The Stuart Smalley Affect

This might not make sense to many people unless you were a Saturday Night Live fan back in the days when Al Franken was a regular. One of the characters that was played up was Stuart Smalley. Stuart was a therapist that ended all sessions with this simple phrase, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and Doggone it...People like me." You might all be wondering what that has to do with my training for my cross country ski competition.

Well here goes.....
Yesterday, Jan. 16, 2006 I had the day off so I headed up to Tahoe to the Royal Gorge with one of my teammates. We decided that we both had to conquer the hills that freak us out so much. As we were skiing I told her that at our last practice the coaches gave a speech on overcoming anxiety on the hills. Their suggestion was for us to give ourselves positive re-enforcement instead of beating ourselves up over something. I think I might have mentioned that in my last entry.

I was practicing the positive statements to myself as I would start to go down some of the hills, which were bigger then any hills I have seen on my cross country ski endeavors so far. I would say things like "You are okay, " or "You are doing fine," or "You're almost down," etc. It worked for the most part, or shall I say until I came to the monster of all hills that I have seen cross country skiing so far. It had three descents on it. It would go down and flatten out for about 5 feet, go down and then flatten out and then the last hill was the steepest hill that I have seen. My teammate went first down the three slopes b/c I was a bit scared. I saw her get to the bottom and I thought piece of cake! So I started my descent! I got down the first slope and even snowplowed the correct way. I then got down the second slope in the same fashion as the first slope and then I approached the final slope to go down. After assessing it for a few seconds I realized that this slope was not one that you can snowplow down, so I decided to go balls out down it.....

I got halfway down and started yelling, "You're good enough, you're smart enough...you can do eeeettttt!" And there you have the Stuart Smalley Affect.

The 2 questions that should be asked at this point are these:
1. Did anyone hear me yell this?
2. Did it work for you?

Answers:
1. Yes my teammate heard me and laughed and the people on the neighboring trails heard it as well....talk about embarrassing;
2. The Stuart Smalley Affect did NOT work for me this time. I fell pretty hard as I got halfway down and slide the rest of the way down the slope from hell!

Will I continue to practice the Stuart Smalley Affect? Yes....It worked for the most part yesterday for me. Am I still scared of hills? Most definitely! But I hope that with more practice that my fear will be less and less. I will be able to tell if my day in the hills yesterday actually helped with my fear when I got back up with the team on Saturday. Time will tell! Until then.....