We’ve heard the term “nerves” used sev­er­al times in ref­er­ence to sport and oth­er forms of ac­tiv­i­ties.

When we use the term “nerves of steel,” we are re­fer­ring to a mind­set where it is the courage that en­ables ath­letes to per­form in the face of anx­i­ety, dif­fi­cul­ty, ex­treme pres­sure, fear or dan­ger.

Some ath­letes who ex­cel in crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions be­come high­ly tout­ed for their abil­i­ty to steady their “nerves” in the heat of bat­tle. These ath­letes of­ten at­tain hero­ic and myth­i­cal sta­tus. We have seen this with Michael Jor­dan, Bri­an Lara, Tiger Woods and oth­er crick­eters in these amaz­ing T20 (Twen­ty20) death overs.

Some may ar­gue that it hasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly been a fea­ture of Leo (Li­onel) Mes­si, for de­spite all his great at­trib­ut­es he hasn’t ac­tu­al­ly lived up to the “nerves of steel” qual­i­ty due to his fail­ure to lead Ar­genti­na over the fin­ish line in more than one fi­nal. I still think he is awe­some though.

I would make ref­er­ence to some­one like Stern John, who af­ter miss­ing a penal­ty in the first half in what was this coun­try’s most im­por­tant World Cup qual­i­fi­er to that day against Mex­i­co in Oc­to­ber 2005, per­sist­ed to bounce back with two goals to help take T&T in­to the play­off with Bahrain.

Then we had Den­nis Lawrence, Dwight Yorke and the rest of the squad hold­ing on­to a 1-0 lead for what was one of the most nerve-wrack­ing 40-plus min­utes ever played out by a T&T team with a World Cup spot at stake. Imag­ine Lawrence hav­ing to lead the de­fence for those gru­elling min­utes with lit­er­al­ly every­thing at stake in the heat of the mo­ment. Re­mem­ber that Kelvin Jack breath­tak­ing save in added-on time?

It is be­lieved that these type of ath­letes pos­sess some unique in­ner char­ac­ter­is­tic that caus­es them to deal with per­for­mance anx­i­ety and thrive dur­ing pres­sure-packed games.

Then there’s those with the “bun­dle of nerves". They are the ones who choke un­der pres­sure. These ath­letes can’t han­dle per­for­mance anx­i­ety and thus fal­ter for a num­ber of rea­sons. The dif­fer­ence be­tween “nerves of steel” and a “bun­dle of nerves” is up for in­ter­pre­ta­tion. How you in­ter­pret your emo­tions will great­ly af­fect your mind, body and per­for­mance.

At the pre­cise mo­ment a foot­baller ex­e­cutes a kick, a bowler de­liv­ers or a bas­ket­baller shoots, the out­come is un­known. The stress that sport pro­vides, there­fore, is in­evitably linked with its in­her­ent un­cer­tain­ty. Sport is a cul­tur­al fo­cal point be­cause it is a the­atre of un­pre­dictabil­i­ty.

While stress and un­cer­tain­ty may mo­ti­vate some ath­letes, they in­duce anx­i­ety in oth­ers. And this al­so in­cludes the fans who are view­ing. Not on­ly are they ner­vous but the ex­pec­ta­tions of the thou­sands of view­ers play a big part in the im­pact it has on the ath­lete. The ab­sence of fans at sport­ing events dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, while be­ing seen as a ma­jor set­back re­gard­ing the at­mos­phere at venues, it could per­haps re­lieve some of the anx­i­ety ex­pe­ri­enced by the ath­letes. Maybe it could al­so af­fect their per­for­mance in that it now re­quires less “nerves of steel.” That’s up for de­bate.

Some stud­ies of the home ad­van­tage phe­nom­e­non show that teams play­ing at their home venue win on av­er­age, around 55-65 per cent of the time de­pend­ing on the sport. The im­pres­sive medal count of host na­tions dur­ing the Olympic Games is al­so no­table, in par­tic­u­lar the record-break­ing haul of medals won by Aus­tralia in Syd­ney (2000) and by Greece in Athens (2004).

British sports psy­chol­o­gist Gra­ham Jones de­vel­oped a mod­el of com­pe­ti­tion anx­i­ety that has been wide­ly used in the last decade. Jones con­tends that it is the per­cep­tion of our abil­i­ty to con­trol our en­vi­ron­ment and our­selves that de­ter­mines the anx­i­ety re­sponse. Hence, if you be­lieve you can cope in a par­tic­u­lar sport­ing sit­u­a­tion, you will tend to strive to achieve your goals with pos­i­tive ex­pec­ta­tions of suc­cess. Hav­ing pos­i­tive ex­pec­ta­tions will in­vari­ably mean that you will be more con­fi­dent and there­fore more like­ly to per­form close to your best. This goes not on­ly for ath­letes but could al­so be ref­er­enced to those sit­ting in the board­rooms, tech­ni­cal ar­eas and of­fices.

The per­for­mance anx­i­ety we some­times feel are most times kept a se­cret. Al­though many suf­fer from it, this in­ter­nal bat­tle is usu­al­ly hid­den in an at­tempt to avoid a weak im­age. Mardy Fish with­drew from his fourth round match with Roger Fed­er­er due to anx­i­ety at­tacks lead­ing up to the clash at the 2012 US Open. He came back three years lat­er af­ter fight­ing with anx­i­ety to com­pete at the same tour­na­ment, even­tu­al­ly open­ing up, on his ex­pe­ri­ence in an ar­ti­cle in the Play­ers Tri­bune.

“To show weak­ness, we’re told, in so many words, is to de­serve shame. But I am here to show weak­ness. And I am not ashamed," Fish said.

So even if we don't all have "Nerves of Steel" it's worth it to face your fears and keep push­ing.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion.