Turning Lamp Posts Into Sweet Talk
Ironman Frankfurt July 2017 - Anything is Possible
Turning Lamp Posts into Sweet Talk
The road stretches out before me. The odometer reads one hundred and sixty kilometres. I still have twenty to go before the training session is finished. I am having a good day out. The sun is shining, a treasure in a place renowned for rain. I feel lucky. A light wind has accompanied me. It has blown the sweat cool to my skin. It’s the small things that keep you going on the grueling days. Keeping a positive mindset is a difficult thing to do. It needs to be practiced and honed. Endurance sport is a great arena to learn this skill. It is very useful in every facet of one’s life.
I have to be honest; I haven’t always talked nicely to myself or been the most positive person in the room. I spent the first few years of my triathlon training beating myself up and hating most of my long sessions. It seemed like too big of an obstacle to get over. I had signed up to do a long-distance triathlon to prove somebody wrong. They’d said I couldn’t do it. Not the best advertising you might think and yet, Triathlon pushed my body to the limit and my mind even further. This is the story of learning to sweet talk myself.
I don’t know what’s going on in your mind. I really don’t and no one else does either, except for you. I hope it’s a nice place. It isn’t always. What do you do when negativity is the captain of your head?
We are all in a process of change or flux, and so nowadays I think of self-talk as a pendulum that moves on a spectrum from one side to the other- positive to negative or vise-versa. That’s how it works for me anyhow. Triathlon taught me how to control the extreme swing to negative thinking and now most days I am in the positive half of the spectrum.
Nature vs Nurture?
So, here’s a question you might like to ponder. Are we born positive or become positive? The research (Røysamb et al.,2018) suggests that hereditary factors determine 30-40% of our outlook. That is a big piece of the pie we have absolutely no control over. Luckily the genes leave 60% to other factors. Røysamb et al.,2018 conclude that the life we lead and the environment in which we live are the other major contributing factors to your self-talk and outlook. Victor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist and author of A Man’s (Women’s) Search for Meaning said, “Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.” Apparently, he was only 60% right. We don’t choose our parents or genes they give us, but we can learn, as Frankl puts it, “to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” And herein lies the power of triathlon to teach us to choose our attitude.
The Effect of Negative Thoughts ☹
What are the effects of negative thoughts? They delay recovery, promote injury and restrict performance. A couple of weeks before my first long distance triathlon I picked up a calf injury. I was still learning how to talk nicely to myself and the injury took me back to a place of negative talk and thought. Besides going to the Physio and getting all the treatment I could, the injury would not heal and I believed it never would. I think this attitude contributed to me keeping this injury for a long time in one form or another. When I learnt to sweet talk myself the injury not only healed for good but running became a pleasure and positive thoughts replaced negative ones.
How I got into Triathlon
I didn’t like running and hated cycling. This is how I started my triathlon journey. This isn’t the best attitude I know. I got into triathlon because of a snowstorm. In the winter of 2008 a snowstorm in North Holland, the Netherlands brought all public transport to a halt and I had to get home to pick up my kids from daycare. No buses and the roads completely blocked; I decided the only realistic way to get there in reasonable time was to run. This was my first 10km run. It was fun and cold and well an experience to say the least. I stopped half way to help some people with their stranded car. What I learnt from this day was that running wasn’t so bad and I could do it. I was already swimming at the local club, cycling daily to work and with this last piece of the puzzle, someone suggested I do triathlon. Today, I enjoy running the most, isn’t it funny how life works?
Chrissie Taught Me About Lamp Posts
Chrissie Wellington dominated triathlon from 2007 to 2012. She was undefeated in all thirteen of her ironman distances. She won her first Kona world championship less than a year after turning professional. To say the least, she set the standard for the rest to follow. In her autobiography A Life Without Limits, Chrissie spoke to the fact that she struggled staying positive when thinking about the race ahead of her. She would get out the water and dread the bike ride to come. I can relate. One hundred and eighty kilometres is daunting, even without the marathon to come. So, what did she do? She would make a deal with herself to ride to the next lamp post, tree, marking on the road etc. and see how she felt. She described how this got her not only to the next lamp post but to the end of the race. She could manage emotions and physical fatigue one lamp post at a time. In Kona there are no lamp posts when you get out on the Queen K highway, but she had her markers that pulled her in and kept her going at a pace nobody else could follow.
Turning Lamp Posts into Sweet Talk
If you only need to get to the next lamp post, you can sweet talk yourself there. “it’s not far,” or “You are doing great, keep it up,” or “Focus on technique until the next lamp post,” or “You’re doing great, keep it up.” There are a million small bits of nice things you can say to yourself if it’s only to the next lamp post. It’s not looking too far ahead. You are not looking at the suffering or the mountain still to be climbed, only the next small section to complete. With practice you can learn to use one mantra repeatedly or different ones. The power of this method is that it is very difficult to not celebrate getting to the next lamp post and keep going. There are enough lamp posts to go around, you just have to notice them. Be conscious of the lamp posts in your life and let them sweeten your talk.
The 12 Minute Rule
Another way of talking well to yourself is committing to doing your set training or task for 12 minutes and then checking in with yourself to see if you want to continue. The first 12 minutes is a great way to have a free zone, where you can build positive thoughts and vibes for the hard training ahead without commiting to it. If after 12 minutes, you’re not feeling it, you stop and do something else. Nine times out of ten, you won’t and you will be talking sweet to yourself all the way through your training and the rest of the day.
3 Benefits of A “Lamp Post” Attitude
1. You smile more. On the longest bike rides and run, after I had learnt about lamp posts, I smiled more. It’s just to the next lamp post anyway, what did I have to lose? Enjoy the ride.
2. You learn and practice reframing. The art of seeing a problem or obstacle from a different and more positive perspective. Instead of being upset at the headwind slowing you down or decreasing your average speed, you appreciate it as a handy training tool, adding a little more resistance to your training load. Instead of stressing about the hours of training ahead, you use the time to listen to your favourite music or podcast and learn something new each time.
3. You build resiliency. You accept change as part of life. How you feel now may change at the next lamp post and that’s ok. The weather or your race strategy might change, its ok. Resiliency will help you deal with these changes and make taking action easier. A flat tyre is a change you don’t want, but it’s not the end of the world. And most importantly, when things change you know you can influence your mind positively to that change.
My mind has become more positive over the years and now leans towards making every day an eight out of ten. These days, even though I am no longer training for triathlons, I become conscious the moment my mind and thoughts turn negative and I use the tricks from Triathlon to move them into a more positive realm. The lamp posts are in my head now, and the road ahead is as it should be, whether I like what I see or not. Happy training and thinking.
