Power of Positive Affirmation in Performance — How it helped Trea Turner

A major leaguer’s season turned around through affirmation, here is how it can help you too.

Trea Turner while he was a member of the Washington Nationals

Trea Turner is a professional baseball player who struggled earlier this season. Still, after receiving a standing ovation from his home fans, his performance turned around almost immediately. As a sports and Phillies fan and a mindset coach, I wanted to investigate why this worked.

Positive affirmation significantly impacts performance, both in sports and in life.

Affirmations work by changing our self-talk and reprogramming our subconscious minds if you think about self-talk as our internal language. Words are containers, and they carry meaning, but they also have power. And so when we repeat positive statements to ourselves, we start to believe them more and more because those statements carry the belief and carry the message that you can do whatever it is that you’re affirming.

Affirmations can lead to increased confidence, motivation, and focus. Then, as a result, we’re more likely to perform at our best.

The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a study that found students who repeated positive affirmations to themselves before taking a test…