This is a terrific article that makes good reading for players and parents of young players. It goes beyond Football!
Our mind is like the world’s greatest storyteller. It NEVER shuts up. It’s always got a story to tell and guess what it wants more than anything else? It ants what any good storyteller wants. It wants us to listen; it wants to grab our attention and pull us away from what we are doing.
Even if it’s painful, nasty or scary. And some of the stories it tells us are true. We call those ‘facts’. But most of the stories it tells us, we can’t really call ‘facts’. They’re more like opinions, beliefs, ideas, attitudes, assumptions, judgements, predictions etcetera. They’re stories about how we see the world, and what we want to do, and what we think is right and wrong or fair and unfair and so on.
So if you’re willing, sit back, get comfortable and do this exercise – close your eyes; don’t say anything for about thirty seconds – and just listen to the story your mind is telling you right now.
One of the key insights to learn is that our thoughts do not control our actions.
Thoughts have a lot of influence on our actions when we hold on too tightly to them, but they have much less influence when we take a step back from our thoughts and look at them for what they really are ... nothing more or less than a bunch of words or picture ‘inside your head’.
When you have this insight you begin to recognise that a thought; may or may not be true; is definitely not a command you have to obey or a rule to have to follow; is definitely not a threat to you; is not something happening in the physical world; may or may not be important to you – you have a choice as to how much attention you pay it; and can be allowed to come and go of its own accord without any need for you to hold on to it or push it away.
It’s not important if a thought is true or false; positive or negative; right or wrong.
One of the things we do want to learn is how to recognise when a thought is helpful, and when it isn’t.
The question here is; ‘If you let this thought and/or feeling guide your behaviour, will it help you achieve what you want to achieve, to do the things you want to do; to be the person you want to be?’
So ... just listen ... what is your mind telling you right now?