Episode: 352 - Navigating Fear, Anxiety and Self-Doubt for High Performance in Sport and Beyond
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast!
IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon hosts the Purple Patch Podcast, focusing on integrating sport into busy lives and overcoming performance anxiety. He introduces a free webinar on preparing for triathlons with limited time, emphasizing the importance of mindset. Dixon shares a case study of an athlete named Kate, who experienced self-doubt and underperformance due to outcome anxiety. He outlines five strategies to manage fear and self-doubt: reframing fear as a challenge, focusing on the process rather than outcomes, using stress as fuel, building exposure tolerance, and separating thoughts from identity. Dixon encourages athletes to embrace discomfort and train their minds for resilience.
If you have any questions about the Purple Patch program, feel free to reach out at info@purplepatchfitness.com.
Episode Timecodes:
00:-1:27 Promo
1:56-5:18 Intro
5:23-8:21 Kate Story
8:34-14:57 Tim Reed
15:12-end Five Strategies for Overcoming Fear and Doubt in Sport
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Transcription
Matt Dixon 0:00
Hey folks, early bird catches the worm. If you happen to be listening to this episode right on release, that's Wednesday, March the 12th. And then what a little invitation, last minute invitation. It is the final chance to join me tomorrow morning. That's Thursday March 13, because I am doing a special webinar for folks that are looking to integrate triathlon into a time starved life. How do you absolutely smash your goals on only eight to 14 hours a week if you're preparing for an Ironman or a half Ironman distance? Well, we've cracked the code. We understand how to do it, and we want to share all the information with you. It is absolutely free. Everyone is welcome to join your friends, your neighbors, even folks that will be kicking and screaming coming into the door, feel free to reach out and join me. And if you happen to be listening to this after the date of the webinar, register anyway. We'll leave the link in the show notes and you can register, and we will send you the recording, which I'm sure will be a gem if you can't attend live. Of course, anyone that signs up gets the recording. There's no pressure. You don't need to be a Purple Patch athlete. And I think it's going to be very, very helpful. Now we're talking about something that is very useful for any athlete that is getting ready for any form of competition or maybe even a presentation at work, because we're talking about overcoming fear, anxiety and self doubt when it comes to performance. I hope you enjoy the show. Cheers. I'm Matt Dixon, and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time starved people everywhere integrate sport into life.
Matt Dixon 1:57
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. As ever, I'm your host, Matt Dixon, and today, self doubt and fear a normal part of high performance. But it doesn't have to be your undoing. We're going to set the stage today with a little bit of a case study and a story that we might return to over the course of it, and then I'm going to try and build a toolkit for you to help you set the right mindset and overcome those really normal little seeds of doubt that you have when you're preparing for and particularly when the big event starts looming on the horizon. Goodness me, it doesn't have to be a negative. In fact, it's a normal part of the process we're going to go through today, and it's going to be very, very helpful, but also hopefully, pretty fun to listen to. Now, if you are listening and you enjoy the show today, I do want to give one shout out as an option for you, because, as I've talked about on the show before, we do consultations, not just for Purple Patch athletes. But for any athlete or any person that is looking to overcome an obstacle, maybe plan their season or anything related to their performance, you can just come, you pay your fee, you spend an hour with one of our coaches, etc. You can also do the session with me. But this week's show is particularly pertinent to highlight one of our coaches, Max Goering and Max, as you know, has co hosted the Purple Patch podcast for me over the course of the last few weeks a couple of times, and is going to be a pretty regular person sitting in the desk here in studio one in San Francisco, co hosting with me as we go through but one of the things you might not know about Max, beyond being a fantastic coach, a Great member of our team. He's also a brain mechanic. Yes, he has a master's degree in performance psychology. So he is the perfect person. In fact, I kind of wish I had him with me today, but he did help me with this show. And so if you finish today with more questions, or perhaps you want some more personal guidance, some support, particulars around your situation. Feel free to reach out to us. Info@purplepatchfitness.com Max is a great guy, really empathetic understanding and will hold you to account. He's going to give you some strategies to help you navigate any self doubt and anxiety as it relates to any form of performance, whether it's sport or otherwise, and equip me with the tools to really thrive and go and have your potential meat performance, which is what we're after. Of course, it doesn't need to be psychology. If you're interested in something else, feel free to reach out to us. You can set up a consultation with any of our coaches. And while I should say this, if you'd like to continue the conversation more broadly with Purple Patch, if you'd like to learn more about our programs, our squad program, which is our most popular, the more autonomous program where you get access to all of our coaching team, or, of course, an individual, one to one relationship with either myself or one of the coaching team. Just reach out to us info@purplepatchfitness.com you can scan the programs at purplepatchfitness.com the website, but feel free to set up a call. We're happy to have a chat with you and see whether we are a good match for you over the long arc of a performance journey. All right, with that, let's get going. Fear and self doubt. It's a good one today. I think this is long overdue, so I hope that you enjoy, settle down, grab the dinner plate, because we are having our meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 5:24
Yes, folks, the meat and potatoes. I want you to meet Kate now. Kate is a very strong amateur triathlete. She's competitive, she's committed, she's driven, and in the early stages of her career, if you want to call it that her journey in triathlon, she had a lot of early success. It was littered with podiums. And as she started to improve, she started to feel validated, confident. I like this. I'm doing very, very well. And her focus started to increase, and there reached a point for Kate, who is a Purple Patch athlete, where there was almost a turning point as she committed more and more to the sport and she applied more of her attention, it became more of a feature in her life. Things got a little more serious, and over the course of a block of time, she had a few tougher racing results, really not what she was hoping for. Certainly didn't meet her performance potential, and led to frustration. But more than that, which is normal, it led Kate to doubt, and she started to find herself in what I would label the what if spiral. And there was a natural thing that started to occur that I see across many, many athletes, where there started to be a heightened fixation on outcomes, and there was a trumping of a focus on execution and process or process and more on just outcome, outcome, outcome questions that I'm sure might be familiar to some of you guys as listeners. What if I don't hit my target? What if I don't get a PR? What happens if I fade on the run? What if all this training that I'm doing just leads to nothing. Oh, she started to have a real struggle, a really conflicted identity, struggling between trying to race for fun, an additive part of her life and her health, while also chasing competitive goals. I've got this beyond and I want to get more I want to get better. And when it came to her key race, after a few couple of races where it was absolutely the goal race of the year, a big half Iron Man, it came to race day, and she hesitated, she second guessed. And you know what emerged under performance, not from a lack of readiness. She certainly didn't lack in fitness, but from, ultimately, when you strip it all away from fear. Now this is a common story. I tell you this because there's nothing weird about Kate's story. It happens to a ton of athletes, but it doesn't have to happen. Now that we've walked through Kate's little experience, it's time to unpack how we can avoid this trap. The reality is that self doubt, fear, they're not actually the enemy. In fact, it's a normal part of the process. But the key, and what I want to go through today is the defining factor, is how we respond to those emotions. That's the key, and that's the unlock for your performance, meeting your potential. I'm going to go into five key strategies that will help you reframe your thinking, enable you to stay present in the moment and ultimately perform at your best five key tips. And I hope that you can use these and start to deploy them, build awareness around them, and then have contextual application to help you when you do feel those emotions, because this isn't a tool to evaporate those emotions. When you do feel those emotions, you can respond, not react. So number one, I'm going to label it as reframing the narrative fear is a challenge. It's not a threat. This is a critical component for me. Most athletes, when they're going through their training process, often have really good days, and it bolsters confidence. It even boosts the ego a little bit. I'm going to smash my goal. Everything's going well. At other times, they have really bad days, rough days at the office, as you might call them. And it's either can be relegated as an afterthought or it can have a real knock. But as the races start to loom in the horizon, they start to come up. The weeks of training get less and less all the way up to the day, fear often starts to emerge. Uh oh, fear. I'm getting anxious. I'm getting nervous. And many athletes see that is a huge warning sign, something that they should try and push away. If fear is coming, it must mean that I'm not prepared. Something's wrong, but it's not the case. How about if we flip the script on that? You see if you're getting nervous, if you're starting to have doubts, you know what it shows you, shows that you really care. It means that what you're about to do matters to you. Doesn't matter to your friends and family, the outcome doesn't matter. They just care about you, but it really matters to you. You care about this, and you've invested a whole bunch into this journey. You've probably had to sacrifice quite a few components in life, but you really, really care. And so flip the narrative a little bit. Instead of seeing the fear in the other emotions as a roadblock, instead greet it as a signal that you are doing something that is critical for growth. You are stepping out of your comfort zone, and that's where growth occurs. I always talk a lot about trying to remove the emotional clutter fear is just noise. That's what it is. But if you lean into it, if you understand that it's something that is a normal part of the process, it can actually not become noise, but fuel. And so flip the script and start to see the looming event, whatever it is, whether it's a public speech, whether it's a big world championships, whether it's your key race of the year, whatever it might be, it's an opportunity, a wonderful opportunity. And so you can shift from fearing a bad outcome to saying, this is a privilege. It's an opportunity, and I feel these emotions because I care, and it is a test of my ability to execute, rather than a measurement of your self worth. So can I give you a real life example of somebody who's navigated this with great success? Well, it turns out I can, and his name is Tim Reed. Now I've told this story before, but it's such an important story that I think I should share it again. Tim Reed, long time Purple Patch pro athlete. As a Purple Patch pro he had, quite publicly, huge self doubt before many of his races, a lot of performance anxiety. No, no more than the big race of his life is in 2016 the 70.3 of the half Ironman World Championships happened to be in malunaba, Australia, which is very close to Tim's hometown. And that was exciting, fun, a once in a lifetime opportunity, and goodness me, it was fear inducing. Tim was worried about the pressures of the home court advantage. All of his family and friends were going to be seeing him live in the biggest race of his life. He had 1000s of Aussies that all wanted to see an Aussie Victor. He wasn't even a favorite. No one had any expectations for him, and over the course of the coming two weeks, going into that event, he was almost paralyzed by the emotions. But you know what Tim managed to do? He managed to follow up on objective number one, principle number one, he shifted his perspective. And rather than seeing this as a pressure cooker, something that was a threat with all of his friends and family to the watch, with adding like a ton of bricks emotionally on his back, he started to shift it to a once in a lifetime opportunity. There was never going to be another World Championships in his hometown. And by the time race day came, he raced with freedom. And when it came down to the wire, that moment, and it happened to be that there was that moment in this race, those same family and friends that were 10 days, two weeks before the race felt like a ton of bricks. Became a part of 1000s of fans whose cheers didn't weigh him down, but became the wind under his wings that enabled him to take that extra step and become world champion in a sprint finish, he won by 10. Two seconds, opportunity taken. Pressure is a privilege, and so the next time that you feel doubt creeping in, ask yourself, Is this a real threat, or is it just my brain protecting me from the looming discomfort?
Matt Dixon 15:19
Principle number two, focus on the process, not the outcome. Yes, indeed, a Purple Patch saying process, not outcome. We always talk about this. One of the biggest mistakes that I see athletes making is obsessing on the results, a time, a place, a qualification, but focusing too much on the outcome, which includes a whole host of things that are not fully under your control, shifts your attention away from the process, which is uniformly aspects that you can control. And when you control something, it's pressure relieving. It gives you confidence. It provides a task to focus on that's actionable, that becomes the ingredient towards a better result. If you focus on the outcome, you tighten up. If you focus on the execution, you free yourself. A good friend of mine, one of the world leaders in performance thinking, Steve Magnus, a great running coach. He said the best performers aren't the ones who avoid failure, they're the ones who stay focused on execution, and it is true, every moment that you judge yourself whether you're on track or not is going to lead to tension, but when the outcome becomes the byproduct of the word, not the emotional weight, it liberates you, you can go and do the things to the best of your ability that are under your control, and when that happen, it shifts the mindset. With the Purple Patch pro athletes we consistently discussed, control your controllables, fueling properly, understanding appropriate pacing, making smart decisions relative to race dynamics, a huge part of professional racing, managing your effort, staying adaptable for changing situations, every single situation. Tim Reed, world champion that we talked about, he probably had to make 20 critical decisions he happened to make, with luck on his side, all 20 of them being the right ones, and that was how he became world champion. But if he spent his whole race worrying about outcomes, he would never make decisions with clear thinking. He would react rather than respond. He would have been tense rather than liberated, and so focus on the process, not the outcome. When Kate, our case study, lost sight of these basics, she spiraled. And she spiraled into outcome anxiety, as I would talk about it, and if she could just shift away from outcomes, worrying about what ifs, and she trusted her process or her process, and she focused on execution, it's way more likely that the result would have taken care of itself. As I said to Kate, stop thinking about things that may or may not happen. Instead, control your controllables. It liberates your mind. It establishes a sense of control. It builds confidence. And minifigures and you start to assemble, establish a sense of autonomy on the path that you head down. And that is empowering. It is also performance inducing. Principle number three, stress as fuel. Athletes often mistake pre race nerves or self doubt as signs they're not ready. Here's the truth. Doubt doesn't mean failure, as I talked about before. It means you care. Tension before a big performance is absolutely normal. It means you're switched on. The body is priming. It's getting ready for competition. And the key to use that as fuel is not resisting it. Instead, it's channeling it into effort, into focus. Back to my mate, Steve Magnus is a great one for this. He frames it. He said, instead of fearing nerves, welcome them, treat them like an old friend. And I think that's a beautiful way of thinking about it. It's a little bit like pain. We always talk about building a positive relationship with pain. Build a positive relationship with stress. It doesn't mean. That it's comfortable. It doesn't mean that it's the emotion that you would choose to have, but it is a part of the equation. If you're nervous before the race, you're engaged, if you're having doubts, it means you're stepping into the challenge. If you're worried about outcomes, it means that you're moving into a new frontier. You're doing stuff that you probably haven't done before. And so the problem around this isn't stress. It's how we build our relationship with that stress. It's how we interpret it. And if you see it as a threat, you wilt. But if you see it as activation, we rise. This is across all aspects of life. And guess what? It's backed by science. I invite you to go back some of the several studies that have been done by performance Stanford scientist, Dr Aaliyah Crum, perspective and mindset matters. And guess what? Approaching stress as a positive through a positive lens has huge implications for performance enhancement, and this runs not through adults, but all the way through children and adults. So next time you feel stress, say to yourself, This isn't fear, it's energy. I need to use this energy. And if you're thinking about it, another Hot Tip from me as a coach. Some of the highest performers, most successful professional athletes that I ever worked with, were riddled with pre race nerves, fear, anxiety and doubt. It's not weakness, it's how you respond to it. And so smash the myth. If you think right now that you look at a Yan Frodeno, a Lucy Charles Barkley, a Chelsea sedaro, a Tim reed that we talk about, and you think they've got it all worked out, they just must feel really confident. They're not they're riddled with the same emotions, but they have built a toolkit to respond to those emotions and leverage them high performers across all aspects of life, build a positive relationship with stress, and you can too, because that is not a genetic or innate mindset trait or character trait. It is something like any tool or skill that needs to be developed and honed. And so repeated exposure out of your comfort zone is a good thing, and that leads us quite nicely into principle number four, build your exposure tolerance. You train your body. And you train your body to handle an input of stress. How often do you train your mind. One of the most powerful ways to navigate fear and self doubt is through effectively exposure therapy, small, controlled experiences that are uncomfortable, that build resilience over time. I'll never forget a good friend of mine, Jerry Rodriguez, one of the leading open water swim coaches in the world has a wonderful program, tower 26 down in Southern California, and he used to welcome every Wednesday, I think it's more frequently than now, but every Wednesday used to welcome 100 plus athletes down to an open water swim on the shores of Santa Monica. Sometimes there would be big surf, and I would go down there, and I would stand at wall as Edward Edgewood Jerry, and I'd think,
Matt Dixon 23:47
there are some scared looking faces, people in their wet suits, terrified. But you know what happened over the course of the season, each of those summers, some of them only able to get out in up to their waist on the first time that they would go down. Some of them doing little loops. Some of them building confidence and going longer by the end of the season, all of them doing multiple ins and outs through the surf circuits of 678, minutes, swimming, very, very hard, learning group dynamics, and yes, there was some conditioning. It never got comfortable. But you know what? They all developed familiarity. They had repeated weekly exposure to something that many of them found distinctly uncomfortable. But just like the body, the mind adapts, and with familiarity, they got used to it, if you you don't have to go down to Southern California, but if you're a triathlete, and you've done your first open water swim of the season, it might feel overwhelming, but by race day, if you train that, it feels like second nature. It lowers the stress hormones you have control you can. Focus on your swim, stroke, you're pacing, and all of the elements that go into a better performance. How about the first time that you race in really nasty conditions, maybe pouring rain, wind, heat, it can feel brutal, and there is a physiological aspect to many of those components. But when you start to training it, your body adapts. But guess what? So does your mind? You become familiar. You become more adept at navigating those because it is mental stress as well, and when you expose yourself to it and that discomfort, you become more familiar, and your performance level goes up. And so therefore it doesn't have power over you. You are empowered to navigate it. I love to focus on this intentionally, and it's not about replicating a race simulation or navigating through a huge speech in front of people, but small moments of adversity where you're exposing yourself discomfort, not for punishment, but to start to build a toolkit of responses when things get tough. The good thing about this is these traits are transferable to anything in life. So get uncomfortable in any area. Stand up and make a speech. It's going to help you. From a character trait standpoint, when you're getting uncomfortable in racing. Get uncomfortable in racing is going to help you when you have to stand up and dance in front of a group at your wedding, the mindset is the mindset. So some of the ways to train your mind for resilience practice race day conditions in training, if you're an athlete, hind wind, tough terrain, do hard things daily across all aspects of life. Get used to facing discomfort and knocking it down. Build mini victories. And when you have sessions or exercises that you really don't like doing, like for me, in strength, pull ups. I freaking hate pull ups. I've got big, long arms, big levers. I'm not built for that. I shouldn't shy away. I should lean in. I shouldn't worry about what others think. I should just try my best, because it forces me to show up and do my best, and yet I might get better at pull ups, but I'm not allowing my mind to fall back into the comfort zone. I'm exposing it to build resilience and adaptability, and that leads us to principle number five, separate your thoughts and your emotions from your identity. I think one of the most dangerous mental traps an athlete can fall into is believing that their thoughts are actually true. I'm gonna say that again, one of the most dangerous mental traps that I see athletes fall into is that they believe that their thoughts are actually truth. Now, many of us assume that because a negative thought enters our brain, it means that it's telling us something about ourselves. I'll give you an example. I don't feel strong today. I feel weak. That must mean I'm not fit. Oh, my God, I'm doubting myself. That must mean I'm not ready. I feel nervous and anxious. That must mean that I'm going to fail. And I tell you what, I've had those emotions. I bet you've had those emotions too. But here's the reality of all this. All you are experiencing, there is thoughts. And do you know what thoughts are? They're just thoughts. That's it. They come and they go, and you don't have to respond to them. You don't have to act. With the pro athletes that I work with, I always encouraged emotional detachment. Get away from your thoughts. You can acknowledge them, but you don't need to respond or act, and so, yeah, recognize fear, doubt, anxiety. It's gonna show up, but acknowledge it without any judgment, and think about it like a cloud in the sky. It's gonna pass. In fact, it's gonna evaporate. And this is not exclusive to world class athletes. Next time your mind throws you into doubt, try this. Me. Hello, my See ya, yep, like an East London market stall salesman, I see you right there, but right now, I'm busy and so Mr. Thoughts, you're gonna pass because I'm busy focusing on what I can control that's going to give you control. You see the thought, you feel it, but you're not going to give it attention, because you're going to channel your mindset into the things you can control. I'm focusing on execution, and it's not some. Thing that's natural, that's organic, that just happens. It's a skill. It's something you can develop, and you can do it every single day. Oh, I'm not sure I should do it, and I feel that, but Hello, that's it. And before you know it, when there's no one on the dance floor, and everyone's looking and you can tell that many people would love to dance, but they don't want to be the first one. You might be the first one to say, You know what, I'm going to do it. And if you're at a school function with all the other parents, and you look around and you feel really uncomfortable, guess what? So does everyone else? Everyone feels uncomfortable, and so it's a good chance to say, I feel that. I feel anxiety. But I'm going to step in. I'm going to turn around to the person next to me and say, Hey, I'm Matt. How are you? And next time you're worried about your outcome or your race or whether you're going to do well or not do well, or anything else, step in and say, I see you, but I'm focusing on the things I can control. And before long, you build little victories and you have a mental toolkit. And so let's bring it back. Fear and doubt. They're not the enemy. The best athletes don't eliminate fear. They navigate it. The strongest performers don't avoid discomfort. They train for it and step into it. And the most consistent athletes that I've ever worked with don't obsess over outcomes. They trust and lean into their process. And so Kate, as you listen to this, don't let your set doubt control you. Don't let it cost another performance, you train your booty off, and so with these tools, you don't have to make the same mistake as you finish today. I'm going to give you, the listener, an exercise that you can do, and I'm going to lead you through an example, but I encourage you to go through this and do this. Write your fears and doubts out on a piece of paper, and when you go through think about it and say, what are the controllables and what are the distractions? What are the elements that you can control? So you can control how you prepare, how you execute, your effort, your mindset, your response to adversity, and then what can you not control? Well, you can't control what your competition is going to do and how they're going to perform. You can't control race day conditions. You can't control external expectations of what people think about you. And so you can let those go, and you can channel it down. So if you write down your fears, your worries and your concerns, and then you think about, on one side you controlled the other side, the things you can't control, and put those out to trash. Alrighty, remember, if you want follow up conversations info@purplepatchfitness.com We've got the brain mechanic on staff. He is happy to help you talk you through all of this on individual level. Max Goering, he's got a master's degree in performance psychology. He's a wonderful coach to deal with this. And folks, I will see you next time. Take care. Cheers,
Matt Dixon 33:17
guys. Thanks so much for joining and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel of YouTube, and you will find it there. And you could subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe. Also Share It With Your Friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know, feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And in fact, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com or leave it in the comments of the show at the Purple Patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, and so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, Let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're really trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community with that. I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, doing whatever you do, take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Fear, doubt, mental toolkit, performance psychology, control, adversity, competition, race day conditions, external expectations, feedback, growth mindset, Purple Patch community, subscribe, positive review, constructive feedback