The other day I had a high performing athlete come into my office with feelings of helplessness. After a great fall season this athlete got injuried towards the end of November early December. The trainers doing everything they could were having a hard time diagnosing the root of the problem. It was decided that this athlete should take the month of December completely off. When the athlete came back to start the new year, eager to get back into training and into competition, was rocked when trying to complete a simple workout and realizing the injury had not healed if anything it was worse. After a couple of weeks of worrying about all the possible negative outcomes of what this injury was causing this athlete started to experience some mild depression and moderate anxiety. When she came to me this athlete had just experienced another setback when a supposed light workout on a machine in the training resulted in more pain than ever.  When talking with this athlete it seemed obvious that the thought processes was one of woo is me. The focus was on all the things that are wrong and had pretty much stopped trying to problem solve. Simply, in a mental state of focusing on what was wrong. When we started talking about rechannellling the athlete’s focus to what can be done, simply a “can do” athlete. We talked about how when the mind is sending messages to our body that something, the body will naturally try and protect itself evern more, thus tightening the muscles around the concerned area likely only contributing to worsening the injury. I suggested a couple of power phrases to help rechannel her energy and focus, “I am going to over come this, I don’t know how but I am going to over come this.” “I will get back to 100%.” The athlete was eager to test this approach out and went to work out on the machine in the training room. This is what this athlete relayed to me. “I got on the machine with the frame of mind that I was overcoming this injury. I could still feel some pain but in my opinion it was half as sore as it had been. I was amazed and started to see some light at the end of the tunnel. After the longest workout I have had in months I got off the machine and turned to notice our massage therapist. I thought, wait I used to see her all the time when I was healthy, I haven’t seen her in months and now I hurt maybe there is some correlation. I set up an appointment and low and behold our massage therapist finds a cluster of knots high in my leg. I get off the training table when she is done and I can’t believe how good the injury feels. The therapist tells me that if I should be 100% in a week.” Notice how when we focus our energy on what we can do, what we need to do, we are more likely to THINK and problem solve. We end up playing the game of life with an approach tendency, simply we play to win. When we allow interference into our mindset we are playing the game of life with an avoidance tendency, a play not to lose mind set. This particular athlete went from deep feelings of helplessness to significant feelings of empowerment and control over achieving what is desired.