Three Ways to Get Out of Your Head
On my third day of eighth grade, I almost died. After trying to diagnose an unsolvable shoulder injury for months, doctors tried a cortisone shot, which they injected between my shoulder blade and my spine.
The next morning, I woke up with the worst pain in my chest I had ever felt. I swam through a practice imagining who would make it to my funeral if I died. Even though my pain was to the point I subconsciously knew death could be involved, I pushed on. Right after practice, I asked my Dad to get me into our doctor ASAP. The office had a cancellation, and I got in for an appointment.
“I noticed I have these bubbles in my throat,” I told our family doctor. After feeling my air bubbles, he sent me to the ER, where I learned I had a tension pneumomediastinum, otherwise known as a hole in my lung. If I had gone to another practice, my lungs probably would have collapsed and I could have died.
No one could tell me the cause of my injury until three years later, so I took my time walking up the stairs so as not to get out of breath, I let myself heal, and eventually, I took to blowing up balloons to strengthen my lungs. But something happened to me mentally with that injury that I had never experienced.
Before, I was the epitome of a competitor. I detested losing with every ounce of my being, and I knew I would fight anyone to the death before I would let her touch the wall before I did. I thrived off of pushing myself beyond what I thought was possible, and I relished the opportunity when someone challenged me to exceed myself in some way. I didn’t fear losing, and I didn’t fear failure. If I didn’t succeed the first time, I knew I would try again. Eventually, I would win. I had zero doubt.
But then I woke up with a hole in my lung out of nowhere and almost killed myself (quite literally) by pushing too hard through the pain. I knew I wasn’t the best at listening to my body, but if I listened too much, that weakness known as “pain” would start to limit my achievements.
For three years, I stopped finishing quite as hard in sets. I still competed, but all the while tiny doubts grew in the back of my mind: “Should I really push that hard?” “What if I get a hole in my lung again?”
Instead of letting nerves fill my body with energy before I raced, I didn’t allow myself to get nervous, because I didn’t want to care about the outcome. If I didn’t care about the outcome (or could at least trick myself into believing that), then I wouldn’t be as disappointed when I came up short, yet again. I analyzed my races instead of letting my guts take over. I locked myself in a jail cell of my own creation, and it was all in my head.
My performance matched my mental state, and I did not get a personal best time in my main events for three years. I went from being the fastest swimmer my age in the country to being a little above average in the recruiting pool headed to college.
Then, I started to overcome it. I learned how to break the jail cell that had held me a prisoner to my own mind. Here are the three biggest lessons that enabled me to compete instead of over-analyzing and psyching myself out.
Trust yourself
Hopefully, you haven’t had as traumatic an incident as a magic hole appearing in your lung, but if you’re struggling with being trapped in your head, it’s probably from some kind of failure or a fear of failure. Maybe you feel like you’ve hit a wall in your training, or perhaps you haven’t gotten a personal best in your event in awhile. Maybe you don’t agree with your coach or maybe you’re so worried about disappointing your parents that you’re paralyzed.
Whatever your motivation, spinning circles in your head will leave you unable to compete like a champion. In training, 90 percent of your gains are in your body and 10 percent is in your head. In a race, 90 percent of your success is in your head, and only 10 percent has to do with your body following what it knows. As counterintuitive as it sounds, you have to learn to trust yourself amidst suffocating doubts. Write a list of what you’ve done correctly in your training, in your diet, and in your rest habits. Repeat to yourself why you should succeed, and have confidence in your ability to overcome.
2. Know your true identity
No matter how confident you are, some things in your career will still suck. You might endure a trial for longer than you ever intended, but unless you quit, you have to find a way to cope with your reality not matching what you thought success looked like.
Whether you have faith in a higher power, believe in the power of optimism, or can just look at reality and realize there is more to life than a sport, you have to place your identity in something other than being an athlete. Being an athlete is what you do, but it not who you are. Who are you when you’re not at practice? What other gifts and passions do you have?
Until you can genuinely let go and realize your life would be okay if none of your dreams are realized, you will have tremendous difficulty taking enough pressure off of yourself to perform well. Ironically, once you let go of control, the freedom you find will most likely restore your passion that you lost along the way.
3. Be Grateful
There was a study recently that suggested gratitude is the only emotion with which you cannot feel another emotion at the same time. For example, you can feel sad and angry at the same time. You might hold both hope and fear in your heart at the same time. But when you’re truly grateful, all you can genuinely feel at that moment is thankfulness.
We get stuck in our heads because we’re focusing on all the negative things that could go wrong. So instead of getting up to compete focusing on the worst-case-scenario or trying to subdue the notion that you could have feelings at all, think about all the things in your sport that make you grateful. Give thanks for your body and its ability to move and perform. Give thanks for the fact that you have a spot on a team. Give thanks that you mean more to people as a person than as an athlete.
Make a list of all the things for which you’re grateful before you compete. If you can authentically focus on gratitude, then you won’t be able to hold fear and doubt in your mind at the same time. Gratefulness will push them out of your mind into the trash where they belong.
Get Back In the Game
Through talking to an orthopedic surgeon, I eventually found out that a needle had nicked my artery during the cortisone shot injection, causing the hole in my lung. I hadn’t caused my injury, after all. But oh, with how much I learned along the way I don’t think I would trade the experience!
Even after my swimming career ended, I still found myself struggling through getting trapped in my head when I recently started coaching group fitness. I was trying so hard to get all the details correct that I lost my personality, which is my very gift to the world as a coach.
I addressed the analysis-paralysis the same way I had overcome my mind trap as a swimmer: I channeled who I knew myself to be and I trusted her, I knew that no matter what happened, I would be a great person even if I no longer coached, and I coached from the vantage point of being profoundly grateful to have the platform to encourage others. The triple threat succeeded once again, and now I am thriving in confidence as I coach!
Whether it’s getting out of your head, learning to resolve conflict, or figuring out how you overcome hardships, the lessons you learn in sports will follow you for the rest of your life. So press into the challenge. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. When you accept the challenges your sport gives you, you’ll be able to problem-solve for the rest of your life. Get out of your head now, and you’ll know how to break the chains of doubt when it dares to show up in your life again.