Have you ever noticed when you stub your toe and it hurts like hell the 1st thing friends will tell you is, “don’t think about it.” This sage advice is often followed by your brain fixating intently on the absolute agony your poor toe is in.
What’s going on here? Surely if you are clever you would follow their advice and not think about it. The unfortunate fact is that the human brain does not work in negatives. For an example try not to think about ice cream. What is the 1st thing that springs into your head, I imagine, a creamy, cold delight of some sort.
You see the human brain only works in positives it simply can’t get its head around negatives. It can’t ‘not think’ about something it can only focus on something else. Thus in our example of stubbing your toe a better strategy would be to think about ice cream rather than try and ignore the pain in your foot.
This same principle applies when learning to kite surf, thus rather than thinking about “not pulling the bar in” whilst learning, instead tell yourself to “push the bar out.” This immediately puts a positive spin on the action and is something your brain can deal with. Whilst teaching yourself any new move or trick in kitesurfing you must be careful of the language you use when talking to yourself (or the language used by your instructor). Ensure it is stated in the positive and that you’re not simply telling yourself “not” to do something again (in which case you almost certainly do exactly the same thing).