Coping/Mastery/Affirmations Recording Assignment

Purpose: The coping/mastery/affirmations recording assignment is designed to help you develop a tool that you can use to boost your confidence or help you prepare for a significant event such as an interview, academic test, sports event, music recital, etc. This is in alignment with the first overall goal of this course: to investigate how psychological factors influence involvement and performance in sport, exercise, therapeutic, and physical education settings. It is also in alignment with the learning objective of using psychological skills to improve performance. Once you see the assignment, you will have a tool to use in life situations you encounter.

Skills: This assignment will help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in this course and in professional and personal life beyond school:

• Improving your confidence in general or specific to a certain situation.
• Using psychological skills to improve your performance.
• Setting goals for yourself
• Taking responsibility for your own development
• Developing positive and instructional self-talk

Knowledge: This assignment will help you develop a self-talk recording that could help you improve confidence and/or improve performance in a certain situation. Your knowledge of a variety of psychological skills may improve:

• Arousal regulation
• Imagery
• Self-confidence & Self-efficacy
• Goal setting
• Concentration
• Motivation

Task: Carefully re-read the following sections in your text before beginning this assignment:

• pp. 410-417 Using Self-Talk to Enhance Concentration
• pp. 328-329 Nature of Imagery

Program your mind for successful thoughts by creating a coping or masteryor affirmationsdigital audio file.

Choose ONE of the three options listed below. 1. For the mastery option, record your own voice (talking to yourself - first person present tense) describing an outstanding performance in which events proceed exactly as desired, including the ideal thoughts, feelings, and emotions experienced just before, during, and after the performance. Consider combining the self-talk with a musical background. 2. For a coping recording, record your own voice (talking to yourself - first person present tense) as you deal with negative thoughts and situations including potential things that could go wrong. Perhaps you made a foolish mistake or lost emotional control. (This part should be no more than 25% of the recording!). Next rehearse strategies needed to regain control and confidence. You may want to practice thought stopping, reframing, or other techniques. The emphasis should be on the process by which you gain control and confidence when confronted with the difficult situation.

3. An affirmations recording is a tool for developing and maintaining confidence. Use positive statements designed for repeated listening. Affirmations work best when you address your own personal stuff. make and type and record affirmations in the first person present tense to give them a sense of immediacy (William P. Nolan, 2013, personal communication). Whichever recording you decide to do, the length should be 1-4 min. Attach an audio file through D2L. You may also turn this assignment in as a written script, however, the recorded version is much preferred.

Criteria for Success:

The student who genuinely speaks to herself/himself is well on the way to being successful in this assignment. Since it is an assignment, you may be tempted to talk to the instructor throughout the recording. Doing so will cause a reduction in your grade. TALK TO YOURSELF!!

Other guidelines to observe in making your recording:

1) keep phrases short and specific 2) use the first person and present tense - TALK TO YOURSELF not me 3) construct positive phrases 4) say your phrases with meaning and attention 5) speak kindly to yourself 6) repeat phrases often

7) Avoid using phrases that have words like "don't, won't, never, etc". For example you may say, "I will never give up". You have now introduced the possibility of giving up. Better to say, "I will stay with this until it is finished".

8) The context you use for developing this recording could be sport, exercise, music performance, public speech, academic test, job situation, etc.

(give a topic to talk about and speech outline) set up in a way for it to be easy to read and say for voice recording