NLP in Sport New Behaviour Generator
Breaking bad habits
Chapter 3
If you have an athlete who is struggling to perform a technique, struggling with confidence, or generally stay motivated, this NLP technique can be effective and is a quick and easy way of building a strong motivation for a desired behaviour. It is also more likely to produce a lasting change with your athlete.
“Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow”. ~Yiddish Proverb
Do you ever find yourself hitting your golf swing at the golf range really well, or in practise hitting your tennis backhand really well, or scoring penalties in training easily enough, though when it comes to a match situation you struggle to perform.
Or you find it really hard to grasp a technique or a skill, it just wont sink in
Do you ever find yourself repeating certain types of behaviour over and over again? Once you have repeated the behaviour you think dam I can’t believe I did that, I can’t believe I have done it again.
All of us have habits, some of them serve us and some of them can be detrimental and self destructing to ourselves and the people around us. Do you have any habits you would like to change? are the certain things you do that you are fed up doing, and have reached the point you want to kick that habit.
Whether it’s faltering under pressure, fear of failure, technical errors such as kicking the football, slicing golf swing, messing up your tennis serve.
The good news it is possible to change negative habits very quickly, with a technique we shall go through later in the chapter, so providing you want to remove an existing habit it is possible to remove it very quickly.
Once a habitual behaviour has been learned it can be beneficial for positive behaviours i.e. exercising, training hard, or be detrimental to negative behaviour such as fear and complacency. Sabotaging our sports performance, living with our limitations.
Examples of some positive and negative habits
Keeping your self in good shape by exercising = good habit
Messing up golf swing under pressure = bad habit
Focusing at key moments in match = good habit
Confidence in your ability = good habit
Doubting your ability = bad habit
Not performing at your best = bad habit
Consciously we can distinguish a good or bad habit; most people know how to perform technically and tactically in their sport . And what foods such as fruit and vegetables are good for them. However why is it that people carry on sabotaging their lives by smoking, drinking, feeling negative?
If people are aware something isn’t good for them why don’t they change?
Habitual behaviour is typically a way of creating order or structure to day-to-day life. Habitual behaviour is learned and then becomes automatic without the person being consciously aware of doing it. Negative habitual behaviours can be detrimental to physical and mental health, the most common being smoking and drinking. They can last a life time and be detrimental to someone’s life.
First let’s explore the mind
The mind has two parts: the conscious and the subconscious. A useful analogy is an iceberg. The conscious mind is the bit that sticks out of the water. The subconscious mind is the bit hidden away underneath the surface.
The subconscious is where all the things that you have learnt to do without thinking is done.
For instance, when you first drove a car, you had to consciously work out where to put each foot and how to use each new control. As your driving skills developed, you handed more and more control over to your subconscious mind. Now you are so proficient that you can drive, navigate and talk to your passenger all at the same time!
Surprisingly, it is the subconscious that can be in control of our behaviour most of the time. Once you realise that, a lot of things begin to make sense. This is the reason people find it very difficult to stop smoking – they have consciously decided that smoking is bad for their health, costs a fortune, is ruining their complexion, etc. However, they have not taken into account their subconscious reasons for wanting to carry on smoking. Go back to the iceberg analogy; if the little bit at the top wants to go one way and the huge bit at the bottom wants to go the other way, guess who’s going to win?
Consciously we know smoking is bad for you, we know eating too much chocolate makes us put on weight; we know drinking to much alcohol isn’t good for you.
So why do we do it?
Once you understand about the role of the subconscious, you can understand where a lot of odd behaviour comes from. People get stuck in a rut because their subconscious doesn’t know how to change. People can get disturbing thoughts or feelings because the subconscious thinks that something bad is about to happen. The conscious mind is only aware of a limited amount of information at any given time, (i.e. try drive, talk on your mobile phone and do your make up at the same time).The unconscious mind is aware of everything else, the sound of the cars outside, the breeze blowing through the window, the sound of the TV in the background, your feet landing against the pavement as you walk, the aeroplane flying overhead. The million of memories we store in our mind from the day we are born, birthdays, scoring that winning goal, your first kiss.
Roles of Conscious/Subconscious Mind
- The conscious mind does your intellectual thinking. Is responsible for your self-talk.
- Your unconscious mind does your perceiving and feeling.
- The conscious mind is logical. It likes things to make sense – have a reason.
- The unconscious mind is intuitive and can make associations of information easily.
- Your conscious mind is associated with the waking, thinking state.
- The unconscious mind is associated with the dreaming (including day dreaming), reflecting, meditating and sleeping state.
- The conscious can voluntarily move parts of your body.
- The unconscious can involuntarily move parts of your body.
- Your conscious mind is only aware of the now.
- Your unconscious mind is unlimited in time and space. It holds all your memories and future constructs.
Our Behaviour
Because our behaviour is governed by our subconscious mind, think about it, physiologically do we need to tell our finger nails to grow, do we need to tell our hair to grow, our heart to beat, tell ourselves to breathe, when we are hungry, feel like going to bed, do we need to consciously tell our selves how to make a cup of tea.
We just do it almost like we are auto pilot. SUBCONCIOUSLY
Successful people, whether they are top athletes or entrepreneurs, have mastered the power of their conscious and subconscious mind to produce their success. Many of us haven’t tapped into the unlimited potential of our minds because we lack the understanding of how our minds actually work. When we decidedly focus our effort on creating unity with the conscious and subconscious minds, we can achieve a greater sense of happiness and success in our lives than we ever thought possible.
That explains why people make conscious decisions at the start of every January to go to the gym and get into best shape ever only to give up by February; statistics say 90percent of people who join gym give up in first six months. We have all the right intentions though the sub conscious mind steers us away.
In order for behaviour to make change and last we must work at a subconscious level ,if we are going to give up the cigarettes and stay off them, then we need to change at a sub conscious level. How you ask, how I can give up the chocolate, give up smoking, stop biting my nails, stop sabotaging my success.
The New Behaviour Generator is one of NLP’s simplest and most powerful patterns for changing behaviour. Use it to…
§ increase confidence
§ motivation
§ get rid of anger problems
§ Break habits
§ improve technical skills
§ Increase performance
§ overcome fears and anxieties
§ improve tactical awareness
You see, the subconscious mind needs clear directions in a very specific format if it’s going to motivate you to do something. Without this “roadmap,” change can be very difficult. With this powerful technique the new behaviour is easy and automatic. Old habits you want to get rid of fall away; new healthy habits you wish to replace them with take their place. One of the things to bare in mind with this technique is by changing your state of mind i.e. the state of mind your in when you make mistakes under pressure, lose focus, make tactical and technical errors. You can change you state of mind from a negative one to a more positive one, and in the more positive state of mind, you achieve a more positive outcome.
For example you may link feeling nervous in a certain situation in a match, and you begin to make technical errors, be changing your state of mind from feeling nervous, to feeling empowered. The new state of mind produces a new outcome, so instead of making technical errors, in your new empowered state you feel more confident and take intiative.
Here are the steps to the New Behaviour Generator:
Technique to assist you in over coming negative behaviour and unwanted bad habits.
1. Identify an technique or resource such as confidence you’d like your athlete to do or have – one that
your Athlete understands is an important part of their training
Schedule, but doesn’t necessarily enjoy. It could be going for a
Passing a ball, being more confident, or developing a skill.
2. Ask your athlete to imagine a time when they successfully
Completed the technique or were supremely confident and ask them to recreate the positive
Feelings they received from it. Now ask them to go back into
The experience, ask them what they felt, saw, heard and what
Was it like?
3. Ask your athlete to imagine themselves in the future having
just completed the technique successfully, and then to look at themselves
after actually doing it. Get them to notice the benefits of having
done it right now, and to think about the results that will arise
from it.
4. Then, ask your athlete to think of themselves doing the
Technique or skill in the future easily and enjoyably. Every time they
think of the technique or skill, they get a good feeling of anticipation,
and hear positive and encouraging internal voices. Ask them
to see how good that “future you” feels about the progress
they’re making, then see them having a sense of joy and
pleasure at having successfully completed the technique or skill and
enjoying the benefits.
5. Ask your client whether they are happy with the change.
If yes repeat steps 3 and 4, fine-tuning the benefits.
6. Identify when your athlete is next going to do the
Technique in a game , and get them to imagine themselves doing it, easily
and enjoyably.
By doing this process you can assist your athlete to alter their
perspective on difficult exercises in their training schedule and
limiting beliefs which could be stunting their progress towards
their performance goals.
First decide on a behaviour you would like to change and decide on a new behaviour to replace it
1. Think of a time you demonstrated that behaviour you would like, or choose a role model that has the behaviour, skills or abilities that you want for yourself.
I.e. confident, motivated, excellent public speaker.
2. Close your eyes and visualize yourself or that person in action. Watch it like a movie in your mind.
See how you or they look, how you or they how they use their body, how you or they their posture; how you or they how they stand, walk, and sit. Pay close attention. Hear how you or they talk, what you or they say, and how you or they say it.
3. Ask yourself: do you really want to adopt this behaviour to change the old one? Confirm that it is what you want for yourself.
4. See yourself as the model or yourself conducting this choice of behaviour. You have stepped into the role model’s place. You are watching yourself do as the model does. You have taken over the role and are acting exactly like your role model. Or imagine reliving a time you did the preferred behaviour
5. Do you feel any negativity come up within you when you watch yourself? Any doubts that you are capable of doing as the model does or producing your new behaviour? Go through them one by one and adjust them, or adjust your action in the movie, until you are happy with what you see and hear in this new behaviour. Feel positive and confident in your abilities.
6. Mentally step inside the picture. You are now inside your movie image, looking through your own eyes. You are no longer watching yourself. You are doing the new behaviour just as you did it in the past or the model did it. How does it feel to perform this new behaviour or be this person with these new behaviours? How does your body feel? How is your posture? What do you hear? How does your voice sound to you?
7. Imagine a future situation where you want to behave this way. Put yourself there. Look through your own eyes at this situation. You are the star of this movie and behaving in the new way! Is it all working? Do you need to make any adjustments?
8. Open your eyes and come to the present moment.
9. Imagine that you are now the new you with the new behaviour. Get up and walk around as the new model. Walk the walk and talk the talk as they say. How does it feel?
Building new pathways in the mind is a great way to adopt a new behaviour, one way I like to put it is re patterning existing negative thought process and replacing it with a more productive level of thinking, even by doing this technique it can be powerful enough to move us forward into a more productive thought process and outcome.