Life is not easy. Each day holds unique challenges varying from waking up late for practice and missing your pre-workout snack to a serious injury requiring surgery and physical therapy. That doesn’t even include disagreements with your teammates, coaches, or family. What about your finances? Do you always have enough in your account to Venmo your friend back for pizza?
There are endless things to stress over and even complain about. But have you ever stopped to consider an alternative? What if there was a way to bring more peace and focus to your day, regardless of your circumstances? What if there was a free “supplement” called GRATITUDE to improve your performance in and out of the pool?
Gratitude
The Oxford Dictionary defines gratitude as the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.
Gratitude Deficiency
Thankfulness does not come naturally. We all run inherently low.
Signs of deficiency include chronic complaining, jealousy, disloyalty, and being inconsiderate, unappreciative, thoughtless, and judgmental.
Thankfully these symptoms of deficiency are reversible and there is a way back to a healthier state. Have you ever been around one of those people who just oozes positivity? Not in an annoying or fake way, but in a genuine and inspiring one. You want to be around them. I guarantee they have been putting in the hard work of being thankful even in the difficult times. We can’t often control what happens around us or even to us. Yet we do have control over how we respond. It is tempting to fixate on the negative. Assume the worst. Expect defeat. Yet, thankfulness can help.
Why does it matter?
Because we live in a world full of difficulty, it is bound to affect our relationships and attitude.
If we wait to be thankful until things are perfect, we will be waiting a long time. There are hard seasons of life and some hard situations we face daily, but we can practice making a choice to appreciate the good things (they are there) and what we have in this moment. The alternative is letting negativity control our thoughts, which can hurt us and our relationships with others.
Therapeutic Benefits of Gratitude
As soon as you begin practicing gratitude (and it does take practice), you may begin to see things differently. You will shift your focus from the problems to the things that bring joy and stability to your life. This perspective can help you become solution-focused and even identify the people in your life who are able to walk you through the challenge. Some problems may seem suffocating and it’s difficult to not become consumed by them, but I encourage you to choose to get up and do the NEXT RIGHT THING. In that moment find something, someone, anything, that you are thankful for. It can be something small like an encouraging phone call from a friend, a funny text from a family member, or a favorite food served in the dining hall. Whatever it is, recognizing it sets your heart on a positive pathway towards peace and contentment.
- Being thankful gives the ability to find the “silver lining.” I’m not advocating living in denial or pretending like everything is great. Ignoring reality or suppressing your feelings is not helpful. But the truth is things are rarely all good or all bad. You don’t have to be thankful for the ugly, the hard, or the things that produce tears as you fall asleep at night. But you can lay your thankfulness down right beside them. Then choose which will gain the most of your attention.
- Being thankful can help you see you aren’t defined by your problems or circumstances. They don’t have the power to be the last word.
- Being thankful breaks the cycle of doubt that life can get better. It dispels the lie that the best days are behind you. Doubt can be our default mode because it comes easily. We must choose to fight against the path to fear, worry, doubt, and discouragement until it becomes a habit to take a familiar, more predictable trail that ends in contentment, excitement, and hope.
- Being thankful reveals that you are not alone in this journey. Enlist others to walk beside you. The more you are around others trying to do the same thing, the easier it becomes.
According to research, there are some other benefits gratitude produces that can impact your performance in the pool. These benefits include sport satisfaction and less burnout (Chen 2013, as cited in Gabana et al., 2019), improved mental and physical health, and improved sleep (Morin, 2014).
Gratitude can become your edge. This plays out daily. You have a hard practice coming up and you must choose how to respond. My daughter’s coach was recently asking some of his swimmers how they were doing before practice. Some were complaining how tired they were (a legit reality this time in the training season). The coach didn’t ridicule them. He merely responded, “I was tired once.” This simple redirection of thought patterns can make a difference of how you perform in the pool. Little mindset shifts can make big improvements in your training.
A travel trip can be exciting if you focus on the positives (hanging out with friends) or something you dread (long hours in the car or bus). What will you focus on? Your attitude will affect your performance for the better or worse. Think about the difference when you arrive at the competition pool if you carry in a positive attitude. Could this attitude carry over into the warmup and the meet as well? Absolutely!
Let’s admit it. We are all weak. But as our relationships get healthier through gratitude, we can be less demanding of perfection, less judgmental, less fearful and less easily offended. We can become more understanding, more compassionate, and have a higher level of optimism. Gratitude is attitude and attitudes are contagious. You may not only improve your own performance but help your teammates out as well.
Gratitude can allow your heart to simultaneously be more compassionate and be strengthened. It increases your ability to work through hard things and increases your desire to help others.
And those are all things to be thankful for.
Gratitude Dosage
So how do I become more grateful? There are multiple ways to integrate this habit into your day. Some athletes enjoy keeping a gratitude journal. There are hard copy journals or apps to track the good things that happen each day. This practice trains you to notice the small gifts life has along the way. If you look for the bad or look for the good, you’ll find it. The bad things will always be there, but searching and finding the good brings a healthier perspective and consequently attitude.
Journal
I use the Each Day is a Gift book by Natural Life. It’s super cute and has room to write in each day for five years. I’m on year two and am enjoying the benefits. It has helped me change what I look for and reflect on each day. It also has helped me look back and remember how I got through previous hard days or seasons. This produces HOPE.
Planner
I also recommend using your planner and adding a gratitude section. You can list your challenges each week. Then at the end of the week go back and see if you can fill in moments that were good related to the hard task or situation.
For example, maybe you have a tough test coming up and you’re really worried about it. The week passes and you’re able to fill in next to it that you found a friend who takes good notes and they let you see them. Your professor handed out a review sheet that helped you study better. Maybe you got a good night’s sleep the night before and were able to focus. Maybe you received the grade you wanted. Or if you didn’t, you learned what you need to improve for next time. This helps you see the good along the way and not have to wait for everything to be perfect to be in a good mood or nice to others.
Gratitude Board
Another idea to practice gratitude is creating a Gratitude Board. This could be an individual board you hang in your room or a team activity that you display in your locker room. You can design it to be as simple or elaborate as you want, but the point would be to highlight the good whether big or small.
An extension of this idea that benefits team unity is drawing names on your team. Then send your assigned teammate an encouraging note thanking them for something they said or did that motivated you that week or perhaps a character quality that inspires you. Whatever the case, be creative in ways to spur your teammates’ success. This builds strong bonds, helps encourage positivity and is all built upon the foundation of gratitude.
Challenge: End this year with daily entries recounting the good you see each day.
Gabana, N. T., Steinfeldt, J., Wong, Y. J., Svetina, D., & Chung, Y. B. (2019). Attitude of Gratitude: Exploring the Implementation of a Gratitude Intervention with College Athletes. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 31(3), 273–284.
Morin, A. (2014, November 23). 7 scientifically proven benefits of gratitude that will motivate you to give thanks year-round. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/amymorin/2014/11/23/7-scientifically-proven-benefits-of-gratitude-that-will-motivate-you-to-give-thanks-year-round/#5173c7f5183c.
Mary Keen is a Purdue graduate and experienced pharmacist. While homeschooling her four children, she has supported their competitive swimming careers from age group through high school and now at the collegiate level. Mary has personally navigated the gluten free/dairy free life and has a passion to help others reach their full potential in and out of the water.