#2001-02 - Never Focus On Your Competitors
What motivates you to swim well in a race? The answer to this may reveal more than you think about your results. A common trap some swimmers fall into (especially young swimmers) is to focus upon beating their competitors instead of trying to achieve their own personal best time. This approach takes your mind's focus off your true goal (which is excellence in the pool) and changes it into more of a 'personal vendetta'.
This is often called negative motivation, an attitude which generally creates pretty average results! Negative motivation is rarely seen at the elite level of swimming, it's mostly common amongst intermediate swimmers, and unfortunately those swimmers generally don't go very far.
This is because negative motivation is mostly emotion-based - and negative emotions such as jealousy, envy, anger, revenge etc are renowned for creating bad performances in the pool. Negative thoughts create negative emotions, and we already know what direction negative thoughts takes you in - the wrong direction. This is a simple case of focusing upon the 'obstacle' instead of the 'goal'.
Some overly-competitive swimmers may even use this to their advantage by purposely trying to get you emotionally angry before a race, by making comments such as "you're going
down!" right before the race is to start.
Never, ever fall for this! A good swimmer would just laugh, disregard the comment, and then get on with the 'real' job at hand. Focus purely upon your own swim, do not let your thoughts leave your own lane. Because otherwise you may often find that you may in fact beat that particular swimmer, but find you came 7th overall in the race, and this is not what you want. Or even worse, you wind up coming last AND losing to your arch-rival, not pretty! However, if you focus purely on your own race, you may swim a PB, win the race, AND beat your competitor as well! Now that's what I call a win/win situation!
If you get caught up in the emotional way of thinking, such as "I have to beat that #@#!!" then you have fallen into their emotional web of deception - and your powerful subconscious mind suddenly loses its clarity and becomes clouded. You mind suddenly thinks "OK, I have a NEW goal, I must throw away the thought of swimming a good time or winning the race - my new goal is to beat the goofy-looking guy over in that lane!".
Focus only on your own swim, and your own lane. This is positive motivation, which is proven to work by every champion swimmer.. Anything else will only bring mediocre results. Revenge is not only stupid, it doesn't work!! It's far better to be the cool intelligent swimmer who keeps their mind focused on the job, not on other swimmers' performances which you have no control over whatsoever.
Winning and swimming PB's is much 'cooler' than beating a nobody. Be a winner and keep your mind on the job. You have the most powerful computer in the world at your disposal -
your mind, so make sure it is programmed correctly if you want a good 'printout' in the pool.
Remember that no-one can stop you unless you stop yourself - keep your mind focused, positive and powerful at all times.
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