Pushing through anxiety with courage – what we can learn from professional athletes

By The Rosewood Centre Psychologist, Sallie Scoggin

Picture this:

You arrive at your workplace on a typical day. But instead of your usual office desk, you're sitting at a new desk, in what looks like an arena. Your desk is on an elevated stage; and you're surrounded by rows and rows of seats, which are all filled with people sitting and looking at you expectantly, waiting for you to begin.

You're there to do your work; however now you've got an audience that's watching your every move. They can see every email you write, everything you type, every phone call you make, and every conversation you have with your colleagues.

The audience is there to watch your performance, and they will also be evaluating how good it is - how well you perform every detail of your job and how effective you are. What would that be like? Confronting? Scary? You bet!

This is just an example of what professional athletes go through with every game or competition. The audience, which may include members of the public, the media, the coaching staff, and their family and friends, is always watching their work closely. They might be taking photos of them; noting how well they perform, if they have any problems or injuries, if they're asked to step up and take more responsibility on that day than their colleagues. Spectators may even have wagered cash on their team’s outcome that day. Athletes put their work up for public scrutiny, for every minute of that game or performance.

Can you imagine what that would be like for the rest of us, not only having our work and how we perform it under a microscope, but also getting it reported on the news, in the papers, radio and TV and online?

We might have seen our favourite team lose, and made a comment on the way home like, “Well, the captain really played awful – made so many errors – no wonder we lost!” Every game, every competition they put themselves out there for scrutiny and criticism which would be hard to cope with and hear, game after game. How do they keep showing up? And what can we take from the experience of professional athletes, knowing this?

To put themselves on the line every game or competition, athletes are able to cope whilst experiencing competitive (performance) anxiety, but also bringing courage to the situation, alongside the anxiety. They can push through the difficult experience by intentionally facing their fears, whilst managing symptoms of anxiety.

They bring courage to face their fears in their work – proving that bravery can exist alongside anxiety.

Is there an important situation that you are avoiding due to your anxiety, and have fears of facing it? We know, from watching professional athletes, that we can push through and manage those anxious feelings whilst being brave at the same time.

Anxiety is a normal emotion. Everyone feels anxious at times, because our brains have evolved to prepare us to face all kinds of risks, and keep us safe. When we do something that is challenging and scary, for example, public speaking, we notice anxiety and fear can naturally affect our thinking/cognitions, our body sensations and physical reactions, and our behaviour.

We can learn strategies that help manage all of these factors. Try these for example:

Emotions:

• Notice what you’re feeling, accept it, and name the emotion for yourself. We know through research that this helps down-regulate our brain’s alarm system.
  • “Here’s a feeling of anxiety”
  • “I’m noticing some anxiety just now”

Body and behaviour:

• Do a body scan. Notice if there is tension in your arms, shoulders, neck and back. Move these gently, stretch and relax them with intention.
  • For example, reach up high with your arms, then lower, relax them, gently move your shoulders forward and back alternately and work on releasing that tension.
  • Breathe deeply and slowly several times.

Thinking:

• Choose positive self-talk, to coach yourself through the situation. Such as:
  • I can do this.
  • This is scary, but I’ve got this!
  • I can be brave AND I can do this!

Psychologists use these and other strategies to help our clients. You can learn skills to cope with being anxious, and “do it anyway” - by digging deep into your personal resources and calling on your courage. Practicing these mental skills repeatedly, with intention, builds capacity in your self-confidence, resilience and self-efficacy. Game on!