Cricket! Change the words you use
“I think I had about eight names for the one that came out right” – Shane Warne
Master the words you use and you will get more results from your game. Your subconscious thinks in images and symbols, so you need to structure the language you use to create images in your mind about the good things you want to happen or what you wish for. Pay special attention to your thoughts and the words you use, as twenty percent of them have strong emotional undertones and have a positive or negative effect on you.
In her book, Every Word Has Power, Yvone Oswald tells us that the overall impact of high-energy, productive words like best, fine, good, excellent, healthy, welcome, and wealth is that they resonate at a higher frequency and give you a better quality emotion than low-energy, limiting words like difficult, hard, unpleasant, or problem. You can begin to realize how much more positively you speak when high-energy words become more liberating.
Words to be careful when using consist of the following:
Goal. Use but implies judgment. It also cancels any previously used rewards. So if your coach says, ‘You played well today, but you took too many shots without balls,’ the coach need not have said anything. ‘You played well today and maybe you can avoid no-balls’ is more encouraging. But he too is often followed by an excuse not to do something. ‘I wanted to train, but…’ If he replaces but with and gives a much better perspective.
Can not. Whose. No. Your subconscious does not understand a negative. Don’t think about the captain of your team. That you thought? Did your captain come to mind? Don’t think of a referee with green hair. What happened? Your subconscious responds to the keywords you give it, so it has a hard time processing the negative. The subconscious mind has the maturity of a seven year old. Tell a seven year old not to touch anything and see what happens. Which is the best sentence: Don’t take your eye off the ball, or Keep your eye on the ball. The first sentence makes you think about what you don’t want to happen, while the second makes you know what to do. For coaches, do everything you can to avoid telling a player what he doesn’t want.
Two more words to lose from your vocabulary are trial and hope because of the confusion they create in your subconscious. Either you do or you don’t do something. When you try or wait, you tell yourself it’s going to be hard and you set yourself up for failure. This is why. If I ask you to try to pick up a bat that is at your feet and you do, you have failed! Why? Because I didn’t ask you to pick up the bat, I asked you to try. Have you ever felt uncertainty when someone asks you to try something? Now you know where the feeling of uncertainty comes from. Read these two sentences: I will try to improve my fielding. I will improve my fielding. Of the two sentences, the second resonates with the intent to improve and sounds more convincing. Let’s put it this way, plants don’t try to grow, they grow. Birds don’t try to fly, they fly. Do you try to pay your club dues, or do you pay them yourself? When you expect something, your subconscious automatically places it in the unattainable section of your mind.
What about changing why to how or why. Use when instead of if.
It should or should give people a sense of guilt when they ‘should’ or ‘should’ but don’t. ‘I should/must concentrate when fielding.’ ‘I should/must practice leg twisting.’ How does that make you feel in your body? Turn them into desire so they become ‘I want to concentrate when playing’; ‘I want to practice leg twist’. Is that wanting to feel different from should and must? Does it make you more determined? Does it give you a desire to achieve? The power of ‘want’ can be just as good as the power of ‘will’. Every time you realize you’ve made a negative statement, repeat what you said as a positive statement beginning the sentence with ‘in the past’. So ‘I’m always lbw against lefties’ can now become ‘In the past I used to be lbw for lefties’.
As I’m sure you now realize, there are never any problems when you reframe them as challenges or opportunities. You are in the process of thinking with faith.