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Sports & Performance Case Study: By Rodney L. Merrill, MPH, CMHt. CMNLP, CPTLT Discussion and Case History In using NLP to model distance runners, I have noticed a few patterns. Although certain runners clearly got a better spin on the chromosomal roulette wheel than others, it isn’t always the physically gifted runners who finish, let alone win, a marathon. Some unlikely characters cross the finish line: pear-shaped penguins waddling their way down the course, scrawny storks with gangly arms and legs flailing in all directions, little Harry Potters puffing on their anti-asthmatic inhalers. It is an awe-inspiring thing to witness. And, too, you will see a few, admittedly not many, superbly styled running machines who just can’t make it happen. Even among essentially matched athletes competing at the highest levels, where hundredths of a second can win or lose the competition, you can sometimes see it happen. The tiniest slip in an otherwise “flawless” performance. In the follow-up interview, the athlete quite often attributes the slip — not to a trick knee or an weak ankle — but a loss of focus or a slip in confidence. It comes down to beliefs. In particular, it often comes down to beliefs about self-efficacy. This being the case, I decided to do an experiment on myself. Although I might be considered “well-rounded” in many ways, I have never been athletic, preferring the library and the keyboard to anything that isn’t sex but involves breathing hard and breaking a sweat. My anguished athletic history I was caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy as a youngster. I was no good at sports, so everyone did all they could to avoid having me on their team. When my name was called, the receiving team moaned and jeered. I spent the entire game anticipating ridicule or being ridiculed. It didn’t stop there. I was assaulted and belittled in the locker room while the teacher played deaf, dumb, and blind. This being my experience of athletics, I avoided them and, of consequence, never improved. By the time I was a junior in high school, I was feigning injury or chest pain to get out of P.E. class. 40 Years Later So here I am—56 years old, borderline obese, high blood pressure. I’ve taken to reading the obituaries to assure myself that I am still too young to succumb to the swift and wide swath of the Grim Reaper. What I find is not reassuring. Although most of the Harvester’s guests are, in fact, 70-, 80-, 90-year olds, even a few centenarians, there are a disconcerting number of corpses in their 50s. One minute a guy is watching South Park, laughing his ass off; by the time his wife returns with his bowl of Chubby Hubby, he’s slumped in the chair stinking of excrement. Reframe Sweating and wheezing is starting to sound good. My wife is this person who runs a thousand miles before dinner to make sure she won’t get fat. It works. She has gone from round and squishy like me to this tiny angular person I have nicknamed “Bones” to make myself feel better. So, I figure running is the ticket. She can coach me and soon I will be catching updrafts and riding on a breeze. We go to Fit Right Northwest and I get a gait analysis. Apparently I roll my foot on the outside edges and need anti-pronation stabilizer shoes. They are $75 but when compared to the hazards of untoward pronation, they are a bargain. We go to Ross Dress For Less and Nike running vestments for a fraction of what dopes paid for it last year. I get shirts and socks made of lightweight “technical fiber” to keep me warm and dry. The running shorts even have a special scrotum halter made of high tech fiber. They think of everything. Kate advises me to use a special BodyGlide® sport lube on the inside of my thighs to prevent “chub-rub”— the bane of chubby-legged waddlers everywhere. Cool. Let’s roll! My first run About a half mile down the road, I am gasping for air and bounding forward and from side to side like grounded walrus. Oh my god! I can’t do this! What was I thinking? I’m just not an athletic person. What made me think I could do this? Something that feels this bad can’t be good for you. Your body is trying to tell you to stop! If I don’t stop, they’ll find me slumped in the ditch and stinking of excrement. Plan B — heck, any plan at all will do! I finish the run. I have to stop and walk a few times to recover but I finish. It is a truly horrible experience. Back at the computer, espresso in hand, I feel much better. My heart rate is almost back to its normal caffeinated 90 beats per minutes. Reflecting on my first run, I am convinced that my self-talk is probably is not that helpful. After years of negative conditioning, I need a plan. I overcame an extraordinary fear of flying using NLP & hypnosis. There are no practitioners where I live so I must either drive 1 ½ hours to Portland and 1 ½ hours back for each session or devise my own therapy. As I See it The place to begin is self-limiting beliefs. Argue for you limitations and they are yours. We seem designed to seek confirmation of our beliefs even when these beliefs are self-defeating. I think this is because a sense of stability or integrity is more important to us than efficacy. We naturally filter out most of the information in our environment because we are not equipped to deal with all of it at once. So, if I believe that I am a competent and surefooted person, I will notice environmental feedback that confirms that. This is the mechanism for the self-fulfilling prophecy and it can work for you or against you. When you truly believe something, you tend to behave in ways consistent with that belief. If you believe that you are not capable, you will not have the mental juice to break through your personal barriers. As a long-time desk jockey, my physical barriers are many and at a very low threshold. Adding negative self-belief to physical barriers is like adding rebar to concrete. “Oh god, I can’t do this!” And sure enough, I can’t.
There is a Catch-22 however. For many athletes positive self-belief comes as a result of innumerable positive experiences where they performed at a high level. If all my athletic experiences have been negative, of course I am going to have self-limiting beliefs in regard to my potential in athletics. Could I Borrow ½ Cup of Self-efficacy, Please? This Catch-22 creates what psychologists call “learned helplessness.” When I have a setback, I go into a downward spiral of negative self-criticism and brooding. Like the Stuart Smalley movie character, I would fantasize that no one loves me, I’ll die in the gutter, alone and 30 pounds overweight. I think somehow running such a routine somehow excuses the giving up that inevitably follows. Technique 1: Borrow ½ Cup of Self-efficacy I have no sense of self-efficacy in physical activity. And no buffer for failure. What I need to do is borrow it from another part of myself. TimeLine Efficacy Search I go into a deeply relaxed state and imagine my personal time line. Rising above the time line, I go into the past searching for times when I felt confident and strong. Episode 1: Instant Genius I find a period in high school I call “Instant Genius”. English class required weekly vocabulary-spelling tests. Despite coming from an impoverished background, I am a good speller and possess a larger than average vocabulary. So this class is great for my otherwise sad self-esteem. Then I lose my primer. I’m not sure why but I make the brash statement that I do not want another one. I don’t need it. Each week when I pick up my quiz, never under 90% despite not having the text to study, I proclaim - “Instant Genius!” This bit of arrogance annoys some of my classmates but others get a kick out of it and applaud. And this fills a hole in me. I feel, as Rev. Jesse Jackson puts it, “I am somebody!” For the first time, I want to excel in school. It feels good to me. But I have no history to support it. I have been told all my life that I am stupid. My report cards are a steady stream of “C” and “D” grades. To top it off, the school counselor tells me that my IQ tests show I am borderline retarded and I should consider a lifetime career in the military. Learn a trade. Three squares and a cot. Make the best of my retarded situation. Episode 2: Prince & the Pauper I pause at a time when I convince a brave young man, a long-time “A” student, to engage terms papers with me in an experiment. We copy them verbatim into our handwriting and submit them as our own. As I predict, Steve earns an “A” with my paper and I earn a “C” with his. Steve is humbled before the power of social expectation and I am vindicated. We agree to take the life lesson and say nothing. I am grateful to Steve to this day. Episode 3: Instant Scholar I come to a later episode that I call “Instant Scholar”. I respond to some offhand remark with this brash statement: I could get “A’s” if I wanted to; I just don’t care. To my shock, the room fills with laughter and incredulity. This is the first time I really comprehend that my classmates think I am stupid as well. Some like me, some don’t. But they seem to agree that I am not “A” material. At that time, this sort of experience often sets me into a depressive spiral that ends with me agreeing or concluding that I am tragically misunderstood — or some other equally ineffectual and helpless response. This time, I latch onto the “Instant Genius” and the Prince & the Pauper” experiences. I latch onto the time Rev. Day and his brother, the college professor, told me I was a lot smarter than I was living up to. I boldly proclaim to the entire home room class that, by next semester, I will be an “Instant Scholar” and will have nothing lower than a “B” grade and a minimum of three “A” grades. This time there is still laughter and derision but this time it is exhilarating. That night, I go home and carry the water and chop the wood as usual. But after dinner, I do not watch television. I set up a table in my bedroom. I turn on some music. And I study until bedtime. I have a lot of catching up to do. Not only do I fulfill my promise, but before the year is out, I form a Contemporary Problems Club, work on the school yearbook, solicit sponsorships from local businesses, play the lead role of Oscar in the stage version of The Odd Couple, build sets for the drama club. I run for class President and come in second, winning the consolation prize of Vice President. From this point on, I am viewed as an underachiever rather than an idiot. Except for the school counselor. For some reason, Tina (or “Nicotina” as I nicknamed our chain smoking mental health worker) needs to believe in my IQ test immutable and urges me to still stick to the trades. She informs me that I just don’t have the equipment to go to college. Value from TimeLine Efficacy Search Visiting these significant episodes is great. First, I remember that I did not always believe in my mental abilities. I have been an intellectual person for so long, I forget the days when I was stupid and scored 90 on the IQ test. I forget that I broke that belief system by being bold and brash, then following through with a lot of hard work. I forget the joy of finding that my “immutable” IQ score of 90 has been replaced by scores of 145 and 155. Maybe the same is true of beliefs about my physical potential? We (me and my wife, Kate) are at a marathon in Sequim WA and, as we are splitting up to go home, I suggest to Kate and her marathon friends that I will run the half marathon next year. (That’s 13.1 miles!) This comes as a great surprise to them and to me since I am not a runner and have shown no interest in running before today. Everyone seems pleased to hear it. When we get home, I interrupt a phone call between Kate and my sister-in-law (Karen) to challenge Karen to a half marathon. She accepts. I say we should run the half in Sequim in May. Karen says that’s no good. She has other things going on then. I have to come down in October and run the Avenue of the Giants in Eureka CA (where she lives). I accept! Oh my god! I’ve never run more than five miles in my life and that was on a treadmill — years ago. She runs daily. And now I have only three months to prepare rather than a year. “Instant Runner!” I hope. Technique 2: Laugh. Quit being so damned serious. I am not going for an Olympic medal. Nor do I intend to win the Boston Marathon. I am adding a little physical activity to my life. Having a half marathon ahead of me means I have to train. I can normally find humor in just about anything. But I have let negative baggage get in the way of doing that with running. I take steps. I have a t-shirt custom made with the famous final words from a book by John "The Penguin" Bingham: Waddle on! I sign up for the Seaside Beach 10K Run and when people ask me what my goal was, I replied: To Finish. With a pulse. They laugh and that helps me to lighten up. I order the professional photograph of me running on the beach. There are no other runners except me and Kate. We are dead last. Kate is running at the back not of necessity but to provide me moral support. I finish. With a pulse. After running for only three weeks. This is the longest distance I have ever run in my life. Yes! Technique 3: Collapse Anchors with Affirmations I go into a deeply relaxed state and remember the times when I have been confident and strong. When I locate appropriate inner resources or abilities, I magnify the submodalities associated with them, particularly visual and kinesthetic attributes as these are more prominent when I go into a funk, then I anchor the resource. I repeat this for Instant Genius, Prince & the Pauper, and Instant Scholar and stack the anchors. Now I find a representation of myself flailing in agony, especially the visual and the kinesthetic and fire the stacked resource anchors in sequence then collapse them with my internal representation of running. I continue to stack resource anchors as they become available. I now add the successful 10K. Although I came in last, I did finish after only three weeks of training and it was basically a fun run. So I consider this a resource. When I begin to flag, I fire the stacked anchors to my power state and then run a series of appropriate affirmations such as: Each time this process elicits a positive response, I add it to the anchor stack as another resource. Last Sunday, I did, in fact run seven miles, for a weekly total of 20 miles. My personal record for distance. Yesterday was a no-run, strength building day. I am to do something other than running that will build strength appropriate to running. I decide to climb the Astoria Column, a 164-step spiral staircase to build strength in my legs. Ten. I climb the 164 spiral steps up and the same 164 down — 10 times! Technique 4: I go into a deeply relaxed state and remember the times when I have been confident and strong. I locate Instant Genius, Prince & the Pauper, and Instant Scholar and my recent “triumphs” with running. I arrange them into a movie and collapse my stacked anchors to magnify the submodalities associated with them. Now I intersperse events from my anguished athletic history (above) and I diminish the values as much as I can, making them smaller, dimmer, grayer, muffled and so on. I mentally run the movie from beginning to end several times, first slowly then faster and faster until I am able to “watch” the movie 10 times in 10 seconds. I now rearrange the events in the film to their true historical order. When I play the movie again, I notice that significance the past events has diminished in comparison to the success I am having today. Gotta run! That reminds me, today is a ramp-down, so I have to go run. But its only four miles. Before I do, I have to say that being able to remain positive and relaxed goes a long way when I am pushing to the next stage of my training. I am actually starting to belief I can complete a half marathon in October and another in May of next year. For now, I am content to believe I can handle what is before me today — naturally and easily. Waddle on! |