Self-Talk and Anxiety

by David E. Moe

The quality of our life and the quality of a tennis match is determine by the quality of our internal dialogue or self-talk. The way we talk to ourselves during tense moments of play will either increase or decrease the anxiety and tension we are feeling during the match. Certain thoughts or ways of phrasing our self-talk can cause distress and the player looses his fluidness. Saying to your self, "I got to get this point" puts more pressure on yourself and can cause a person to be tentative in their strokes. A better way of phasing it is to say "I want my opponent to make a good serve so I can hit a good return."

Playing great tennis requires that we develop a habit of thought where are self-talk is positive and encouraging. Beating up on ourselves verbally will only breakdown our resolve and destroy our confidence. Saying to yourself, "What wrong with you, Dave, can't you do anything right" or "Jez, your really a clutz today," wouldn't help a person find that fleeting feeling of confidence. We as human being are a complex computer which are always processing information. How we evaluate the information and interprets it to ourselves is the key to cultivating or poisoning the seeds of confidence within us. Confidence grows as we cultivate positive thoughts and positive emotions. Negative thoughts and negative emotions contaminate the fertile soil where confidence grows. When things aren't going well and your shots aren't going where you want them to go it is better to develop a sense of non-judgmental awareness, rather than getting self-critical. An example of this came to me as I was playing doubles. I was return serve from the duce court and having problems. All my cross court returns were landing a foot out. I was saying to myself, "Dave, you don't have any control today. Your hitting everything wide cross court." The more I worried about it. The more consistently it happened. Then I had an inspiration. What if I tried to hit the ball one foot out. Guess what, on the next service return I hit the ball to the same spot. The lights went on in my head. I do have control of where I am hitting the ball. I just need to think about where I want to hit the ball and not think about where I don't want to hit the ball. Dan Millman the author of the book, The Warrior Athlete, said that every thought is a prayer and every prayer is answered in some form. What we think about and dwell on is manifested in the physical world. Since I have done a lot of computer programming I know how to make the computer do things automatically just like a robot. We are much like a robot except we can program ourselves. Remember the old adage, "Actions speak louder than words". We can program our bodies if we reinforce internal dialogue with relaxed physical movements. In tennis if we re-stroke a shot while thinking or saying encouraging statement to ourselves, then appropriate stroke is more likely to happen the next time we need it. A feeling of confidence must be nurtured and reinforced with positive self-talk and actions.

A more complete explanation of the principles of neuro linguistic programming and how they can be applied to tennis can be found in my book, The Making of a Winner.