My Blog

"No one knows what to say in the loser's locker room"

-- Muhammad Ali

Anyone who is an athlete knows how bad it feels to lose or not compete as well as one would have liked. It's easy to get down on oneself, especially immediately following the loss or poor performance. What if I told you that in 2 minutes you could reduce the negative effects of losing?

That's just what researchers from the University of New England set out to do. They decided to create and test a brief -- and I mean brief -- coping intervention in an attempt to minimize the negative feelings associated with a competition loss.

They based their study on the premise that the way you think about an aversive event, such as a competition loss, will influence a change in feelings you associate with the event.

They tested their intervention on a group of 68 field hockey players in Sydney, Australia and sure enough, their intervention made a significant difference in reducing the player's feelings of sadness and lethargy.

So what did they have the players do that was so successful? What's the secret formula for changing feelings of failure into thinking more optimistically about the future?

Here's what you need to do:

Step One: Positive Thoughts
For 1 minute concentrate on one of the following thoughts:

• Something you did well in the game (or during the competition)
• How you felt last time you won (or did well in a competition)
• Something that made you smile during the game (or competition)

Step Two: Coping Statements
For 1 minute concentrate on one of the following statements:

• I didn't win but I played really well.
• No point letting a loss get me down.

That's it! Two minutes total! Does it work? All I can tell you is that the researchers found that those athletes that used the 2-minute intervention (or "cure" as I like to think of it) were significantly less bummed out after a competition loss than those that didn't use the intervention.

Will it work for you? Take 2 minutes out and try it -- you don't even have to wait until you "lose." You can try it after you next bad workout. What's two minutes? And when you do experiment with it on your own, post a comment on this blog and let us all know how it went.

Reference: Arathoon, S. M. & Malouff, J.M. (2004). The effectiveness of a brief cognitive intervention to help athletes cope with competition loss. Journal of Sport Behavior, 27, 213-229.