bad meets before and have always been able to get through them and turn things around. You’re stronger than you think you are.

Perhaps you’re coming off of the worst season you’ve ever had where you weren’t able to drop time in any of your events and it feels like you’ve done nothing except manage to go backwards. Perhaps this past season has caused you to question yourself; to lose the desire and determination to continue on. If so, just remember that you’ve had a bad season before at some point, and yet you still managed to continue on, to not give up, and keep pursuing your dreams. You’re stronger than you think you are.

The strength to keep going despite the pain, both physical and mental, is no small thing. The perseverance to continue onwards and stay the course despite your setbacks is not at all insignificant. It takes great courage and great bravery to WANT to keep going and push on despite everything you’ve been through. It takes real heartiness and real guts to wake up each day and keep moving forward. It takes true fearlessness to walk out of your front door and face the world. Each time you do, you’re proving to everyone around you, and most importantly to yourself, that you DO have great inner strength.

The fact that you’re still here, the fact that you’re still swimming, and the fact that you’ve managed to continue moving forward and following your path despite what you’ve been through proves without a shadow of a doubt that you do indeed have great inner strength. If you didn’t, you would have walked away a long time ago. You would have given up after the first painful swim, the first bad race, the first bad meet, or first bad season. Yet, you didn’t.

Swimming will always be complex. It will always hurt, both physically and mentally. It will always place challenges and obstacles in front of you. It will always present you with setbacks and roadblocks. It will always give you moments of disappointment and experiences of heartache. You’re always going to swim a bad race, get a bad time, have a bad meet, or have a bad season at some point. However, no matter what happens, and whenever you start to doubt yourself, just always remember this:

You’re stronger than you think you are.

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About Will Jonathan

Will Jonathan is a sports mental coach from Fort Myers, Florida. His clients include athletes on the PGA Tour, the Web.com Tour, Major League Baseball, the UFC, the Primera Liga, the Olympics, and the NCAA, as well as providing numerous talks and presentations on the mental aspect of sport and peak performance to various sports programs and organizations across the country. He’s currently the official mental coach for the Florida State University Swimming & Diving team. He provides private, 1-to-1 mental coaching sessions for swimmers on location or through Skype, as well as providing talks and presentations to swim teams on the mental aspects of swimming.

• Website – https://willjonathan.com/
• YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC33_eUb7wjnlB1AGw4sDSfQ
• Twitter – https://twitter.com/_WillJonathan_
• Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/WillJonathanMC/

Stop Making New Goals—Create Habits Instead

Finally become the person you want to be.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wander-woman/201802/stop-making-new-goals-create-habits-instead

Marcia Reynolds Psy.D. - Wander Woman

The scenario: You declare a change you want to make to achieve the results you desire. You eagerly set a goal and plan the steps. You tell yourself this time, you will commit to your goal.

Then you go back to days full of urgent emails and texts; projects falling behind; messes to clean up; fires to put out; agendas, lists and people who need to be heard out.

You think about your goal between frantic interruptions, but the days feel so overwhelming and out-of-control, you cling to what you have done in the past. You say, “Next week I’ll change when I have more time.” Lapses of distraction and masterful rationalizations crush your best-laid plans.

Sound familiar? You might feel guilty for a while, but then you conveniently forget your goal so you can focus on the more important things you must do. Or you say things like, “I am who I am” and people should accept me for that.

Humans are creatures of habit. Nearly half of what you do each day is repeated behavior. ¹

No matter how invested you are in your goals, taking consistent action to change your habits is difficult. There is safety going back to old thinking and behaviors. You must take deliberate, consistent actions repeatedly over time to defy your brain if you want to achieve the results you desire.

To achieve a goal, don't plan on taking progressive steps. You must first create new habits.

People do like change, they just forget they do.

Your desire to create different outcomes is not enough to sustain change.²To create new habits of behavior, your brain needs consistent evidence that your goal is achievable and worth the effort. Without consistent evidence, your brain will fabricate rationalizations for not changing, and give you reasons for decreasing the value of the goal. You forget why the goal is so important unless you have someone help you see your way through these typical blocks to progress.

Change is a continuum, not an event.

Your brain’s primary function is to protect you from harm and discomfort. You must convince your brain that you will not only be safe if you change, you will be better off.

To convince your brain, you must compose easily attainable steps that you will repeat for a period of time until they comfortably fit into your routine. You need visual reminders that there is a feel-good payoff for the change you want to make. Then every day, you want to recognize every time your remembered and tried to meet your commitment, even if the attempt was small. You have to show your brain that you will succeed, little by little over time.

The key to transforming your choices into a long-lasting behavioral change is to:

1. Use pictures and notes to visually remind yourself of what you want to create.
2. Plan and repeat small shifts in behavior so you can see early and consistent evidence that you can be successful.
3. Document the evidence of each positive step when you journal and dialogue about your progress.

First, make sure you define specific activities you can celebrate. Chunk your goal into small behaviors that will move you forward to achieving your goal one step at a time. For example, if you are trying to improve your relationships by being a better listener, you might start with the practices of releasing a full breath before you respond to a question. Notice when you do this for days or weeks until the pause becomes a habit. Follow-on steps might include 1) noticing and shifting your emotions to feeling curious after your breath, 2) making sure you have fully stopped walking and working to be present with people you talk to, and 3) seeking to understand more clearly what people need and already know before you respond.

Take time with each step. Don't be impatient. You are making shifts in your routines and behaviors, not drastic changes.

You can spend as many days as you like on each step until you see consistent progress but acknowledge yourself each day for even minor attempts at achievement. Keep reminding your brain you can succeed so it will support you instead of protecting you.

The transformation is more likely to stay on track if you make a point of noticing your accomplishments every day. Write about your victories in your journal. Talk about them with others who support your growth. Send congratulations notes to yourself.

Piece-by-piece, you shift your mind and behavior. Little by little, you create new habits. Eventually, you become the person you vision yourself to be.

Dialogue keeps your brain on track

Even if you accept that you must change a behavior or habit, the act of letting go of old ways takes constant self-encouragement. It is easy to be discouraged. You might feel rejection and embarrassment if your attempts to change are rebuffed by others. You have to try out less than perfect behaviors, which can be frightening.

Asking for support and assistance can make you feel vulnerable, yet social support is important to help you override the emotions that can trigger your brain to give up your plans.

Just sharing your desires with others will strengthen your commitment. Research shows that making a new behavior automatic can take 18 to 254 days, with 2 months being the average.³ During that time, ongoing dialogue with a coach or a trusted friend can:

• Remind you of your overarching desires when you question your choices.
• Call on your strengths when you question a goal’s achievability.
• Celebrate wins with you, no matter how small, as significant steps in your journey.
• Mine the learning from each lapse so all actions are seen as valuable instead of setbacks.

Creating consistent evidence that you will succeed and using a social support system that includes a coach or mentor can help become the person you want to be.

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References

[1] Neal, D.T., Wood, W., and Quinn, J.M. (20?) Habits—A repeat performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 15, 198-202.

[2] Nowack, K. (2017) Facilitating successful behavioral change: Beyond goal setting to goal flourishing. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, Vol 69, No. 3, 153-171.

[3] Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C., Potts, H., & Wardle, J. (2010) How habits are formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1009, 998-1009.

4 Simple Ways to Improve Performance

By Alice Reeves-Turner, Swimming World College Intern.

Whatever the level of meet, whether it be a junior event or the Olympic games, all swimmers have a pre-race ritual. This may simply be listening to a specific piece of music, eating a specific meal or a specific set of stretches– whatever the level of complexity of our behaviour before a meet, all swimmers believe that these things will help us improve in our race. Although these little quirks make us feel good on race day, there are many things that a swimmer can do which guarantee they will achieve their full potential…

1. Sleep

We all know know we should get around 8 hours sleep a night, however with the pressures of balancing training and the other commitments of life there are very few swimmers who can manage that every night. To improve performance at a meet, swimmers should try to get a solid night of sleep before a race. Studies have shown that athletes who sleep better are more likely to achieve as they can concentrate better.

2. Diet

Swimmers are renowned for their enormous diets, with Micheal Phelps featured on an NBC special eating 12,000 calories a day before his retirement. But this does not mean that swimmers eat the right things. Many never see their full potential because they never take time to focus on food. By quite simply eating the rights things and having a balanced diet, a swimmer is guaranteed to improve there performance.

3. Training

It seems logical that if you try hard in training you will achieve more in races, however some of us seem to forget that when faced with a tough training session. Hard work pays off. Despite the temporal pain a hard training session can cause it will pay off in the end.

4. Mindset

Going into a race with a good mentality can make all the difference. In fact, studies have found that if someone goes into anything with a negative viewpoint they are less likely to perform to their full potential. So, the next time you think a negative thought prior to a race about your performance, banish it from your thoughts and rocket into a world of happier, faster swimming.

All commentaries are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Swimming World Magazine nor its staff.