Compete! (In Something...)

An Experiment

“I want you to walk, foot over foot, on this line until you reach the end”.

“Ok, good. Now I want you to walk over the same line, foot over foot, but now imagine there are bloodthirsty crocodiles underneath you.”

This is an experiment I will use from time to time to demonstrate the complexity and essence of competition (I didn’t come up with it, I’m pretty sure I read this in one of James Smith’s books). Almost everyone can walk foot over foot on a line on the ground. You don’t even need to give detailed instructions. The person simply begins walking, and does a good job of intuitively figuring out a fast way across.

Then I introduce the bloodthirsty crocodiles. Now the line is no longer just a line. It is a tightrope. The total distance seems longer. There is immediate danger. Invariably, the once comically easy task is now an arduous test of focus and coordination. The free and harmonious movement patterns demonstrated beforehand are now rigid and robotic. The pace slows down. Some might even stumble and fall…to a horribly brutal, imaginary death.

What’s the point? This is competition, at least the psychological side, beautifully captured in a silly experiment. We practice endlessly to show how fully capably we are…in practice, with no bloodthirsty crocodiles. Then the National Anthem drowns out all of the chatter, and you’re forced to confront the butterflies you’ve been swatting away. The game starts, and your task is to perform the same movements you do in practice. You have literally done all of them thousands of times. Instead now your joints feel frozen, muscles are tense, a pressure like the feeling of swimming to the bottom of a pool surrounds you.

Why do you feel this way?

There is something there. An ineffable phenomenon, part because what is there is extremely difficult to articulate, and part because we don’t want to try to articulate it. We don’t want to admit what it is. We don’t have the courage to say we are afraid.

Of course, this is only side of the story. There are those who perform the same, or walk faster in spite of the bloodthirsty crocodiles. There are those who have consciously chosen to confront the fear. They have found a way to intercept it, to deal with it, manage it, or better yet, harness it. They have reached down into themselves and miraculously pulled out someone who is more capable than what their talent should allow. They make it look easy. They’re smooth. Their play is indifferent to one person watching or one million.

We can all get to this point. And it is an existential task that we should all bear. To perform to the best of your ability, and perhaps even beyond, during a formal competition, is an expression of courage that can pull the soul upwards toward something greater. It leaves an indelible mark, sort of like a nametag, that reads “I am capable”.

But how do we get there?

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Step 1

Before we can journey forward, we have to know where we are. We have to be fully aware of the mindset that we currently use during competition. To understand our current mindset we have to reach inside of ourselves. We have to examine the thoughts we have, and attempt to do so through an objective lens. It is easy to be defensive and protect yourself when undergoing a thorough introspective examination. For example, if we find thoughts of self-doubt, we are naturally inclined to coat those thoughts with thin shells of pride; a shell just burdensome enough to deter us from attempting to break through.

I am going to list some questions that can serve as the impetus for this process. As you explore them, here are some tips to keep your answers as honest as possible.

· Detach yourself from yourself. Pretend you are a professional interviewer who is interviewing you. The interviewer (you) is sitting in one chair, and the person of interest (insert your name) is sitting in another chair facing you.

· Dive Deep. Try to develop a well articulated thought for each question. Remember how you use to groan when you English teacher made you write a certain amount of words? Do that here. Don’t finish until you have exhausted the well that each question dips into.

· When you reach a soft spot, continue moving forward, but tread gently. Remember, you are a professional interviewer, and your job is to get to the bottom of the story. But if you’re rude, your interviewee is more likely to shut down.

As for the questions (and I will leave a few specific examples underneath each to help guide you):

· In the week leading up the competition, were you having irrational dreams of failure?

o Did you “forget” how to perform the basics of the task, like hitting a baseball?

o Did you leave all of the equipment you needed at the house?

· When you arrived at the competition, were you calm and collected or did the clarity of your thoughts and movements immediately become cloudy?

o If you’re checking in for a weigh-in in a powerlifting competition, did you remove all of your gear neatly, piece by piece, as asked, or were you floundering around in your bag pulling out things in disorder?

· Are you experiencing any feelings of self-doubt towards a standard or goal you have set for yourself?

o As a defensive end going up against a tough offensive guard for a highly ranked team, do you feel like you are going to be swallowed by the task?

· Is your perspective of success from your point of view of from those in attendance?

o Are you worried about what other people are saying about you?

o Is there someone in the crowd you don’t want to be there, are you trying to impress someone?

Again, these are questions that can get you started, and are questions I have asked myself and experienced the negative answers fully. Remember, the goal here isn’t to label yourself as tough or soft, capable or incapable, or whatever other dichotomy exists in competitive lexicon. The goal is to flesh out your current mindset. To get it all out there. We have to know where we are in order to move forward.

If you find that your answers are trending towards the negative side, then there is something that needs to be confronted. Before we go there, I don’t like the route I am about to take. I don’t like taking complex issues and boiling them down into one source of causation. There are plenty of videos of Jordan Peterson making people look foolish who approach him with a parochial mindset. He even wrote a chapter on it in his new book. So perhaps accept this next section as thoughtful anecdote. From someone who has experienced all of this, answered the questions, and found that all the roads leading to the negative answers originate from fear.

Fear, seems to me, to be the root of all the psychological negativity experienced in competition. Precisely, it is the fear of failure. We knowingly, or unknowingly, perform through a “try not to fail” than a “try to succeed” mindset. In doing so, even though we are trying to avoid failure, we give failure the throne and crown and then willingly kneel to it. If we make it our primary avoidance, it becomes our primary target.

Fear paralyzes. Ancient brain systems evolved to use paralysis as a means of protection (1). Many herbivores will freeze in place if they sense danger, an attempt to use their camouflage to render them invisible. Maybe this comparison is a stretch because we aren’t physically hunted down anymore (for the most part), but the implications are worth exploring. The first is that in the face of fear, you freeze, and passively wait for something good to happen. You bank your chances on fortuitous luck, something outside of your control. The second, is you admit to being hunted. You know that there is something out there, stalking you down. A force so powerful that even with all of the tools at your disposal all you can do is wait.

And here is why we must confront the fear rather than hide. Hiding may work. You may get lucky. You may have a string of good luck even followed by success. But the predator is still out there because you haven’t killed it. The higher you go, the bigger and badder the predator becomes until it is to big and cunning to hide from anymore. It will find you.

So, we must get to it before it gets to us. But the question is, how do we face the bastard?

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Step 2

If you answered the questions honestly and thoughtfully you are on your way to a good start. At the very least you are aware of any fear that might be residing within your competitive mindset. It is still there, but now you know where it is. That is already more than what you have done. You have turned into the hunter.

There are two things I recommend as you journey into the domain of the beast. They are separate steps, or tasks perhaps, but they occur harmoniously and create a synergistic effect.

The first, the confrontation must be voluntary; you must willingly put yourself in the very place that you don’t want to go (1). Important to note, however, is that you can prepare yourself. You can arm yourself. You can train your body and your mind. As you prepare, you are creating more resources that can be used at your disposal. And the more resources you have, the more the confrontation will be perceived as a challenge that you can handle, rather than a threat that could potentially harm you (2). Moving forward under you own will and exposing yourself to the danger begins the process of placating the danger. It starts to transform. Maybe it shrinks in size. Maybe you see it as something else. Nevertheless, it becomes something you can manage, or conquer, or even harness.

*This is manifested endlessly in competitive environments. Are you afraid of competing in a powerlifting meet? Personally sign up for one, give yourself a minimum of four months to prepare, and train as hard and intelligently as you can for it. Are you afraid of striking out? Earn your spot in the lineup. Take as many reps as you can and work hard in practice so you know when you walk to the box the next time it is your own doing. Are you afraid of speaking in front of people? Put yourself out there. The next time something needs to be presented at work, volunteer to do so. Create a detailed and organized presentation, and practice it.

The second is not to discard the monster, the fear, once you have valiantly come face to face with it. Rather, you must learn how to effectively reincorporate it back into your psyche. Dr. Carl Jung writes “How can I be substantial if I fail to cast a shadow? I must have a dark side if I am to be whole.” (3). This shadow side is the diverse amalgam of the unconscious psyche. It could be “images or feelings”, or “things we have repressed or forgotten”, even things deemed as “inferior and worthless”. These murky, sometimes painful and sinister elements are what our shadow side are comprised of. But as Dr. Carl Jung wrote, in order for us to be substantial – which means to have more to us than just what is immediately perceptible – we have to cast a shadow. And the fear that we have just sought out is worthy of being incorporated into our shadow side. In fact, it can be large enough to make up a significant portion of it.

Here is the critically important thing to note, and is also the reason why this works so well. To refer back to Dr. Carl Jung, it is a foolish belief that there “can be heights without corresponding depths”. To compete successfully and attain high levels of performance, it is not enough to just prepare above ground level. To train, and sleep and eat well, and even read on and develop a strong mindset. You have to go below, and face your fear, because the fear that you create for yourself is greater than any opponent as they exist in reality. Then you give the fear residence in your shadow side, but you don’t give it a key. You don’t grant it any control, and because you have faced it fully and know what it is capable of, you now know that you are more capable.

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Step 3

As one question is answered another one opens. Think about what we have done from a detached perspective. We cannibalized and subsequently tamed the fear that lead us. Still, though fear is a lousy leader, at least there was something that compelled us to act. So the question is, what do I replace the fear with?

I look to James Smith’s writings on psychological preparation for sport for the most practical answers I can give you (4). Maybe more than any other leader in the field of sport performance, James Smith provides the most unique and challenging perspectives on the status quo of coaching while at the same time introducing the content in a way that anyone can use. This is why I recommend diving into his work after you’re done here, as it serves as the platform for what I introduce next.

Replace fear with focus. Superficially, this seems like an obvious and underwhelming answer. But the logic behind it runs more deeply than kneejerk thinking. Focus has robust enough integrity to be that which you aim at during competition because it purges any distraction outside the locus of your control. At the same time, focus affords you the power to subjugate fully that which is under your control but can be utterly detrimental if not. Specifically, your emotions.

Because “emotion is the antithesis of reason”, we cannot be solely focused on the task at hand if we are under the influence of emotion (especially fear). During competition, we want to maximize reason and decision-making skills while at the same time allowing our automatic motor patterns to display themselves uninhibited. And although the latter is the primary goal, focus serves as the medium through which automatic movement is expressed best.

This is potentially an “easier said than done” situation. As we all tacitly know we need to focus on the task at hand. And we certainly all try to focus. However, is it a difficult task, especially if focus is required over long periods of time. Fortunately, a close look at emotional outbursts provides the requisite knowledge for increasing your ability to focus. In short, “emotional outbursts are, in part, a reflection of the lack of connectivity an individual is able to generate between what is “felt” and the symbols we apply to feelings in order to articulate them logically/rationally via written and spoken word”. Emotion is amplified by a lack of understanding. If something upsets you, and you lack the mental faculty needed to assign thoughtful dialogue to it, then that thing will most likely upset you more than it should.

So, as emotion is amplified by a lack of understanding, focus is amplified by preparation. The humble acknowledgement of your lack of knowledge is the precursor for improved focus. And knowledge is represented here in many forms. Yes, knowledge of yourself and what makes you tick, what you like, dislike, etc. Knowledge of the tactical and technical dynamics of your sport. But also, knowledge in the form of movement made possible through practice. Michael Jordan seamlessly blowing past defenders and driving towards the basket, while his tongue hangs out of his mouth, is a high form of knowledge comparable to any other domain society would classify as “intellectual”.

If focus guides you, you exist in your current moment. Which is the only period of time that you have in competition to act. The resources and tools you have prepared for yourself can be deployed in their purest form, giving you greatest opportunity for success.

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Why You Should Compete

The body of this blog traversed into the territory of explaining how to compete. Specifically, how you should compete mentally. But, the original sentiment of why you should compete remains untouched. I mentioned how performing to the best of your ability during competition is an act of courage that everyone should strive to encounter. Why?

For one, I mean competition as represented by sanctioned events. I do not mean training, or practice, or exhibition. I mean you need to compete in a formal event. Entering official competition (and if I haven’t made it clear, competition in any discipline: chess, ping pong, you name it) gives life to the idioms, “putting skin in the game” and “toeing the line”. You doing so is a legitimate existential contract given to you by the side that says you can’t and signed by the side that says you can. The legitimacy of the competition is of paramount importance because when you reach down and defeat the fear within you, you have the cold, hard evidence needed to win the trial we all ask ourselves. When it came down to it, and I did toe the line, did I do so forthrightly?

And two, winning that battle is a victory that transcends competition itself and allows you walk throughout all stages of life with your shoulders back. You become the recipient of a confidence that doesn’t boast itself loudly, instead it carries you along, opening the door to new opportunities you never would have opened before.

Finally, it silences the voices and opinions of those who haven’t competed themselves. Ask yourself, if you went through this process and came out the other end standing taller, would you care about the opinion of someone who is blind to their fear? The same fear that you overcame and is holding them back from putting themselves out there?

On the surface, it might just seem like a silly competition and trophy. But you voluntarily entering into it means much, much more.

Never stop competing. Prepare. Become more than your physical ceiling can give you. Drown the fear.

References

1. PETERSON, JORDAN B. Beyond Order. ALFRED A KNOPF CANADA, 2021.

2. Seery MD. Challenge or threat? Cardiovascular indexes of resilience and vulnerability to potential stress in humans. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011 Jun;35(7):1603-10. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.03.003. Epub 2011 Mar 23. PMID: 21396399.

3. Jung, C. G., et al. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Martino Fine Books, 2017.

4. Smith, James. The Governing Dynamics of Coaching: A Unified Field Theory of Sport Preparation. Vervanté, 2016.