#5 - Overcome External Scrutiny and Silence Inner Doubts: How to Handle the Pressure of Success

Now I just saw him a couple of hours ago, and he said to me, I tried it out, and it really worked with a big smile on his face. So that's just from one quick session, getting him to build his own press process, and he gets success. Imagine if you could stop worrying about what other people think, reduce that head noise that goes on after you're thinking about what other people think when it comes to how you're performing in certain areas. Imagine if you could get a level of consistency and increase in performance without having to worry about the races. Talk about today's episode. I'm Ian Hawkins, and this is sport. Is life. The purpose of sport, as I see it, is to see your vision become a reality, find your voice, create strong connections and learn to trust your body.

Bigger. Wednesday.

So this week, I noted there was a fair bit of scrutiny around Nico Heinz, who plays for the sharks. He seems to be one of those players that everyone's either got glowing praise for. Everyone's cutting him down. And I know he's had his fair share of mental health challenges. I also know he works with a mindset coach, which is really cool, and I know the value of that having one of my own. And also, obviously, as a coach myself, he talked about this week about that people are going to react how they're going to react. People are going to have opinions about how he's playing, but ultimately he just wants to come back to his best performance. He's got to shut out the critics. He's got to shut out all that noise, because ultimately, it's irrelevant for what he's doing. Now the reality is, is any sort of success in your life, whether it's career, if it's in sport, where in business, wherever you've made improvements, it's going to come with some scrutiny. The people closest to you sometimes can be challenging for them when you're getting success, because it shines a lot on maybe where areas where they could be doing better. It's not them doing it deliberately. It's it's subconscious trigger to how they their belief system is how they feel, they are valued, how worthy they feel. So it's going to happen with success. It's also going to come, obviously, if you in any sort of public eye, and some people are going to take the attempt at cutting you down for whatever reason, I know, for me that's that was a tool for me, used sarcasm for many years, and also just cutting people down to build myself up. It's a human trait in response to not feeling good enough for yourself. So how do you deal with that? So it's all well and good to say. We'll just shut out the noise, and that's so much easier said than done. And to dive into how you change your your physical and mental and emotional reaction, is a much longer conversation. But the first point is to go from worrying about the outcome, worrying about what people think, and coming back to a process. And if Nico is working with a mindset coach, and I actually haven't heard him interview talking about this is he goes back to his process. He's just come back from an injury stint. People are expecting him to play at the absolute elite level, but that's not the level that he's at. He's not at that top rung of players. So he comes back, he plays a role, and he does a solid job, and people want to still have a crack at him. He just comes back to his process. He knew the process. He knew what his role was in the team. He talked about that this week in the aftermath, I came back, I did my role, if that means someone else has got a bigger, a bigger role, because I'm just coming back from injury, then so, but really powerful. So finding a process in everything you do is so important. I was working with a young athlete this week, a basketball and he was asking me all of these questions, how do I how do I play better? How do I not worry about what other people think? Because he was getting into game situations and really worrying about exactly what was going on, what other people might think, all of that noise. Now, the reality is, like I said, if you if you got any level of success, even if the success is you moving up slightly higher level than you were before, whether that's you at an absolute elite level at sport, whether that's in business, or just at that real local level of friends, family and so on. And also, there's that noise in your head of the reaction to your own success, which can be the hardest part. Yeah, so what I talked about with this young athlete was to come back to process, and he's like, Well, how do I do that? Now I couldn't be at his technical session, his shooting session, so instead, what I did is get him to get a journal like I asked everyone to do, like I've probably asked you to do on this podcast previously, and I'm sure you'll hear me say it again and again, and record when he was shooting his best, what was present? What were the things he was doing? What the steps that he was taking now for basketball, without going into the technical elements of it? Did he have his feet at a certain angle? Did he have his arms at a certain angle? Was he taking deep breaths? Was he calm? Was he having fun at the time when he was shooting well so he was more relaxed, like, was he joking around? Was he silent? Was he serious? Whatever it was for him to write it down and try and condense those main key things down to less than five or less key areas of his process. Now, I just saw him a couple of hours ago, and he said to me, I tried it out, and it really worked with a big smile on his face. So that's just from one quick session, getting him to build his own press process, and he gets success. So if you're looking at any area of your life. This doesn't have to be about sport, but if you're applying it to anything, if you want to get healthier, you will have a set process that works at optimum levels for you. So it's starting to identify where you're going well, when you're going well, and recording the key things that were present, and you'll start to find these patterns happen across different areas. Oh, every time I do this, no matter what it is that I'm doing, I always do it really well. One of those for me is preparation, getting everything ready well in advance. That's a key thing for me. Another one is visualization or meditation. They are. They are absolutely present in every time I perform at my best, no matter what activity I'm doing, start identifying what that is for you. Not only will you be able to reduce that head noise around worrying about what other people think, you will reduce your worry about what anyone else thinks, but you'll also start to see your performance go to a whole other levels. And it seems oversimplified, and in a way it is. The hard part is having the discipline to do it, and then having the discipline to continue to make that a habit. But that's why the journal comes into it even better if you've got a mindset coach that's going to hold you to account and give you the next step along the way. Good luck with this. Let me know how you go building your process. I'll speak to you in the next episode. You've taken the time to listen to this whole episode. Now it's time to take action. Commit to one thing you've learned today and make it happen and to avoid any obstructions, join the sport is life movement by clicking on the link in the show notes you.