skip to Main Content

What The Language You Use Really Says About You…

Nobody wants to hear they are not good enough, or don’t deserve something, are a failure and so on. I mean you can add your own unhelpful thoughts and beliefs to the list. But…how can you ever expect to be anything else if what YOU say to yourself doesn’t support yourself? 

If you’re anything like me when I first got told this my initial reaction was to almost condescendingly agree with it. “Well of course, duh”. And…the hardest lessons are the ones we initially don’t want to hear but through which we experience our greatest growth. 

Let me take you back. It’s early 2000 and I was playing junior State level basketball in my home country, The Netherlands. Our team got promoted to the junior National league which was both very exciting and daunting at the same time. My team and I were just from a relatively small town with no history of any girl team playing at national level. Most of us were full time students and combining study with the training requirements meant a massive step up in time and commitment for all of us. As pre-season training was underway we like every year invested lots of time in ball skills, conditioning, offensive plays, defensive plays, and the works. Prepping ourselves to the best of our abilities as the national league was about to kick off. 

Ha that first game, TOTAL DISASTER! We got our arses handed to us on a platter. It was that bad all I remember is the score difference was well and truly more than 60 points. And if you know nothing about basketball, losing by more than 60 points is not a loss, its annihilation! 

The next 3-5 games after that weren’t much better. Needless to say we doubted our abilities, questioning if we should even be there etc etc. There was a lot of soul searching going until one day…

We all took a hard look in the mirror and each other. What we discovered was ALL of us, myself included had prided ourselves somewhat jokingly on being a small club, from a small town and the underdogs in the league. The nobody’s, the unknowns, the outsiders. The realisation my team mates and I had was we saw ourselves as SMALL & a joke! Unconsciously we were actualising what we told ourselves consciously! We would go into games thinking small, playing small, acting small. This was in total contrast to our trainings. The moment we consciously changed our inner dialogue, deleted words such as; small, nobody, underdogs, can’t, don’t believe and I’ll try, out of our vocabulary how we played totally transformed. Accountability and conscious monitoring of language were as consistent as doing layups for warm up.  

For me, every day and before walking onto the basketball court I would say to myself; “I am a big time player, I take big time action”. My team mates had their own affirmation and as a collective we implemented a new huddle yell, “I for you, you for all”. The “all” in our yell represented us, our club, family and friends. 

I get this may sound very corny, but seriously I was completely blown away. We played with swagger, speed, intent, control and a reserved confidence that is hard to explain. 

Teams who previously smashed us, now struggled against us. We would frustrate them to the point of collapse. The majority of teams had played in the national league for YEARS with had deep benches. Now, well now was a different story. Receiving compliments from your peers is great; hearing it from your opponents and head coaches is something different. 

The lessons I learnt that season have stayed with me. Whenever I catch myself saying words that are not helpful, negative beliefs, filled with negative emotions I ask myself, what is this really saying about me? Is it saying I’m scared? I don’t believe in myself? I’m angry, frustrated, sad? Once I recognise the specific linguistics, I consciously substitute them for empowering words until I believe it! 

Back To Top