5 Ways to Generate Motivation and Promote a Positive Personal Environment
Swimming is a sport with a long season, which can lead to challenging moments. It is important to not only keep yourself motivated, but ensure your teammates remain hungry throughout the season. Listed below are five ways to help generate motivation for not only yourself but also your team and coaches throughout the season.
Be Proud of Yourself
It’s okay to give yourself some credit. Sometimes, people can view this approach as being conceited, but it’s okay to feel good about your accomplishments. One of the most powerful ways of staying motivated is by acknowledging your own achievements. When we achieve positive feedback of one kind or another, it allows our dopamine to go into overdrive. Allowing yourself to pat yourself on the back can make a huge difference in creating consistent motivation. Make a mental note of when you do something well, whether it is in practice or a meet. If you’re the type of person who needs praise from others to feel satisfaction, share your successes with others.
Surround Yourself With Positive People
A positive team and coaching environment can enhance your positive self-talk, which also helps to promote consistent motivation. More, this atmosphere makes practice more enjoyable for everyone. Surround yourself with people who motivate and encourage you to be better. You want people who cheer you on when you do well and also cheer you up when you have had a bad day. You are going to spend a lot of time with your team, so be the support system for them that you want in return.
Develop Positives From Your Setbacks
It is easy to get bent out of shape when you do something wrong or don’t do as well as you want in a race or meet. Occasionally, you lose hope for yourself and the future. Instead of going down this path, the next time something negative happens, sit down and write out three positive things that will come out of the situation. It will get you refocused and re-motivated when it’s the hardest time to do so. As noted before, the swimming season is long and hard. There are many turning points throughout the season, so it can be difficult to see what the future holds. Think positively rather than tearing yourself up.
Create An Environment That Promotes Success
Similar to choosing a peer group that infuses you with positivity, create an environment around you that encourages success. Having your goals posted somewhere prominent is a good start. Look around you and find things you could do in order to create an environment that make it easier for you to succeed. This can be anything from a motivational quote on your lock screen to buying food and drinks that fuel your body. Having a positive external environment can affect your positivity internally. Having an environment that promotes success can even create dopamine in your brain which can improve your performance as a swimmer.
Change It Up
If variety is the spice of life, incorporate some into your training to keep things fresh and enjoyable. Swimming back and forth, doing countless flip turns for hours on end can get boring. Your brain will get burned out long before your body does, so be sure that you are doing your part to keep training not only challenging, but also engaging for your mind and body. Add some running, HIIT workouts, or strength training to your day-to-day workouts to keep yourself in shape, but fresh.
All commentaries are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Swimming World Magazine nor its staff.