Segment 7: How to avoid panic under pressure
The Apollo 11 Launch Sequence
20 seconds and counting
T-minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal
Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, ignition sequence start
Six, five, four, three, two, one, zero, all engines running
Lift off, we have a lift-off (lift off, lift off...)
Apollo 11 was the first Mission to land humans on the moon in 1961. The crew was told they had a 60% chance of landing on the moon safely. Not even in the face of computer overload, dangerous terrain, and 15 seconds of remaining fuel at the time of touchdown, did the crew, especially its leader Buzz Aldrin ever take his eyes off the mission. At a celebration 50 years after the Moon landing Aldrin said ""My wish is for each of you…to find the courage to risk the abyss, to set sail for the edge and find instead new worlds beyond imagination to dare to dream and reach for the stars."
Panic, Pressure
I have weekly calls with athletes all across the US to help them work through the process of race planning. From the outside, this may seem like we’re hyper-focusing on race splits, tactical racing, and trying to manipulate the race in our favor. The reality of the 5 phone calls I had Thursday last week: 1) Leaning into discomfort and refining a pre-race plan 2) How to handle the pressure from coaches to achieve a specific outcome for the 2nd race of the season back from injury 3) How to manage the emotions of moving from 2nd to 5th on the team, how to negative split races 4) This athlete has the opportunity to win a race, how to key in on the performance and not time 5) A string of bad races, how to turn around their outlook and set objectives within reach
The fear of failure and the fear of judgment
In Segment 6 we learned that we’re constantly fighting off the fears of judgment and failure. This is especially present in the time leading into a race and most present at the start line. The athletes that perform the best have created a space of psychological safety at the start line. They have learned how to slowly up their presence on the start line and control the thoughts that are helpful by letting them in and recognizing the unhelpful thoughts kindly showing them the door and kicking them out.
All of the athletes I talked to last week were dealing with and working through some form of disassociation, pressure to perform, and getting caught in their blind spots. A big part of the reason why I’ve encouraged you to document and self-reflect so much in the past 6 weeks is that you need to understand what you are feeling before you can start to work on how to fix it. I wish there was a simple cheat code you could unlock in a video game by doing a specific pre-race sequence but it’s simply not that easy. Where your focus goes, energy flows.
Backing up your performances
The highest-pressure races are often the races directly after a season-best or PR. This is because your brain has recognized your performance as a reward for your work and you got a wonderful dose of dopamine, and praise from friends, family, and coaches. Now that it’s time to suit up again, fear, pressure, and panic set in -what if I don’t do as well as last time? This same feeling can come as a build-up after a string of races where you underperformed by your expectations. Pressure and Panic are created when we place expectations on an outcome; this is often situational but often sounds like:
“I’m afraid I won’t run as fast this time”
“Coach wants me to run in the 21’s, my first race was in the 23’s”
“My last races have gone poorly, why would this one be different?”
“I’m not as fast as I was last year”
“ I just feel like giving up out there when I hear my splits”
There is a key element that is missing in all of these statements; no wonder athletes can find it difficult to perform under pressure. It’s even harder to step towards this fear because athletes are often coming from a place of “having” where they hold on tightly to their times and performances like they are awards or objects - they allow the performance to define who they are. When an athlete comes from a place of “being” they are able to surrender the outcomes and focus on the effort of their performance. This is not a light switch type of change - it requires working on focusing on efforts - not outcomes.
Wired to Predict
Your brain is a prediction machine and it loves to protect you. Pressure, Panic, and Fear are feelings and emotions associated with specific places, situations, and often an aversion to specific unpleasant feelings. Think about how much racing hurts - you are voluntarily choosing to feel pain and discomfort so when you push yourself hard and don’t get what you want, it can create a “why try” or even a fear of discomfort. Situationally, we see these emotions most often in the 24 hours leading into a race. We are often irritable, unhappy, or unbalanced going in when we are often focused on not making mistakes and hyper-focus on achieving a specific outcome this can lead to little mistakes like forgetting to eat, under-hydrating, not getting to sleep because of anxiety for the race, not eating breakfast, cutting your warm up because you’re nervous, and ultimately falling apart in the race because of this chain reaction. This leads to further distrust in yourself because you underperformed last time why would this one be different? When athletes get frustrated, they can find themselves feeling like they care too much about the outcome leading in, causing a shift to the opposite end of the spectrum into complacency - why care at all?
Surrender the Outcome
I want you to care so much that you are willing to surrender the outcome
In the book Twin Thieves, Jack Nickalus is discussed: “
Jack Nicklaus is arguably the greatest golfer of all time. He once said, “The reason I win so much is because I’m ok losing”
“OK Losing?”
”He didn’t say he liked losing or even preferred it. But he knew that even if he gave it his everything and lost, he was still going to be okay.
Nicklaus surrendered the outcome and ended up winning more because of it.
Think about Buzz Aldrin - He was going to be one of the first men on the moon, one of the first to be strapped into a rocket and launched miles into the unknown, to land in an oxygen-less environment, and walk on the moon, not to mention he had to lead others there with him. The Apollo 11 mission and Buzz Aldrin had every reason to feel fear, panic, and pressure. When you listen to Buzz talk about the mission, you understand he was the perfect one for the job. Buzz completely surrendered the fact that he had a 60% chance of landing safely, as did everyone else on the mission. Surrendering the outcome allowed him to be freed up to be his best, be focused, and be in the moment.
If he had focused on the outcome and let panic, fear, and pressure in - he wouldn’t have been able to rescue the mission with a felt tip pen. Buzz Aldrin surrendered the fact that he could fail, he now had the greatest likelihood of not failing. Displacing the fear and focusing on what was within his control allowed him to be present in what was happening around him. He was solely focused on what he could control, and solving problems that arose.
Surrendering the outcome doesn’t mean you care less about the outcome or your process. It certainly doesn’t mean that you don’t give your best and throw all care to the wind. It simply means that you have surrendered the outcomes that are outside of your control. It is about having peace with what is outside of your control without sacrificing the effort or care for what is inside your control.
Peace in the pursuit
When it comes to putting together the performance you want, you are ultimately hoping that your expectations and reality meet up. What isn’t factored into this equation of Happiness = Reality - Expectations is the effort it took to achieve the reality before and during the event. If you put lots of work (effort) into achieving a goal and pushed as hard as you could on the day you can still find yourself upset with the outcome. That’s because our prediction machine of a brain puts a heavy weight on the outcome and results void of all factors (controllable and uncontrollable).
Thankfully, we’re able to shift our think and reward system to look at the effort of an outcome, assess the controllable and uncontrollable factors, and comes to a peaceful understanding that your “best” is a moving target that requires you to look at more than one factor when it comes to assessing performance. When I speak to surrender, it’s not a weakness and it doesn’t mean going in without a plan to achieve a desired outcome. Surrendering the outcome is about removing the pressure that the outcome is the only thing that matters; allowing you to have peace in the pursuit.
About this weeks download
Halfway through the season, and there is still plenty of time to make progress. Before we pile on all the things we need to improve, let’s flip that on it’s head.
Where have you improved? What have you done to make progress?
At a recent meeting with our Peak Elite team, we sat down with this exercise. I asked the team - where had they made progress? In the last 6 weeks, had they taken intentional action? This exercise really had a few members stumped, they weren’t used to looking for progress in how they practiced, and how they prepared. They were only comfortable looking for progress in their race day performances - specifically around time. The second half of the exercise was far easier at first, where they defined areas of growth. Where it got difficult was defining how they would intentionally pursue that growth. Identifying areas of growth is easy for any of us to do. How do we get intentional about making changes?
Define and plan and take action!
