Building your self image

It’s unusual for a teenager to have a well developed self image. There are exceptions, often these kids are the sports champions who have grown up being good at something.   Every win builds their confidence and they expect to win, which makes it more likely that next time they race they will win.

In triathlon many of us have come into this sport without any real success in any of the sports involved. And many of us have had rather humbling experiences in our first few attempts.

Most of us really don’t know how others see us. We often imagine that others actually care what our results are. Who are we kidding? Triathletes are the most self centered bunch of people you’ll ever meet. Don’t get me wrong here, some of the finest people I have ever met are triathletes. But ask them what time you did in your last race and they’ll look blank. They really are mainly interested in their own results and training progress.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to measure yourself against your training partners. Use your own time trials and race results to measure your progress.

To race faster, you have to build your expectations along with your fitness, technique and strength. Building strength, fitness and improving technique is all just a matter of time spent following a sensible program, following a good diet and practicing perfection.  In order to build your expectations, you need to develop a strong self image. You really have to like, who you are.

To build that strong positive self image, you need to be nice to yourself. You need to compliment yourself when you achieve something. Climbing a hill in a higher gear. Swimming a PB in the pool. A faster race result.

All of these examples are of “you beating yourself”. This is the only real measure of progress. If you pin your progress on someone elses performances, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Other athletes may improve at a different rate to you.You may be a steady long term improver while your training mate might be going through a stage of rapid improvement only to slow down in the future. Also theres the chance your training mate has so much untapped talent that he’ll be a future champion of the sport.

There’s also the real chance that your training mate is a perfectionist, someone dedicated to doing everything right. Dotting every “i” and crossing every “t”. Lance Armstrong proved that this approach pays off. Doing everything right and sticking at it for a long time has a scary way of uncovering talent you didn’t even know existed.

Keeping a diary is a great way of building self image. I suggest you only record the “wins”. When I look at your diary, I don’t want to see what “went wrong”, I want to see what “went right”. When you look back over that diary and you see all the good things, you’re able to see your progress in black and white. You may think you’ll remember it but if you write it down, it’s there. Also the actual act of writing it down prints it into your subconcious mind as a permanent record.

Really self image, whether it’s strong or weak, it’s recorded in your subconcious mind, it’s part of who you are. It can onle be changed a little at a time.  You can’t go and hear Anthony Robbins speak and instantly become a winner.

Becomming a winner is a step by step process. Lots of small wins add up to you seeing yourself as a winner.