"Does thinking positive actually work?"

Well, not entirely. I had a client send me this message 10 minutes after our session. She has been feeling down and asked me in session, "Do you think I'm depressed?" She had already identified in our session that her thoughts have been negative, that it's hard for her to experience happy feelings. She announced, "I need to get a handle on my thoughts."

Here's the truth. If telling ourselves a new thought and thinking positive was all it took to magically feel better, we would be better by now. We would be performing our best whenever we decided in our mind that we wanted to be good or feel good. If a positive thought alone could turn around our day, our game, or our life that would be really convenient.

The reality is the part of our brain that is in threat, our limbic system, can't take in positive thoughts if we are not regulated. I can't just input a new thought and get my whole system onboard. I need to work with the whole system. This means, I need to find the positive thought, then start from the bottom of the brain up. I have to feel the regulation from my breathe, or calming movement; I have to believe it, feel it in my heart, my lungs, let every cell in my body get behind the thought. Then, the thought has real power. If I believe I can make the shot, breathe like I can make the shot, and smoothly allow my body to flow through making the shot, then the belief "works."

Most of the time when I see an athlete, they have learned growth mindset and how to "think positive" but they cannot get their nervous system to believe the thought. They might get to the free throw line telling themselves, "Make this shot." but their nerves still feel out of control. There are patterns in our system that run so deep that we need deeper tools to have the thought integrated into a positive outcome.

My answer to this client? "It's a starting point. You did great recognizing this. Let's get your body to actually feel some calm and joy again, and the thoughts become easier to believe." And most importantly, yes, we need to get you feeling better. Because if you are feeling depressed and playing ball isn't bringing you joy, we need to address that first. So, if you've been working on your growth mindset but not seeing much change, we need some different tools. Let's chat.