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Mental Skills Toolkit:

Play Better Soccer with these Positive Self Talk Examples that Actually Work

Published: May 31, 2022
Updated: February 23, 2023
By: Jenn Ireland

Category: Confidence, Growth-Mindset, On the Soccer Field

Positive self talk in soccer is a hot topic these days. Some players are eager to try it right from the get-go, while others put it aside and disregard it as an actual solution because they assume it’s all about being overly cheery and putting on a fake smile.

Positive self talk is not all about positivity, really. Positive self talk is not just cheesy, upbeat thoughts full of kittens and sunshine and rainbows. So, what is it then?

Positive self talk in soccer is anything that is NOT negative or self-defeating. It’s any thoughts or internal dialogue that is good, useful or constructive. Messages that are helpful and not hurtful on the soccer field. Essentially, positive self talk is anything that ENHANCES your focus, not messes with it.

In this post we are going to break it all down by giving self talk examples that are useful on the soccer field and make it really easy to understand the benefits and why self talk is important.

Being your own best coach

Self talk is how you coach yourself. Each and every time you step on that field, you get to choose to coach yourself with hurtful inner dialogue or helpful inner dialogue. It’s your choice.

In a nutshell, positive self talk is about being your own best coach.

To play your best, you need to be able to coach yourself into a calm, composed, focused state of mind – regardless of what is going on around you, regardless of the pressure, nerves or heavy expectations. Using positive self talk is a great way to handle stress, free up your mind and stay present so that you can maximize your potential and be impactful on the field.

Some players have a strong ability to coach themselves into this optimal performance zone with good self talk habits. They’ve either naturally do this or they’ve invested a lot of time into mental skills training. Then there are other soccer players (most players to be honest) that don’t have the tools or the awareness at all and get completely caught up in emotions. These players do not have the self talk skills to be able to bring themselves into the headspace they need to be in to play well.

How do you become the first player, the one that coaches themselves into their optimal performance zone? To be your own best coach, you have to very, very intentional with what is going on inside your head before, during and after games. You have to be very intentional with your mindset. You need to CHOOSE what’s going on in there, not let your mind run wild and do what it wants. This is why self talk is important.

Why is self talk important

The reason self talk is so important is that your body follows the most dominant thought in your head. And if that thought is self-defeating, well, you can see how that wouldn’t work in your favor.

Self talk is important because it DIRECTLY IMPACTS YOUR PERFORMANCE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT, the direction is your choice. Negative self talk negatively impacts how you are playing right now, and good, useful and constructive self talk positively impacts how you are playing right now.

Self talk is a very powerful tool that left to its own devices will work against you, but if you harness it you can completely change your game. If you want to get better at soccer, its of the upmost importance that you cut off the negative inner dialogue. Here are some examples of the types of thoughts that a guaranteed to negatively impact performance:

One of the most important things to understand about self talk is that in order to change your thoughts, you can’t just tell yourself to STOP thinking negative thoughts (it won’t work), but instead you have to consciously and intentionally REPLACE them with something else.

Helpful self talk is self talk that is good, useful or constructive. We’ve got four different self talk examples that you can take to the soccer field and start using right away. Let’s dive in.

Self talk to improve (pre + post) game mentality

Self talk type 1: motivational self talk

Motivational self talk is used for “boosting confidence and psyching-up athletes for competition,” as defined by this article from Coaches Toolbox. Motivational self talk is typically what is thought of when ‘positive self talk’ is mentioned.

This type of self talk is both positive and encouraging. Motivational self talk is useful for helping to keep self-defeating thoughts from impeding your focus and concentration before a match. It’s also useful in terms of calming yourself down and staying centered and focused heading into a match.

Motivational self talk examples

Motivational self talk examples include – I am prepared, I am ready, I’ve got this, let’s go! Essentially any type of reminders to yourself that you are equipped to handle this moment. Mantras or affirmations are part of this as well, anything that you put on repeat to help you regulate your emotions under pressure and keep your mind focused and composed to keep the doubt at bay.

Self talk type 2: self-compassion

Self-compassion is the second type of self-talk you can use to improve your mentality. Self-compassion doesn’t get talked about a lot in the soccer world, but it’s important and not to be underestimated because its EXACTLY what players need to combat their inner critic and build resiliency skills.

Let’s dispel the misconceptions right away. Self-compassion in soccer DOES NOT MEAN being weak, it DOES NOT MEAN being a pushover and it DOES NOT MEAN being overly nice to yourself. It doesn’t mean any of these things.

What it DOES mean is this: acknowledging the difficulty in situations, understanding that this experience is shared by others or has been at some point, and then working really hard to say sometime kind and helpful to yourself instead of letting your inner critic have a heyday is EXTREMELY helpful in terms of not getting hung up on things.

You can be self-compassionate and still be a FIERCE competitor. You can be kind to yourself while still holding yourself accountable to improvement and growth.

Think about it this way, if you are facing a challenge or something difficult, you’ll eventually get past: but will you move past it more quickly by beating yourself up and telling yourself how terrible you are? Or by acknowledging the difficulty and then giving yourself the kind encouragement you need to push through? Which will help you bounce back better and become more resilient?

Self-compassion examples

An example of self compassion might be something like this. You are playing center back and you are struggling to build because the opponent is applying a high amount of pressure. After the game you reflect, and instead of beating yourself up and being self critical about everything you did wrong and should have done better, you try this approach: “That was really hard, they were really applying a lot of pressure. But I understand that things like this are a part of soccer and I’m not alone in having had this experience. I did a good job being very aware though, noticing where the pressure was coming from and then trying my best to give my teammates instructions about how to move the ball so that we could keep possession.”

For more on the power of self-compassion and different ways you can use it, check out the work of Dr. Kristin Neff.

Grow your confidence through preparedness.

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The most HELPFUL self talk for on the field

Motivational self talk and self-compassion are wonderful tools for helping to improve overall mentality and helping with pre and post game mindset, but they aren’t always the best for when you are on the field, actively involved in the play. For that we go to neutral thinking and instructional self talk.

Self talk type 3: neutral thinking

The concept of neutral thinking comes from mental coach Trevor Moawad. Moawad describes neutral thinking as “a high-performance strategy that emphasizes judgment-free thinking, especially in crises and pressure situations.” This article by Soccer Resilience describes it quite well, saying that “put simply, it means accepting that when something good or bad happens, it happens. You accept the event or situation for what it is and then decide to move forward.”

Here’s a video of Russell Wilson and Trevor Moawad talking about the concept:

Neutral thinking is all about focusing on the process. It’s about judgement-free thinking and meeting the moment with no resistance. As Wilson says in the video, “this is the situation, how do we overcome the situation? It’s really that simple.”

Neutral thinking is really helpful in high pressure situations because if you can take out the negative and positive and neutrally identify the TRUTH of the moment, you can more quickly and easily solve the problem and execute to the best of your ability with a levelhead.

Neutral thinking examples

An example of neutral thinking in soccer is this: instead of getting upset at yourself when you turn the ball over to the other team, what would happen if you instead had this thought, “I just passed the ball to the other team, now I need to defend.” This is the truth of the moment with no negative or positive connotations. How could thinking this way help you adjust, make earlier decisions and perform at a higher level?

Self talk type 4: instructional self talk

Lastly, we come to instructional self talk. Instructional self talk is THE MOST HELPFUL THING IN THE MOMENT. Instructional self talk is less about if you ‘feel’ ready or confident, but more about DOING. Instructional self talk is a type of neutral thinking in that it has no positives or negatives attached to it and its about the process.

Instructional self talk is short, specific phrases that you use to help direct your attention to the task at hand. It’s things you can do, actions you can take. Instructional self talk is also useful in that it keeps you from overthinking by taking your attention away from self-defeating thoughts and instead focusing in on specific details of how to execute in this moment.

Instructional self talk examples

You can use instructional self talk like a mantra as well. A short phrase on repeat to center you and bring you back to the present moment as you start to get distracted by emotions, heavy expectations of perfection or missed opportunities.

These instructional self talk examples are written per position but you could do this anyway you want.

Instructional self talk examples for defensive center midfielders –

Defending: get behind the ball, delay forward progression

Attacking: take space, break lines

Instructional self talk examples for attacking center midfielders (#10) –

Defending: win the ball back immediately, eliminate time and space

Attacking: provide good angles, demand the ball

Becoming a player with good & useful self talk

In order to make the change away from negativity and become a player with good, useful and constructive self talk, you need two things:

1 – the self-awareness that the negative self talk and self-defeating mentalities are present
and

2 – curiosity and a genuine growth-minded desire to want to change things

Changing from negative self talk to positive self talk is hard and takes time, patience and persistence. You sometimes have to completely rewrite some deep, internal beliefs about how you feel about yourself which isn’t a quick or painless process.

The reason self-awareness is necessary here is because you need to understand the impact of the negative self talk, and then really want to discover how to get the heck out of it.

Positive self talk will not come naturally when you start though. You’ll have to force yourself to do it for awhile until it starts to become habit. That is why a genuine desire to change is a necessity because you are going to have to have a great deal of persistence to pursue.

Circling back to where we started, positive self talk isn’t shear positivity, it’s any sort of thinking or self talk that is good, useful or constructive to you on the soccer field.

If you are a player that struggles with self defeating mentalities and lack of confidence on the pitch, pushing yourself to take on this challenge and try one of these self talk examples is a really great way to jumpstart things and get invested in yourself and your growth. Because soccer is WAY MORE FUN when your’e inner critic isn’t the loudest voice in your head.

One way to transform your self talk and play with more confidence is to make mental skills training a priority. At Expand Your Game, we have developed a 10-week transformational 1:1 mentorship called the Mindset Mastery Academy. Learn more about MMA here.

Hi everyone! I’m Jenn and I create content to help female soccer players and coaches maximize individual and team potential by developing healthy mindset skills. Join other subscribers and sign up for the newsletter for all my best tips and advice!

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Hi everyone!

I'm Jenn, a USSF C-licensed youth soccer coach, mental skills coach & founder here at Expand Your Game. I created this site because it is the site I needed when I was a soccer player.

About me: I am a former newspaper photojournalist who loves downtempo electronic music, guacamole and books of every sort. And of course soccer! On days off you can find me researching tiny farms in Portugal , tossing a frisbee for my dog, or tending to my growing collection of indoor plants.