As I was running my marathon the other week, I became incredibly lonely out on the course. Most of the hype around the race in Phoenix is for the half-marathon runners. I’d estimate that about 75% of the people who sign up for the race run the half-marathon, and therefore, it has it’s own separate course. Those of us left running the full 26.2 miles had several more stretches of almost pure isolation…no crowds, no cheers, no bands. Just me and my thoughts.

At mile 22, my I-phone, that I was using for musical motivation and GPS tracking keeping my Facebook friends informed of my progress, lost its battery power and shut down. As soon as the music died, my legs at the very same instance stopped running. Up to that point, the songs that I had strategically placed on my playlist were providing my words of inspiration and motivation. When the words suddenly went away, I psychologically lost some of my drive that had gotten me through the first 22 miles pretty easily.

Fortunately, I was prepared. I knew of the power that self-talk provides performers. Self-talk is exactly what it sounds to be–you talk to yourself. Of course, there are many different ways in which all of us do this. Everyone engages in self-talk. You probably do it several times a day and don’t even realize it. What’s important to remember though, is that the internal conversation you have with yourself greatly affects your mood, your behaviors, and ultimately how those interact with your performance.

I’m encouraging you to talk to yourself more often, but keep these principles in mind:

S.P.A.R.C.

Stop the bad thoughts

Yes, we all talk smack to ourselves. We are often our own worst enemies and criticize ourselves more harshly than anyone else ever would. It’s natural, but it can be extremely distracting and detrimental to achieving your performance goals, so nipping it in the bud quickly is key to success. The easiest way to stop the negative self-talk is to simply be aware of it happening and tell yourself, “Stop!” The trigger to cutting off the negative talk, whether verbal, visual, or physical, can be whatever you want, but it has to be something you can commit to and is effective with minimal distraction to the activity you’re engaged in.

Predict your future positively

When what you think will happen actually does happen, it’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you tell yourself over and over again what the future will hold, you will more than likely place yourself in situations that will enable that prediction to come true. If you go to a party and tell yourself all day leading up to the party that it will be awful, then you’ll tend to look for all of the things at the party that could be classified as awful and ignore what is potentially making the party fun. Therefore, when having an internal dialogue with yourself about an upcoming performance, make predictions about the outcome you really want.

Affirm yourself

Positive affirmations got a bad rap years ago when Saturday Night Live mocked them in a funny skit with the character, Stuart Smiley. From the outside looking in, if found telling yourself in a mirror how great you are, it probably would look ridiculous, but the truth is that positive affirmations work. You can’t have a coach with you 24/7, and you need to believe in yourself that you are capable of achieving your goals. A positive affirmation is simply reminding yourself of what your capabilities are. Hearing yourself say it out-loud enhances your own belief that you can achieve peak performance.

Reframe

Understand that sometimes bad things are going to happen. Realities cannot be changed, but your perception of them and how you react are in your control. Reframing is when you find the positives in bad experiences. Take pre-performance nerves for example. Your stomach feels uneasy. Your palms are sweaty. Your heart feels like it will jump out of your chest. Some people when they experience this say to themselves, “How can I possibly go out there like this? I’m so anxious!” That’s no way to set yourself up for a good performance. Someone who wants to enrich their performance would look at those physiological reactions and say, “Man, I’m so excited and ready for this, my body wants to be out there right now!”

Counter

Sometimes our perceptions of realities are wrong though. Sometimes our perceptions are full of self-doubt and low self-efficacy in our abilities. Countering is a technique to use when you find yourself telling yourself that you can’t do something. When you are going into a big performance event that you’ve been preparing for and find yourself saying, “Oh, I’m not good enough to actually do this,” you need to counter that by stopping the thought and debunk the negative statement with a positive truth. A good follow-up would be, “That’s not true. I’ve had awesome rehearsals for this moment, and all of my hours of preparation have set me up for success!”

I used all of the techniques above in the last 4.2 miles of my marathon race. I had no bigger fan than me when I really needed one. As I saw other people walking over to the course’s edge and contemplating quitting, I was chatting myself away, reminding myself of how I have done this before and how a new personal best was right in front of me. I fell just short of a new personal best, but I convinced myself to push for it, and it felt good knowing that I was my own best friend that day rather than an enemy.

Good luck to you and your internal dialogue. I’d love to hear of your experiences in using the the SPARC techniques above to ignite your performances!