Dr. Michael Gervais

It's refreshing in one way because living a great life is not marked by a foot massage and avocado toast at 10 o'clock every day.

It doesn't work.

So we do need to apply ourselves and we really need to apply ourselves in a deeply nauseatingly focused way.

That time under tension is a prerequisite.

Okay.

But that's for technical skill.

That's so that you can think clearly and critically technically.

But when you put pressure on that system and you don't have the psychological skills to navigate that pressure, it's as if those things that you've worked so hard to be able to do, just you don't have access to it.

And in sport, we call it choking.

You don't actually choke, physically choke, but you do choke off access to the way that you want to behave.

You choke off access to the way that you want to relate or think.

And that's what stresses.

That's what pressure is.

Psychological skills buffer that so that you can think creatively and critically.

You can access those skills that you've built even when the pressure's on.

So

There's no way around it.

Either you're going to grind and never really know what it's like to consistently rise to that moment to be able to be artistically eloquent when other people are overstressed and not thinking creatively and critically or imaginatively, or you figure out the right inputs for the output.

What I'm going to say is when we study modern-day greats, they are pointing to the value of investing in their psychology.

That's essentially what the sub-science of sports psychology is built on.