Normalizing Lows

I’m an optimist. I know mindset and positive self talk can make a huge difference in the quality of life, athletic performance and recovery from injury. I’ve lived it. I’ve experienced it. But what about the low moments that we have to experience to make that positive self-talk count?

I’ve had a lot of injuries and low moments over the years. I’ve lost my way, I’ve lost hope and self-belief. I’ve doubted if I could ever make it through, or feel like myself again. It’s in moments like these that I use positive self talk to try to shift my mindset and create a more positive space between my ears. But most importantly, I let myself feel the lows. I let myself feel sad, experience grief and I acknowledge when I’m feeling helpless or hopeless. Of course, the challenge is, to not let those emotions get the best of me - but my point is - to allow my positive self talk to make an impact, I have to experience low moments.

Avoiding sadness or doubt can seem like a solution, but in my experience, acknowledging those emotions make them easier to confront. Take my cycling season this year. I was both terrified and sad to shift almost my entire competitive season to the bike. Not only did I lack confidence on the bike, I was sad to not be running and frustrated with my lack of ‘return- to - run’ timeline. I was in limbo land and pretty unhappy about it.

So I leaned into my strategy that has worked in the past - one that relies on journaling and positive self talk every day to get me out of my funk. But it’s incremental change. Most every day I still experienced doubt and experienced lows. It sometimes felt pointless to write positive mantras in my journal: Keep showing up, believe in your best athletic days, you’re stronger than you think you are. Sometimes these felt like a lie and I wasn’t sure if they would make a difference.

But over time, they have become my super power. When the doubts would come in, my response wouldn’t be more negative thoughts, but instead, positive ones. I was arming myself with self-belief and it would give me the strength to keep going. The biggest thing I’ve learned from set back, injury, or hard moments in life, is to not be afraid of the sadness that comes with it. To not be afraid to hit a low point. Of course, low moments are not fun to endure, but they are one of the few ways we can really uncover our inner strength, and practice self belief.