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Friday, July 25, 2025

Powering through with the Olympian Mindset

by

1418 days ago
20210905

Ath­letes get far on phys­i­cal abil­i­ty, but what sep­a­rates the tru­ly elite from the rest is how they use their minds. Hav­ing a strong mind­set can be one of the most pow­er­ful tools for suc­ceed­ing in the face of com­pe­ti­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to a dis­tin­guished psy­chol­o­gist at Har­vard Health, we can all learn from how Olympic ath­letes men­tal­ly pre­pare for their sport to im­prove our own per­for­mance in chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions – whether it’s com­pet­ing as an am­a­teur ath­lete, giv­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at work, play­ing an in­stru­ment, tak­ing a test, do­ing a project at home or thriv­ing through a Pan­dem­ic.

“A strong mind may not win an Olympic medal, but a weak mind will cer­tain­ly lose you one,” Michael Phelps, Amer­i­can swim­mer and most-dec­o­rat­ed Olympian of all time.

Here’s how Olympians sharp­en their men­tal for­ti­tude and how you can im­prove any as­pect of your per­for­mance in stress­ful sit­u­a­tions:

1. Ac­cess an op­ti­mal zone of per­for­mance

Olympic ath­letes recog­nise the zone where they per­form the best. Find­ing the right phys­i­o­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al state of­ten en­ables ath­letes to best com­pete. We can learn to ac­cess our own op­ti­mal zone by iden­ti­fy­ing a time when we per­formed well and think­ing about the char­ac­ter­is­tics that went in­to do­ing our best, then bring­ing those same qual­i­ties to an up­com­ing task.

2. Man­age stress

Olympic ath­letes’ train­ing in­cludes learn­ing how to han­dle big-event nerves. They de­vel­op plans for deal­ing with an­tic­i­pat­ed stres­sors, which can in­clude cre­at­ing a pre-com­pe­ti­tion rou­tine, or se­ries of ac­tions and thoughts that help them men­tal­ly pre­pare for suc­cess. We can do this by sim­ply re­al­is­ing that we have some con­trol over how we in­ter­pret our stress. Pos­i­tive stress (ex­cite­ment) can be good and can push you dur­ing a high-pres­sure mo­ment. Brief re­lax­ation strate­gies like breath­ing ex­er­cis­es or lis­ten­ing to mu­sic can help you keep that per­for­mance anx­i­ety to a min­i­mum.

3. Laser-like fo­cus

Olympic ath­letes need to have laser-like fo­cus on the task at hand, and they do so by stay­ing in the present. They learn to bring com­plete at­ten­tion to the task at hand by us­ing the pres­sure in a pos­i­tive way. Learn­ing how to sta­bilise the mind in the mo­ment, not wor­ry­ing about out­side in­flu­ences or pos­si­ble fail­ure, are key men­tal skills for Olympians. Prac­tic­ing mind­ful­ness is a great way for any­one to cul­ti­vate fo­cus.

4. Prac­tice pos­i­tive think­ing

Olympic ath­letes mon­i­tor what they think and say about their per­for­mance. They learn how to re­place neg­a­tive think­ing with en­cour­age­ment. We should all lis­ten to what we are say­ing to our­selves about our per­for­mance. Cor­rect neg­a­tive thoughts by con­scious­ly think­ing more pos­i­tive thoughts. In time, in­ter­rupt­ing neg­a­tive thoughts and re­plac­ing them with con­struc­tive ones will have a re­al ef­fect on your per­for­mance and over­all out­look.

5. Re­cov­er from set­backs quick­ly

One thing that sets elite ath­letes apart is their abil­i­ty to bounce back af­ter a set­back. They let go of mis­takes and re­fo­cus their mind on what’s next. Luck­i­ly, it’s a skill we can all learn. Start by re­mem­ber­ing that there are on­ly suc­cess­es and learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences, and that when things don’t go well, we can learn from it.

Olympians don’t suc­ceed by chance. Start set­ting and work­ing to­wards long-term goals and in­cor­po­rate men­tal for­ti­tude train­ing to help you. Cre­at­ing an Olympian mind­set has a lot of ben­e­fits for all as­pects of your ca­reer and your life.

This grad­u­ate of Mi­a­mi Uni­ver­si­ty and Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, who is Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first Olympic row­er, won sil­ver at the 2019 Pan Amer­i­can Games in Li­ma, Pe­ru and made her Olympic de­but for T&T at the last Sum­mer Games in Brazil 2016. She was T&T’s first ath­lete to fea­ture at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

Q: What fu­els the tenac­i­ty to over­come all odds?

“I think you have to take a step back and ask if the goal in mind is some­thing that you RE­AL­LY want as op­posed to some­thing you think you should want be­cause, as with any dif­fi­cult goal or ob­jec­tive, when the go­ing gets tough, you’ll ask your­self “Why am I do­ing this?” and if you don’t have a good an­swer, you won’t have a rea­son to keep go­ing. So, one re­al­ly im­por­tant step to set­ting your­self up for suc­cess is to re­al­ly ar­tic­u­late TO YOUR­SELF why you’re walk­ing the path you chose so that when the go­ing gets tough, you can re­mind your­self of those rea­sons and push on.”

How do you cope with the stress?

“It de­pends on the source of the stress! For com­pe­ti­tions, I try to fo­cus on the things I can con­trol. I can’t con­trol how fast my com­peti­tors are or whether it’s storm­ing on the day of my race but I can re­mem­ber to work through my race rou­tine and take care of all the small de­tails (warm-up, my equip­ment, etcetera) to en­sure the best chance for a good out­come.”


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