Emotional Endurance. Mental Toughness.
Endurance. It’s a concept addressed by many, from philosophers to poets to politicians. Its elements are spiritual, physical and mental. It’s what separates the good from the best, regardless of your field of work or field of play.
Athletic endurance involves toughness of both body and mind. If you have ever trained and competed, you know that so much of the experience is mental. Mental fitness is just as necessary as physical fitness in sports success. And just like developing physical strength, you also have to work hard to develop mental strength.
Emotional weights can be just as heavy, if not heavier, than physical weights. Anxiety about your performance, fear of failing, anger at yourself for making that mistake—if we allow them, negative feelings can hijack our brains and take control of our actions. Our bodies have a way of holding onto negative feelings, making us tense, tight, and rigid—not ideal for competing.
When I consult with athletes, I am always curious to know when they have successfully endured. Are there moments in their sports story that have been forgotten or pushed aside that could challenge the negative narrative that is trying to take root? Or maybe there are non-sport experiences where they triumphed over adversity. Perhaps they have been bullied or laid off from a job or struggled with an addiction or an eating disorder. Are there events in their childhood that created early resilience that can be the foundation of mental toughness today? Endurance is born out of facing and surviving adversity regardless of age or circumstance. And mental skills, like athletic skills, can be learned in one context and successfully applied in another.
Whether you are an elite athlete or pursuing sport more recreationally, training and competing can be intense and stressful. And there can be elements of both eustress and distress in the experience. We are all familiar with distress, the type of stress that can make us feel anxious, worried, and frustrated. Distress fuels negative thinking and can lead to a lackluster performance. Eustress, on the other hand, arises from those events that are more positive and can make us feel motivated, excited, and focused—think about dating someone new, starting a business, or buying a new home. Stressful, yes, but we are left feeling eager to engage. Eustress actually means “beneficial stress”.
Mental strength is about stress management, dealing with the distress and embracing the eustress. It’s about putting into practice self-regulation, the ability to effectively manage your feelings, thoughts and actions. Some of us are better at it than others. But we can all train ourselves to be more effective self-regulators. The Dutch researcher and professor of sport psychology, Dr. Vana Hutter, believes it is important “to actively seek out situations in which you are forced to confront your own thoughts and emotions”. It’s about engagement, not avoidance.
Have your feelings, all ll of them, those that feel good and, yes, even those that feel bad. We can experience our feelings without reacting to them. Recognize that feelings are like waves. They roll in and push against us, but they are not permanent. It may be high tide, but low tide will return. And feelings are not facts. Getting beat can make you may feel like you are a loser, but that does not mean that you are a loser.
Regulating our thoughts is equally important. When training and competing, it is easy to become distracted with the “what ifs?”. What if I injure—or reinjure—myself? What if I can’t make it to the finish? What if my opponent beats me? Instead, shift to the “what is?”. Pay attention to what is happening now. Focus on your technique or style of play in the moment. Remind yourself that your body is conditioned and ready for this event. Reflect on the fact that, right now, you are doing something that you enjoy. When we are having fun, our bodies become more relaxed and loose. I had an athlete tell me, “I run best when I have fun, and I have fun when I run.”
Remaining in control of our actions is the most crucial. Emotional and cognitive regulation helps you make conscious choices and to stay in your own lane. Imagine how chaotic it would be if a swimmer or runner drifted into another person’s lane. Chaos would ensue. And a disqualification! This is what happens internally when we let our negative feelings and thoughts take control. We start to drift away from our goals and all we have trained for. We become panicky, lose our focus, freeze up, and shut down. Feelings and thoughts are something we have. We don’t have to let them have us.
When my colleague and I first decided to launch our sports counseling practice, we had the perfect launch date: June 2020 to coincide with the 2020 Summer Olympics. Then, this little thing called COVID happened. As we all know, what was supposed to be a two-week hiatus from normalcy morphed into a protracted pandemic. Each new wave of infections swept us further and further out into the sea of uncertainty. Sports took a direct hit. Competitions stopped. Teams were eliminated. Athletes called it quits. “Now what do we do?” my colleague and I asked ourselves. Our feelings were intense. Our thoughts were loud and distracting. But we chose to tread water…and wait. If you have ever been caught in a rip tide, you know how tough it is not to react to the forces pushing you further out, further away from where you want to be. Staying calm and focused is the secret to survival. Adversity may create a delay, but it does not have to destroy.
Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who lost his wife and parents to the concentration camps. He knew adversity. He had to learn to endure. He eventually developed the mental toughness to move forward into a life of his making. His words ring true regardless of your sport or condition: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space, we have the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
