Finally, after weeks of pain and not being able to run anywhere, yesterday I managed to run for a whole 30 minutes pain free (Although I am more than making up for it today)! Even though it has been weeks since I was able to do any sort of exercise, I thought it would be easy to get back in to. After all I used to do 11 hours a football a week, 30 minutes on a treadmill is nothing, surely?!

Besides the fact that running on a treadmill whilst staring at a blank wall is mind-numbingly boring, it was physically a lot more difficult than I had anticipated as well! This is because I approached the challenge with the wrong mindset.

A mindset is our beliefs about our ability and personal qualities (Dweck, 2017). Dweck outlined 2 types of mindset: fixed mindset and growth mindset. A person with a fixed mindset believes that ability and personal characteristics are static and cannot change, whereas a person with a growth mindset believes that ability can be developed. These beliefs can be endorsed by our environment. For example, in a culture of genius (Murphy & Dweck, 2010) people have the shared belief that ability and intelligence is fixed, whereas in a culture of growth people believe that talent and intelligence can be developed. Mindsets occur on a continuum, however people tend to have a dominant mindset in certain situations meaning a person’s mindset regarding their intelligence may differ from their mindset about their sporting ability, for example (Burnette, O’Boyle, VanEpps, Pollack, & Finkel, 2013).

I tackled this particular challenge with a fixed mindset. I thought that because I could run for that amount of time before, it would be easy to do it now. And if I’m being honest with myself, I gave up after 30 minutes because I had had enough – even though if I had persisted, I could probably have run for another 10 minutes. By giving up when I did, it felt like I was in control and I appeared like I had mastered those 30 minutes on the treadmill. If I had stayed on for much longer, it would have become much more difficult and I would have looked like I was struggling, and I didn’t like to look like I was exerting too much effort. But by adopting this mindset it is likely to prevent me from reaching my potential, and I can see where this has also been in the case in the past.

Adopting a growth mindset has been shown to be beneficial in many domains, particularly sport (Dweck, 2009) and education (Claro, Paunesku, and Dweck, 2016). For example, Potgieter and Steyn (2010) found that in a sample of athletes competing at various levels – from international to school level – those who adopted a growth mindset, and were task orientated, related strongly to having a positive reaction to both success and failure. The athletes with a growth mindset demonstrated that they were able to be motivated by failure and success which supports Dweck’s (2017) growth mindset theory.

It is suggested that those with a growth mindset set goals which focus on learning and are more confident when evaluating the potential for goal success, whilst those with a fixed mindset set performance focused goals and feel more anxious when evaluating past and future performances (Burnette et al., 2013). Although this has received a lot of research support (Kray & Haselhuhn, 2007; Nussbaum & Dweck, 2008; Thompson & Musket, 2005), other studies have shown no effect (e.g. Biddle, Wang, Chatzisarantis, & Spray, 2003), or even the opposite effects – for example, Braten & Stromso (2005) found that new teachers with a growth mindset felt less confident in their ability to accomplish their tasks.

Mindsets have also been shown to be weakly related to personality (Spinath, Spinath, Riemann, & Angleitner, 2003) suggesting that they are independent from personality. Interestingly, I have noticed in myself that my mood affects my mindset massively, if I am in a positive mood then I am more inclined to show more of a growth mindset, however if I am in a negative mood, like I was yesterday, then my mindset is more likely to be fixed. So even if the task is the same, my beliefs about my ability may be different depending on factors such as my mood – something the literature does not currently account for.

For example, I wasn’t in a particularly good mood yesterday so my thoughts about doing a bonus blog were more related to a fixed mindset – I didn’t see the point as I thought I wouldn’t improve because intelligence is fixed. This was reinforced to me the other day when a couple of lecturers told me not to worry about my upcoming assessments, as even though I hadn’t prepared, I “would be fine because I am clever”. Relating to this, it has been shown that in educational settings, a fixed mindset can be cued simply by attributing successes to traits such as being ‘clever’ (Pomerantz & Kempner, 2013) .

However, today I am in a significantly better mood and am more determined to take on board the feedback from my previous blogs in the hope that I can learn from it and achieve a better grade in this one. That being said, for people who suffer from a mood disorder, it may be that this effect is more exaggerated than in a typical population. I find that my moods can swing from one extreme to the other, sometimes in a short space of time, so I may be more prone to demonstrating a transient mindset more often than most as a result.

Therefore, in order to reach my potential, I should continue to try to adopt a growth mindset. I have been much more productive today writing this blog when I have adopted a growth mindset so I shall try to remember that when I am faced with the next challenge. Next time I feel like giving up on the treadmill because it is getting harder, I shall persevere and embrace the challenge.

References

Biddle, S. J., Wang, C. J., Chatzisarantis, N. L., & Spray, C. M. (2003). Motivation for physical activity in young people: Entity and incremental beliefs about athletic ability. Journal of Sports Science, 21(12), 973-989.

Bråten, I., & Strømsø, H. I. (2005). The relationship between epistemological beliefs, implicit theories of intelligence, and self‐regulated learning among Norwegian postsecondary students. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 75(4), 539-565.

Burnette, J. L., O’Boyle, E. H., VanEpps, E. M., Pollack, J. M., & Finkel, E. J. (2013). Mind-sets matter: A meta-analytic review of implicit theories and self-regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 139(3), 655-701.

Claro, S., Paunesku, D., & Dweck, C. S. (2016). Growth mindset tempers the effects of poverty on academic achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(31), 8664-8668.

Dweck, C. S. (2009). Mindsets: Developing talent through a growth mindset. Olympic Coach, 21(1), 4-7.

Dweck, C. (2017). Mindset-updated edition: Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential. Hachette UK.

Kray, L. J., & Haselhuhn, M. P. (2007). Implicit negotiation beliefs and performance: Experimental and longitudinal evidence. Journal of personality and social psychology, 93(1), 49.

Murphy, M. C., & Dweck, C. S. (2010). A culture of genius: How an organization’s lay theory shapes people’s cognition, affect, and behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(3), 283-296.

Nussbaum, A. D., & Dweck, C. S. (2008). Defensiveness versus remediation: Self-theories and modes of self-esteem maintenance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(5), 599-612.

Pomerantz, E. M., & Kempner, S. G. (2013). Mothers’ daily person and process praise: Implications for children’s theory of intelligence and motivation. Developmental Psychology, 49(11), 2040-2046.

Potgieter, R. D., & Steyn, B. J. M. (2010). Goal orientation, self-theories and reactions to success and failure in competitive sport: psychological perspectives. African Journal for Physical Health Education, Recreation and Dance, 16(4), 635-647.

Spinath, B., Spinath, F. M., Riemann, R., & Angleitner, A. (2003). Implicit theories about personality and intelligence and their relationship to actual personality and intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 35(4), 939-951.

Thompson, T., & Musket, S. (2005). Does priming for mastery goals improve the performance of students with an entity view of ability?. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 75(3), 391-409.

Despite looking forward to this module in January, it hasn’t panned out as I had expected or hoped. My injury has persisted, preventing me from being able to run the marathon and as a result, at times, my mental health has been worse than what it was before I started. However I have learnt some important theories and strategies that I can use for the rest of my life. Whilst I have begun to implement them now, I do still require some practice.

I haven’t been able to run a race to reflect on so instead I will reflect on the most important things I have learnt and how I have tried to apply these to other areas of my life.

In a video I watched the other day, someone likened their mental health to a health bar in a video game – very rarely (if ever) is it at 100%, sometimes it can take a massive hit and be down as low as 30%, but by using some of the things I have learned in the Born to Run module I am hoping when this happens I will be well equipped to boost the bar back up to 70-80% where I can live a relatively happy and healthy life.

One way in which I have managed to apply some of these lessons to a challenge this semester is in reducing my stress and anxiety levels around my academic work. In previous years I have worried so much about my work it resulted in me being physically and mentally ill, and not being able to complete it all in time as I relied heavily on numerous extensions, special circumstances or even having to come back over summer to complete first sits.

This semester however I have felt much more prepared and have been less anxious and more productive as a result. One of the lessons I was able to apply to my studies was the use of goal setting. One of my previous downfalls was having no structure do my weeks and no end goal. I was unable to break down the pieces of work I had to complete so would become overwhelmed by it all. Since learning about goal setting in the early weeks of the semester, I decided to use the SMART goal framework (Doran, 1981) to help me achieve my goal of getting (hopefully a first-class) degree.

Goal setting involves developing plans of action which help motivate a person to achieve a result they desire (Day and Tosey, 2011). In order to achieve my main goal of getting a degree, I have had to break that big goal down into smaller sub-goals which have been focused on completing the work that I needed to complete for that week. For example, this week I had the goal of inputting my data for my dissertation from Tuesday to Friday, and today I aim to finish this blog. By breaking down my workload into weeks, or even days, I feel a lot less overwhelmed by the amount I have to do.

Goal setting has been linked to academic self-regulation, which is “the degree to which students are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviourally proactive regulators of their own learning processes” (Zimmerman, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992). According to the social cognitive perspective (Bandura, 1986) students who are self-regulated set themselves challenging goals to direct their learning and achievements (Schunk, 1990), and these goals are achieved by the application and use of appropriate strategies (Zimmerman, 1989). Bandura and Schunk (1981) found that children with poor mathematical ability and a lack of interest in mathematics who used proximal sub-goals showed increases in ability, self-efficacy and intrinsic interest in maths.

Therefore it is important for me, especially at this point in the semester when all my work is now due, to ensure that I am using sub-goals effectively in order to motivate myself to complete my work to the best of my ability, and hopefully this will also make it more enjoyable.

Despite feeling motivated and prepared to complete my work there have still been the odd occasion where I have felt anxious about a task in hand. For example, last week I had to go into a local primary school and listen to children read as part of my dissertation. I was anxious about going into the school as it was somewhere I have never been before and there was going to be people I had never met before. As I lay wide awake at 3 o’clock the night before I was due to go I thought back to one of the videos we were shown in class a few weeks back where Kelly McGongial gave a TED talk on how to change our perception of stress. Out of everything we have covered in the module, that was the one thing that stood out for me the most.

Cognitive reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy which helps a person to reassess the affect of a stimulus (Buhle et al., 2014). Emotions are generated when a person perceives a stimulus and appraises its emotional significance which leads to an affective, physiological and behavioural response (Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, & Gross, 2007). Therefore by reframing the negative anxiety I was experiencing about visiting the school to more positive thoughts it was much more beneficial to me. When I experience symptoms of anxiety such as increased heart and breathing rate, I feel as though the demands of the situation are exceeding my cognitive resources which makes me feel like I cannot cope with the situation.

Instead what I tried to do on this occasion was reappraise the stress-induced arousal I was experiencing as being a positive rather than a negative. Rather than worry about going into the school and the physical symptoms I was experiencing I told myself that increased arousal is beneficial for performance and is not bad for me. And it worked – I actually felt much better and more confident that I would be able to go in and complete the task I had to do.

This has been demonstrated by Jamieson, Nock and Mendes (2012) who gave participants a stressful task to carry out. Those who had been told to interpret their physiological arousal as helpful demonstrated cognitive benefits such as a decreased attentional bias, but interestingly they also showed physiological changes to their stress response as they demonstrated an increased cardiac efficiency and decreased vascular resistance. For someone like me who worries excessively about their health, these findings are important as it shows that it is the way I perceive stress which is damaging to my physical and mental health so by making these small adjustments to my thought processes can be really beneficial.

For me personally, these were the two most important things I will take away from this module: the importance of effective goal setting and cognitive reappraisal. I have demonstrated to myself that these strategies do work so I hope that by being able to continue to apply them in the future I will be able to keep my health bar in the green zone.

References

Bandura, A. (1986). The explanatory and predictive scope of self-efficacy theory. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 4(3), 359-373.

Bandura, A., & Schunk, D. H. (1981). Cultivating competence, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of personality and social psychology, 41(3), 586-598.

Barrett, L. F., Mesquita, B., Ochsner, K. N., & Gross, J. J. (2007). The experience of emotion. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 373-403.

Buhle, J. T., Silvers, J. A., Wager, T. D., Lopez, R., Onyemekwu, C., Kober, H., … & Ochsner, K. N. (2014). Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: a meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies. Cerebral Cortex, 24(11), 2981-2990.

Day, T., & Tosey, P. (2011). Beyond SMART? A new framework for goal setting. Curriculum Journal, 22(4), 515-534.

Doran, G. T. (1981). There’s a SMART way to write management’s goals and objectives. Management Review, 70(11), 35-36.

Jamieson, J. P., Nock, M. K., & Mendes, W. B. (2012). Mind over matter: Reappraising arousal improves cardiovascular and cognitive responses to stress. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141(3), 417-422.

Schunk, D. H. (1990). Goal setting and self-efficacy during self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 25(1), 71-86.

Zimmerman, B. J. (1989). A social cognitive view of self-regulated academic learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(3), 329-339.

Zimmerman, B. J., Bandura, A., & Martinez-Pons, M. (1992). Self-motivation for academic attainment: The role of self-efficacy beliefs and personal goal setting. American Educational Research Journal, 29(3), 663-676.

After being pain free for a week, I finally managed to put my running shoes on and attempt a run with the group. I’d be lying if I said I sprung out of bed full of excitement. When my alarm went off, I pulled the duvet over my head and stayed there for another 10 minutes. I REALLY did not want to get out of bed because I was facing 2 problems that morning:

1) Anxiety – I hadn’t run in so long and I was scared I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the group or that I would get hurt again. I started experiencing the symptoms of anxiety as soon as I opened my eyes and realised what day it was. My hands were sweaty, my legs felt like jelly, my mouth was dry, and my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. But I am no stranger to these sensations so I knew I just had to calm myself down and eventually it would pass.

When we experience anxiety, the amygdala sends a signal to the hypothalamus which in turn activates the sympathetic nervous system. The adrenal glands release adrenaline into the bloodstream which causes blood pressure, heart rate and breathing rate to all increase. The hypothalamus also releases corticotropin-releasing hormone which travels to the pituitary gland and activates the release of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). ATCH travels to the adrenal glands triggering them to release cortisol which increases the glucose in your bloodstream, alters the response of the immune system, and supresses the digestive and reproductive systems.

Eventually I managed to calm myself down by doing some diaphragmatic breathing (DB). DB is a breathing technique where the diaphragm contracts allowing the lungs to expand and inhale more oxygen (Chen, Huang, Chien, & Cheng, 2017). It has been shown to effectively reduce the symptoms and perceptions of anxiety, as well as be beneficial in other conditions such as asthma (Girodo, Ekstrand, & Metivier, 1992), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (Vitacca, Clini, Bianchi, & Ambrosino, 1998), and migraines (Kaushik, Kaushik, Mahajan, & Rajesh, 2005). It is advantageous as it offers a safe, non-pharmacological alternative which requires little space and time, and is easy to learn and practice (Kim, Roth, & Wollburg, 2015). DB works by stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for returning bodily functions back to homeostasis, especially after the sympathetic nervous system has activated the bodies fight or flight response (Chen et al., 2017). This exercise is one that the physio recommended to me, although it is something that I have been aware of for years now. I even have it tattooed on my arm, should I ever forget to do it!

But, once I got over my bout of anxiety, I hit a second hurdle…

2) Amotivation – the self determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000) outlines three types of motivation: extrinsic – behaviour driven by external rewards; intrinsic – behaviour driven by internal rewards; and amotivation – the lacking of motivation, which is characterised by a lack of perceived competence or a failure to value the activity and its outcomes. This amotivation is what I was experiencing when I woke up on Tuesday morning. I simply did not want to get out of bed and run because I didn’t think I was capable. Or was it more down to the weather, and the fact that I didn’t want to get my hair or my shoes wet.

Yet I did get up, embrace the rain, and attempt to run with the rest of the group. So, why?

I remembered back to what John said in his lecture on motivation – that intrinsic motivation drives wellbeing and success. But in order to achieve this we need to feel competent, autonomous, and related to others (Deci & Ryan, 2000). The SDT states that if these three basic needs are fulfilled then people will be more motivated and gain more positive psychological, developmental, and behavioural outcomes.

I reminded myself why I CHOSE to do this, and then Jan messaged me to say she was on her way and could I save her a seat. So I finished my breakfast, put my shoes on and before I knew it, we were stood outside the Wheldon ready to go. Knowing I could control how far I run fulfilled a sense of autonomy, knowing that I would make progress every time I went out for a run fulfilled a sense of competence, and knowing that I had Jan and the rest of the group there with me fulfilled a sense of relatedness.

I only managed to run for about 10 minutes before I had to stop because the pain got too much. Part of me felt good for trying but the rest of me is really disappointed and frustrated, especially as I have been told to stick to walking again for the next few weeks. But the motivational principles still apply even I am only walking. I can walk with others, I can control how long I am out for, and every time I go out, I am making progress (hopefully) in my recovery.

From reading up more on SDT I have concluded that it would be beneficial if I had more autonomous motivation. Deci and Ryan (2008) describe this as ‘both intrinsic motivation and the types of extrinsic motivation in which people have identified with an activity’s value and ideally will have integrated it into their sense of self.’  Whereas controlled motivation is ‘both external regulation, in which one’s behaviour is a function of external contingencies of reward or punishment, and introjected regulation, in which the regulation of action has been partially internalized and is energized by factors such as an approval motive, avoidance of shame, contingent self-esteem, and ego-involvements.’ Controlled motivation can cause people to feel pressured to think or behave in certain ways, therefore autonomous motivation produces better psychological health outcomes and long-term persistence. This is important for me because I want to improve my psychological wellbeing through this module and take what I learn and apply it to other areas of my life. Rather than being motivated by a medal or because people are telling me I need to do it, I should feel motivated because I am doing this for my mental health and I want to live a healthier, happier life. I should remind myself of the words stuck on above the door in the seminar room: “I AM A MARATHONER”. And I should do this every day in order to increase my autonomous motivation.

The STD is a useful model as it addresses the criticism of early work into motivation which focused on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. This was criticised for being too dichotomous, so the STD instead explains motivation as being on a continuum of different motives, as illustrated below.

Furthermore, Vallerand and Losier (1999) incorporated elements from the SDT to create a motivational sequence relevant to sport. They argue that social factors play a vital role in influencing athletes’ perceptions of autonomy, competence and relatedness which then determines their motivation. For example, success/failure can influence an athletes’ perception of competence, and as a result can impact on their intrinsic motivation. Vallerand and Reid (1984) demonstrated that people who received positive feedback to a motor task reported increased perceived competence and intrinsic motivation between the first and second phases of the task, whilst those who received negative feedback reported decreased perceived competence and intrinsic motivation. This supports the hypothesis that the effects of feedback on intrinsic motivation are mediated by perceptions of competence, as suggested by the SDT.

Therefore, this highlights the importance of positive feedback when running. It would be beneficial for me to highlight and write down the things that went well rather than focus on the negatives, like I normally do. So rather than beat myself up about only lasting 10 minutes before it was too painful, I should tell myself that I did well to give it a go and those 10 minutes were more than I managed the week before. This positive feedback should increase my perceived competence and consequently my intrinsic motivation.

However, Vallerand and Losier’s work on social factors may be too simplistic as it may be the case that one social factor can influence another social factor which may in turn impact motivation. For example, cooperation may impact cohesion which may in turn influence motivation. So the interaction between these factors may be more complex than the original model demonstrates.

Nonetheless, on Sunday morning I decided to put this all to the test and went for a walk. The blue sky overhead made this so much more bearable. I’ve always preferred the warm weather in the summer and find that I am usually much more productive when the suns out. It has been shown that high levels of sunlight and higher temperatures are associated with an elevated mood (Cunningham, 1979), however research is conflicting and Howarth & Hoffman (1984) found that higher temperatures were in fact associated with a low potency. This would indicate that there are individual differences in responses in mood to the weather. I personally love the scorching sunshine but my friend hates it (the weirdo). Unfortunately for me Bangor rarely sees the sun but when it does I definitely feel happier, so I made the most of it!

Before I went, I wrote down the positives from the last time I ran and this reduced my anxiety and increased my motivation to go out and stay out. I’m glad I made the most of the sunshine, although it did disappear behind the clouds a few times. I felt motivated to complete a 45-minute walk (as suggested by the physio) and I felt like I had achieved something by the end of it.

References

Chen, Y. F., Huang, X. Y., Chien, C. H., & Cheng, J. F. (2017). The effectiveness of diaphragmatic breathing relaxation training for reducing anxiety. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 53(4), 329-336.

Cunningham, M. R. (1979). Weather, mood, and helping behavior: Quasi experiments with the sunshine samaritan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(11), 1947-1956.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The” what” and” why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2008). Self-determination theory: A macrotheory of human motivation, development, and health. Canadian Psychology, 49(3), 182-185.

Girodo, M., Ekstrand, K. A., & Metivier, G. J. (1992). Deep diaphragmatic breathing: rehabilitation exercises for the asthmatic patient. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 73(8), 717-720.

Howarth, E., & Hoffman, M. S. (1984). A multidimensional approach to the relationship between mood and weather. British Journal of Psychology, 75(1), 15-23.

Kaushik, R., Kaushik, R. M., Mahajan, S. K., & Rajesh, V. (2005). Biofeedback assisted diaphragmatic breathing and systematic relaxation versus propranolol in long term prophylaxis of migraine. Complementary therapies in medicine, 13(3), 165-174.

Kim, S., Roth, W. T., & Wollburg, E. (2015). Effects of therapeutic relationship, expectancy, and credibility in breathing therapies for anxiety. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 79(2), 116-130.

Vallerand, R. J., & Losier, G. F. (1999). An integrative analysis of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in sport. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 11(1), 142-169.

Vallerand, R. J., & Reid, G. (1984). On the causal effects of perceived competence on intrinsic motivation: A test of cognitive evaluation theory. Journal of Sport Psychology, 6(1), 94-102.

Vitacca, M., Clini, E., Bianchi, L., & Ambrosino, N. (1998). Acute effects of deep diaphragmatic breathing in COPD patients with chronic respiratory insufficiency. European Respiratory Journal, 11(2), 408-415.

I finished my last blog on a positive note, however I have been struggling this week. My mood has been very low and my anxiety levels high. I am also getting increasingly frustrated with not being able to run and am fed up of being in pain now. After seeing the physio both last week and this week, he suggested that maybe in a couple of weeks I will be able to start doing some light running, but until then I have exercises to do which will hopefully help get me back on my feet soon. But although the last couple of months have flown by, the thought of having to potentially wait a few more weeks yet is agonising.

I took the dog for a walk the other day and although my pain is slowly decreasing, which is good, when I stopped to look at the view across the water I thought to myself that the rest of the group will be running a half marathon over there in a few days. Meanwhile I don’t feel like I have achieved anything the past couple of weeks, and am starting to feel like a bit of a failure. And as a perfectionist, failure is the ultimate nightmare!

I have it written in my PLSP that I struggle with perfectionism, and this causes many problems when it comes to exams and assignments. Last year I cried for hours when I received a B+. It’s the lowest grade I’ve ever received in an essay, and I was livid! But no one else could understand why I was so upset. To many people that’s a fantastic grade and if it was anyone else, I would be full of praise. But for me it simply wasn’t good enough. Conversely when I scored 100% in both the Personality midterm and final exams, I still wasn’t happy about it as I didn’t feel I was challenged enough. As you can imagine these sorts of high standards create a huge amount of pressure and anxiety. But until now, I wasn’t aware quite how problematic this issue was in other areas of my life, such as sport.

Perfectionism can be defined as the striving for high standards which is accompanied by overly critical self-evaluation (Frost, Marten, Lahart & Rosenblate, 1990). However, Hamachek (1978) suggested that there are 2 forms of perfectionism: normal and neurotic. Normal perfectionists set very high standards for themselves but can accept that personal and environmental factors may affect their performance, therefore they are less harsh with their self-evaluations. Whereas, neurotic perfectionists are overly critical with their self-evaluations and see performance environments as threatening. Because of this, even when they try their hardest, they are rarely satisfied with their performance and often feel inadequate. Thus, normal perfectionists are motivated to succeed and are seen as adaptive because they are flexible and are able to recognise their successes despite the occurrence of minor flaws. Whereas neurotic perfectionists are motivated to avoid failure and are seen as maladaptive because mistakes are perceived as a threat to their self-esteem rather than an opportunity to learn and grow (Hall, Kerr, & Matthews, 1998).

So, whilst perfectionism isn’t all bad, it is the maladaptive, neurotic, perfectionism that unfortunately I can relate to.

Whilst I haven’t done much in terms of running since my injury, when I reflect on my running before I got injured, I can see how perfectionism was affecting my performance. I used to dread going for a run in case I couldn’t do it and had to stop, particularly when we went for a run as a group, and this made me more anxious. I would expect myself to be able to keep up with everyone else, and if I started to feel tired then I would beat myself up for it. I also felt like everyone else would expect me to be able to do it easily because I play football. Even when I did try my best, I would always look for things I should have done better rather than focusing on the positives, and this concern about mistakes is typical of a neurotic perfectionist.

Frost and Henderson (1991) found that in female athletes, neurotic perfectionists who were concerned about mistakes felt threatened during evaluated performances as they saw them as an opportunity for failure, and this resulted in increased anxiety and lower self-confidence. This is one of the reasons why I did not want to download the Strava app – because whilst some people might thrive on the competition for segments and crowns, if I was not at the top it would feel like I had failed and I would be so much more unmotivated.

More specifically to runners, Coen and Ogles (1998) found that obligatory runners were more perfectionistic than non-obligatory runners, and were particularly concerned with making mistakes and setting high personal standards which resulted in them reporting higher anxiety scores. Coen and Ogles also suggested that obligatory runners are possibly more likely to perceive themselves as failures when they were unable to run due to illness, injury etc. This suggestion may explain why I have been feeling increasingly more anxious and frustrated over recent weeks as I have been unable to run due to my injury.

When I reflect back even further to when I played football for Brighton and Hove Albion, it was my struggle with perfectionism that eventually caused me to quit. I was petrified of making mistakes, even in training, and I felt that everyone, including myself, had such high expectations of me. In the end I used to hate playing and no longer got any enjoyment out of it. In fact, it has been shown that the negative effects of perfectionism can cause young athletes to lose enjoyment and ultimately burnout (Gould, Tuffey, Udry, & Loehr, 1996; Jowett, Hill, Hall, & Curran, 2016), which would appear to be what happened to me.

So, what can I do to help overcome some of the problems that perfectionism can cause?

Self-talk

Perfectionism is characterised by negative evaluations of oneself (Dunn, Dunn, & Syrotuik, 2002), so one way to counteract the effect of this would be to practice positive self-talk. Self-talk can be defined as verbalisations that are aimed at oneself (Hardy, 2006). Hardy suggests that self-talk has different dimensions. It can be positive or negative – positive self-talk is related to praise and a focus on the present, rather than past events, which can facilitate performance, whereas negative self-talk is related to criticism and can be anxiety-provoking, which can hinder performance; it can be overt or covert – overt self-talk is said out loud, whereas covert self-talk is the inner voice inside your head; and it can be frequent or infrequent – male gymnasts who qualified for their national Olympic team reported using self-talk more than those who did not qualify which would suggest using self-talk frequently can benefit performance (Mahoney and Avener, 1977).

In order to stop being so overly critical of myself, I should try to minimise the negative self-talk and replace it with positive self-talk. The table below demonstrates some examples of how I could do that:

However, the literature is somewhat inconsistent with findings into the effects of self-talk. Highlen and Bennett (1983) found that wrestlers who qualified for the Pan American Games were more critical in their self-talk than wrestlers that didn’t qualify. Furthermore, Rotella, Gansneder, Oljala, and Billing (1980) found no differences in positive vs negative self-talk in skiers. So it is too simplistic to say that there is a one size fits all solution to overcoming perfectionism and improving performance as everybody has different personality traits and so responds differently to different things (Hardy, 2006).

Therefore, what I have learnt is that no 2 people are the same. As such what works for person may not work for me. Having said that I won’t know what works and what doesn’t until I try. So, I will aim to implement positive self-talk into what I do to see if it helps me. If it doesn’t then there are plenty of other strategies such as imagery, goal setting etc., which I can try, but for the purpose of this blog I decided to focus on the one strategy – else I’d have still been sat here this time next week!

Fingers crossed for a better, more positive, week!!

References

Coen, S. P., & Ogles, B. M. (1993). Psychological characteristics of the obligatory runner: A critical examination of the anorexia analogue hypothesis. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 15(3), 338-354.

Dunn, J. G., Dunn, J. C., & Syrotuik, D. G. (2002). Relationship between multidimensional perfectionism and goal orientations in sport. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 24(4), 376-395.

Frost, R. O., & Henderson, K. J. (1991). Perfectionism and reactions to athletic competition. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 13(4), 323-335.

Frost, R. O., Marten, P., Lahart, C., & Rosenblate, R. (1990). The dimensions of perfectionism. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 14(5), 449-468.

Gould, D., Tuffey, S., Udry, E., & Loehr, J. (1996). Burnout in competitive junior tennis players: I. A quantitative psychological assessment. The Sport Psychologist, 10(4), 322-340.

Hall, H. K., Kerr, A. W., & Matthews, J. (1998). Precompetitive anxiety in sport: The contribution of achievement goals and perfectionism. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 20(2), 194-217.

Hamachek, D. E. (1978). Psychodynamics of normal and neurotic perfectionism. Psychology: A Journal of Human Behavior, 15(1), 27-33.

Hardy, J. (2006). Speaking clearly: A critical review of the self-talk literature. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 7(1), 81-97.

Highlen, P. S., & Bennett, B. B. (1983). Elite divers and wrestlers: A comparison between open-and closed-skill athletes. Journal of Sport Psychology, 5(4), 390-409.

Jowett, G. E., Hill, A. P., Hall, H. K., & Curran, T. (2016). Perfectionism, burnout and engagement in youth sport: The mediating role of basic psychological needs. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 24, 18-26.

Mahoney, M. J., & Avener, M. (1977). Psychology of the elite athlete: An exploratory study. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1(2), 135-141.

Rotella, R. J., Gansneder, B., Ojala, D., & Billing, J. (1980). Cognitions and coping strategies of elite skiers: An exploratory study of young developing athletes. Journal of Sport Psychology, 2(4), 350-354. c

After buying my new running shoes last week I was excited to go and try them out. I enjoyed the group run last Tuesday – I felt like I had achieved a lot, particularly with the hill runs – and was feeling positive about implementing my training plan over the coming weeks. However, my excitement was short-lived, as come Monday morning I found myself sat in Bangor Hospital awaiting an X-ray on a swollen, painful foot.

About 5 months ago I injured my foot whilst playing football. However, come November the pain had subsided, I was back playing football, and I just added it to the long list of sporting injuries I had sustained over the years.

Unfortunately, significantly increasing the amount of running I am doing and running on hard surfaces instead of grass has caused the old injury to flare up again. I have an appointment with a physio on the 22^nd of February but in the meantime I have been told to rest it, which has left me feeling very anxious about my (lack of) progress.

Whilst exercise has been shown to have positive psychological effects (Mandolesi et al., 2018), the psychological effects of injury in athletes is less researched. Putukian (2016) argue that injuries can trigger mental health issues such as depression and suicidal ideation, anxiety, disordered eating, and substance use/abuse. Leddy, Lambert & Ogles (1994) found that athletes who are injured report increased depression and anxiety, and lower self-esteem than non-injured athletes both immediately after injury and at a 2 month follow-up. More specifically to running, Chan and Grossman (1988) reported that runners who were unable to run for at least 2 weeks displayed increased symptoms of psychological distress, including depression, anxiety, confusion, over-all mood disturbance, and lower self-esteem than runners who ran consistently.

In order to ensure that my injury doesn’t have a negative effect on my mental health I will have to be resilient. There are multiple definitions of resilience but Luthar and Cicchetti (2000) describe it as the ability to adapt positively despite the presence of adversity. In my case, I will have to adapt my training plan and short-term goals in response to my injury.

I had originally used the SMART goal framework (Doran, 1981) to help me achieve the goal of completing the Liverpool Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon on May 26^th. However, I will have to reassess my current goals as I am currently unable to walk further than the high-street without significant pain, let alone run anywhere. Once the physio has properly assessed the injury and given me exercises to do to help, I will be able to adapt my training plan and use smaller sub-goals to get back on track.

I haven’t always been this positive though. Being the drama queen I am, my immediate response when the injury flared up again was to just quit the module – but then I realised it was too late to do that. So then I thought about quitting the degree, but then realised it was probably a bit too late to do that as well. In the end I gave up trying to run away from the problem and just sat in my room feeling sorry for myself all night.

I was demonstrating learned helplessness – the repeated exposure to an aversive stimulus that cannot be escaped which results in you stopping trying to avoid the stimulus – and this has been linked to depression and anxiety (Selgiman, 1972). In my case, I was sat in my room feeling sorry for myself because I felt I couldn’t avoid the aversive stimulus (my reoccurring injury). But then I remembered the reason I signed up to this module was to help improve my wellbeing, yet here I was feeling worse than I did when I started. So, once I had gotten over my strop, I realised in order to overcome this learned helplessness and demonstrate resilience, I had to change my thinking.

Prapavessis and Carron (1988) state that adaptive achievement patterns are characterized by the maintenance of effective strategies or development of new strategies when faced with adversity, high persistence and challenge seeking, and pride and satisfaction in terms of effort exerted in both successful and unsuccessful events. Whereas maladaptive achievement patterns are characterized by the deterioration of effective strategies or a failure to develop new strategies when in an aversive situation, low persistence and challenge avoidance, and pride and satisfaction only from ability exhibited in successful conditions. People who show maladaptive achievement patterns are called learned helpless (Dweck, 1986).

One theory that explains maladaptive achievement patterns in the development of learned helplessness is the attribution theory (Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale, 1978). How someone identifies the causes and consequences of their behaviour are known as attribution processes. Abramson et al., identified different dimensions: External/Internal, Unstable/Stable, and Local/Global to show that how people make attributions will determine whether or not they show helplessness. Prapavessis and Carron (1988) found that tennis players identified as helpless made attributions to failure that were internal, stable, and global, whereas the non-helpless tennis players made attributions that were external, unstable, and specific. This highlights the differences in attributional style between athletes with learned helplessness who demonstrate maladaptive achievement patterns compared to non-helpless athletes, which supports the attribution theory presented by Abramson et al.

Therefore, if I were to display an adaptive achievement pattern I needed to reassess my attributions. Attribution retraining can be used to do just this as it is based on the assumption that you can change someone’s response to failure by changing their attributions for failure (Forsterling, 1985). Sinnott and Biddle (2012) gave attribution retraining to children who had maladaptive attributional profiles and rated their success as low on a ball dribbling task. After being retested on the ball dribbling task they demonstrated an increase in perceived success, clear changes in attributions, and a large increase in intrinsic motivation. And similar results have been demonstrated in athletes who have undergone attribution retraining across a variety of different sports (e.g. Rascle ,Le Foll, & Higgins, 2008; Parkes & Mallett, 2011; Orbach, Singer, & Murphe, 1997).

My original attributions are illustrated in the table below, along with new attributions I adopted in order to take more control and show resilience in tackling my injury.

All in all, whilst I am unable to achieve much in terms of my running at the moment, I am determined to overcome my injury and am proud of myself for being resilient and not letting it affect my mental health too much as previous footballing injuries have done in the past.

References

Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87(1), 49-74.

Chan, C. S., & Grossman, H. Y. (1988). Psychological effects of running loss on consistent runners. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 66(3), 875-883.

Day, T., & Tosey, P. (2011). Beyond SMART? A new framework for goal setting. Curriculum Journal, 22(4), 515-534.

Doran, G. T. (1981). There’s a SMART way to write management’s goals and objectives. Management Review, 70(11), 35-36.

Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1040-1048.

Försterling, F. (1985). Attributional retraining: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 98(3), 495-512.

Lawlor, K. B. (2012). Smart goals: How the application of smart goals can contribute to achievement of student learning outcomes. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning: Proceedings of the Annual ABSEL conference, 39, 259-267.

Leddy, M. H., Lambert, M. J., & Ogles, B. M. (1994). Psychological consequences of athletic injury among high-level competitors. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 65(4), 347-354.

Luthar, S. S., & Cicchetti, D. (2000). The construct of resilience: Implications for interventions and social policies. Development and Psychopathology, 12(4), 857-885.

Mandolesi, L., Polverino, A., Montuori, S., Foti, F., Ferraioli, G., Sorrentino, P., & Sorrentino, G. (2018). Effects of Physical Exercise on Cognitive Functioning and Wellbeing: Biological and Psychological Benefits. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 509.

Orbach, I., Singer, R. N., & Murphey, M. (1997). Changing attributions with an attribution training technique related to basketball dribbling. The Sport Psychologist, 11(3), 294-304.

Parkes, J. F., & Mallett, C. J. (2011). Developing mental toughness: Attributional style retraining in rugby. The Sport Psychologist, 25(3), 269-287.

Prapavessis, H., & Carron, A. V. (1988). Learned helplessness in sport. The Sport Psychologist, 2(3), 189-201.

Putukian, M. (2016). The psychological response to injury in student athletes: a narrative review with a focus on mental health. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 50(3), 145-148.

Rascle, O., Le Foll, D., & Higgins, N. C. (2008). Attributional retraining alters novice golfers’ free practice behavior. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 20(2), 157-164.

Seligman, M. E. (1972). Learned helplessness. Annual Review of Medicine, 23(1), 407-412.

Sinnott, K., & Biddle, S. (1998). Changes in attributions, perceptions of success and intrinsic motivation after attribution retraining in children’s sport. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 7(2), 137-144.

When I signed up for the Born to Run module last summer, I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to engage in a curriculum where I could do something fun, physical and novel – like running around the streets of Bangor – whilst still learning about principles, such as motivation and goal setting, which I could apply to various aspects of my life in the hope of improving my overall wellbeing. At the time, the prospect of having to get my act together felt a lifetime away… fast forward 6 months, to a cold, wet, miserable January, and I started to wonder if I had made the right decision.

The images I had seen from previous years doing the module displayed a group of eager students running against the beautiful backdrop of Snowdonia, smiles on faces, sun shining. The harsh reality of our first run as a group was anything but. As soon as we stepped out the door we were greeted by Baltic winds, sub-zero temperatures, and a monsoon. As we made our way down the cycle track, I could barely move my frozen fingers, I could no longer hear anything as the icy wind blew through my eardrums, and I could hardly see through the raindrops streaming down my face, or perhaps they were tears of regret. Why was I putting myself through this?

As previously mentioned, my primary goal for this module is to use this opportunity to improve my overall wellbeing, particularly my mental health. I have suffered with anxiety for a number of years now preventing me from living my life to the full. It even caused me to give up playing football for Brighton and Hove Albion, who currently compete in the highest league in the country: The Women’s Super League. Passing up the opportunity to be a professional footballer is something I still regret massively.

About 3 months before I started university my doctor prescribed me medication to help with the anxiety. I took half a pill a day, as directed, for 3 days before I started getting funny sensations down my right side. I immediately stopped taking the medication but my symptoms worsened over the next few days, to the point I could no longer feel the entire right side of my body from top to toe. My GP sent me straight over the hospital for scans and tests, luckily my brain scan showed no signs of neurological damage and my symptoms were explained as psychosomatic. After a few weeks I was once again able to brush my own hair, cut my dinner up and tie my shoe laces, which felt like a huge achievement at the time, but it took well over 6 weeks until I felt better. Although, even to this day I often feel my arm and leg go funny when I am anxious.

Since this experience I have tried to seek for more ‘natural’ ways to improve my mental health, and I am hoping that running can provide the answer.

Research has shown that exercise can improve mental health as it helps reduce anxiety, and improves mood, self-esteem and cognitive functioning. Despite this knowledge, my intentions to exercise regularly are often not followed through, a principle known as the value-action gap or intention-behaviour gap, which put simply is where one’s values or intentions do not match their behaviour. And it would appear I am not alone, as Rhodes and Bruijin (2013) found that 46% of people who had intentions of exercising did not follow up these intentions with any physical activity.

So, the question remains how am I going to motivate myself to change my behaviour and ultimately run the Liverpool Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon in May?

The dual process theory states that behaviour change happens via hot and cold systems. The hot system, of which approximately 95% of our decisions are based on, is emotional, impulsive and automatic. Whilst the cold system is slow, effortful and logical. I often rely on my hot system when choosing to play video games in the warm over going for a run, or staying up late to watch something on telly rather that get a good night’s sleep. These decisions are instantly gratifying, hence why I continue to make them, despite them sometimes being to the detriment of my wellbeing.

I hope that by changing some of my bad habits it will help me achieve my goal of improving my wellbeing. The habit loop explains habits working through a process of cue-routine-reward. I have learnt that when I am stressed (cue), I sit and play video games whilst eating a big bag of Thai sweet chilli sensations crisps (routine) to make the stress go away (reward), albeit the rewards being shortlived.

I hope that by getting into the habit of exercising more it will lead to me eating better, sleeping better, having better concentration and being more productive. By having a keystone habit of exercising more it should help those other positive habits develop, as keystone habits are small changes that people introduce into their routines that create a domino effect in helping new behaviours flourish. Oaten and Cheng (2006) found that those who maintained an exercise programme for 2 months showed a significant decrease in perceived stress, emotional distress, smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, and an increase in healthy eating, emotional control, maintenance of household chores, attendance to commitments, monitoring of spending and an improvement in study habits.

I aim to change my behaviours by using MINDSPACE, which encompasses nine robust principles that can be used as an effective behaviour change tool. This focuses primarily on the automatic ‘hot’ system as it involves changing a person’s environment as opposed to their cognitions. The table below shows how I will apply these principles to change my behaviour.

I have found a training plan that feels achievable and will also allow me to fit in football as well. I look forward to starting this journey to hopefully a healthier, happier, lifestyle. Although I am still petrified!

References

Arnautovska, U., Fleig, L., O’Callaghan, F., & Hamilton, K. (2017). A longitudinal investigation of older adults’ physical activity: Testing an integrated dual-process model. Psychology & health, 32(2), 166-185.

Callaghan, P. (2004). Exercise: a neglected intervention in mental health care?. Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing, 11(4), 476-483.

Dolan, P., Hallsworth, M., Halpern, D., King, D., Metcalfe, R., & Vlaev, I. (2012). Influencing behaviour: The mindspace way. Journal of Economic Psychology, 33(1), 264-277.

Duhigg, C. (2013). The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do and how to change. Random House.

Oaten, M., & Cheng, K. (2006). Longitudinal gains in self‐regulation from regular physical exercise. British journal of health psychology, 11(4), 717-733.

Rhodes, R. E., & de Bruijn, G. J. (2013). How big is the physical activity intention–behaviour gap? A meta‐analysis using the action control framework. British journal of health psychology, 18(2), 296-309.

Sheeran, P., & Webb, T. L. (2016). The intention–behavior gap. Social and personality psychology compass, 10(9), 503-518.

Zimmerman, K. J. (2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business. Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 23(2), 76-81.