5 Ways Athletes Handle Stress and Pressure and You Can Too
Want to know how to handle stress and pressure in life effectively?
For athletes to be effective in their field they have to be strong not just physically but mentally.
At the moment that counts they need to not let the fear of failure and creeping self-doubt overcome their ability to win.
It’s not just in the moments they perform but during the constant training they undergo.
They have to be at their peak physically so this means constant training and following the right lifestyle.
So, if you are constantly wondering how to handle stress and pressure in life just remember even the pros have the same problems.
Professional athletes often turn to sports psychologists for advice and guidance.
Here are 5 tips that leading sports psychologists recommend on how to handle stress and pressure that you can use for everyday life.
1. Be careful how you speak to yourself
Sports psychologist Helen Davis is the author of the think.believe.perform website and has trained numerous athletes including the university rowing team at Cambridge.
All her athletes want to know how to handle stress and pressure and she advises them to be careful of the words they use when speaking to themselves.
She tells her clients when beginning a race to avoid telling themselves ‘I shouldn’t panic at the start of the race’ or ‘I mustn’t tense during the race’.
Sentences that can trigger panic, stress, and anxiety just as they are about to perform.
The same goes for when athletes fail or do not do as well as they had hoped.
She advises athletes when this happens tell yourself, ‘I am not the worst cyclist in the world it just so happens I’m not the fastest’
Take this into a real-life situation.
Instead of being hard on yourself for bombing that presentation at work by getting nervous and not effectively communicating your points tell yourself ‘I am not the best public speaker but I can improve on it if I have more practice and training.’
It’s not just sports psychologists who understand the power of what you tell yourself.
Research shows your stress and anxiety levels can be greatly impacted by a few choice words you tell yourself.
Use words to ‘fake it until you make it’
Social scientist Alison Wood Brooks is an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.
She conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to sing karaoke.
All participants were nervous.
1 group was asked to say ‘I am excited’ while the other group was asked to say ‘I am calm’ before they sang.
Using voice recognition software and monitoring rhythm, pitch, and volume of their voices she concluded those who were instructed to say ‘I am excited’ performed better than the ‘I am calm’ group.
Brooks suggested that what you tell yourself how you feel despite feeling a different way can impact your performance.
It acts as a ‘fake until you make it’ type situation.
So, next time you feel the stresses and pressures of life overwhelming you focus on what you say to yourself.
Tell yourself, ‘I am calm,’ ‘I am confident,’ ‘I can handle this’.
Even if you do feel the opposite it can lower your stress levels by tricking your brain to think otherwise.
2. If you want to know how to handle stress and pressure in life put yourself in a challenge state rather than a threat state
Dr. Jamie Barker, who specialises in sport and exercise psychology, was curious as to what causes some athletes to thrive under pressure while others buckled.
He concluded those that who thrived put themselves into a challenge state.
While those that failed put themselves into a threat state.
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