"Life is a collection of self-fulfilling prophesies."
-- John Nabor, US Olympic Swimmer

There's a page I keep in the notebook I carry when I give workshops.

It's an old ad ripped out from a past issue of a local sports magazine.

It's really nothing to look at. No glossy pictures or bright colors. Just a list of sentences followed by a tagline promoting a marathon for women - an event where thousands of women will "redefine" themselves. Or so the ad says. Here's a few of the sentences:

"No one runs in my family."
"I am not built like a runner."
"My bones aren't weightless."
"My legs aren't gazelle-like."
"I am not a marathon runner."
"As a child, no one ever said, "Now that one"she's going to be a runner."

I'm not sure how effective the ad was in getting to women to register for the marathon, but it is a great illustration of our Inner Critic. Imagine racing and out of nowhere you find that you are talking to yourself, repeating any one of the sentences above. You're pretty much guaranteed to struggle through the rest of the run leg unless you can replace the nagging self-doubts of your Inner Critic with the positive self-talk of your Inner Coach.

In the previous month's article, we examined the first three of seven typical ways by which the Inner Critic tries to convince us to believe we are no good: filtering, catastrophizing and personalization. This month we will explore the remaining four: polarized thinking, overgeneralization, mind-reading and magnifying.

If you're a "black and white" kind of person, you probably engage in a good deal of polarized thinking. Since triathletes are, by nature, Type A personalities, we are extremely susceptible to this type of thinking. It resonates with our perfectionist tendencies to push ourselves to our limits and to see anything less than flawlessness as failure. We either have a good workout or a bad workout, a good race or a bad race. We easily forget that life is painted in shades of gray, and that most things occur in the "middle ground" between good and bad. If we engage in polarized thinking it is imperative that we train ourselves to "think in percentages." If we had four good days of training and one workout this week where we weren't at our best, we need to move away from saying that it was a bad week and remind ourselves that 80% of our workouts were good.

Closely related to polarized thinking is the pattern of overgeneralization. Here we take one scanty piece of evidence and use it to reach a sweeping conclusion. For example, you do a brick workout with a training partner and she flies through the run while you're dragging yourself to the finish. If you say to yourself, "I'll never be able to finish an Ironman," you've just overgeneralized. This thought pattern is one of the simpler to overcome in that it is relatively easy to recognize; it typically involves the use of words like "all," "every," "never," "everybody," or "nobody." Replacing these with words like, "some," "most," "might" makes a world of difference; it can actually change your self-perception. Perhaps you won't finish that Ironman, but then again you might. Since you really can't know until you try, focus on what is possible instead allowing fear to trick you into believing something is impossible.

Another variation on this theme of taking something small and blowing it out of proportion is magnifying. Here we exaggerate the degree or intensity of a problem. We turn up the volume on anything negative, making it loud, large, and overwhelming. You're in the middle of the run leg of a triathlon and you hurt. If you tell yourself, "this pain is unbearable," you've just magnified the situation and psyched yourself out. Most of the time that we exaggerate problems there is no factual basis for what we believe. If you find yourself magnifying, remind yourself that history shows that human beings in general and athletes in particular, can survive almost any psychological blow and can endure incredible physical pain. You can train for and cope with almost anything. Make memorizing and repeating the phrase, "I can survive this," a regular part of your mental training.

Do you think you know what other people are really thinking? Guess again. Very few of us are mind-readers. However, that doesn't mean we don't engaging in mind-reading. We often allow ourselves to believe that we know what another person is actually saying to us. So even though our training buddies may tell us that we are ready to place in our age-group, we may tell ourselves that "they are only saying that because they feel sorry for me." Instead of assuming we understand what other really mean, to avoid mind-reading we need to treat all assumptions as hypotheses to be checked out by asking for clarification and evidence. Better yet, we could simply avoid making inferences about what other people think and take them at their word. If others see us positively, instead of objecting why not try agreeing with them?

Last month I used an acronym ACE to describe the steps to turning an Inner Critic into an Inner Coach. We must become Aware of how we engage in filtering, catastrophizing, personalization, polarized thinking, and overgeneralization, mind-reading and magnifying. Then we must Challenge the limiting beliefs that arise from such limited thinking. Finally, we must Expand our limited thinking to reflect our desire for success.

Expanding limited thinking is best accomplished by the use of Positive Self-Talk (PST). The same process that caused our Inner Critic to grow in strength can be used to develop our Inner Coach -- constant repetition. If we repeat a positive phrase often enough we can train our mind to believe it and to recall it when needed. Positive Self-Talk statements are the key to positive thinking.

Almost all Positive Self-Talk statements have certain qualities in common. They are specific, brief phrases that typically begin with "I" or "I am." They are in the present tense and anticipate success. They use words that suggest strong positive emotion. "I am a strong cyclist," "I always swim relaxed and effortlessly," and "I love competing," are examples of PST Statements.

There are just two tricks to using PST statements. First, the statement you repeat actually has to be positive. Sometimes our Inner Critic creeps in and what at first glance appears to be affirming really turns out to be a negative. I once worked with an athlete who was enthusiastically training for her first marathon. When I asked her what she thought about as she ran, she said, "I tell myself over and over, "I'm going to finish this marathon if I have to crawl across the finish line." By constantly repeating that phrase, she reinforced the thought and image of crawling to the finish. Far better, would have been for her to use something like, "I always finish strong."

The second trick is that you actually have to practice using PST Statements. They can only programmed deeply into your mind if you repeat them. Write them on post-its and place them where you can see them - your bathroom mirror, the dashboard of your car, your computer. Repeat them during training. Burn a CD of yourself reading your PST Statements and listen to it before you go to bed. You cannot say them enough. Remember, it took a long time for your Inner Critic to develop. It will take some work to silence it. But it can be done. Given a chance, your Inner Coach can prevail.

Imagine how much more powerful the ad I carry around might have been if, instead of being negative and critical, the ad copy read:

"I am the best runner in my family."
"I am built like a fast runner."
"My bones are weightless."
"My legs are gazelle-like."
"I am an outstanding marathon runner."
"Now that one—She's going to be a success!"