Pre-Match Team talks #2 - Don't Think of a Black Cat

Early in my coaching regime at one club I trod on the Manager’s toes big time. The side were coming back in to the changing rooms after their warm up routines, for the last 5 minutes before kick-off. As they trooped past the Manager he exhorted them to “Not play like last week, it was crap – Don’t do X or the opposition will walk all over you – play like that and you’ll lose” and so on. Hearing this I knew I had to wipe it out as best I could – and quickly.

So I told them about Don’t Think of a Black Cat. And they discovered that in order to NOT think of one they actually had to bring up an image of a black cat. This is because the unconscious only deals with positives, so the “nots”, “don’ts” etc are just ignored. So as their ears were still smarting from his “call to arms” their minds were presented with “do X” and “play like last week”. They realised that what they had just had to endure from him was likely to bring about exactly what he’d commanded them NOT to do.

PLUS (and this is also significant) his diatribe was full of embedded commands. Embedded commands are subtle phrases within a script that are processed unconsciously, and, in the case of his talk, phrases such as “play crap”, “you will lose”, “the opposition will walk all over you” were going in under the radar. Once the match is under way, any instances of the above happening would just reinforce these opinions and pretty soon they become beliefs - by which time the whole side is at a (self-induced) psychological disadvantage.