Even the Greats Face Self-Doubt—Here's How to Take it Along For The Ride

A lesson from the Chicago Marathon

“I don’t know why race week always has to be like this, but here we go.”
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It was one week out from the Chicago Marathon when Steve got the above text message from an athlete. She had an easy workout, a taper session she should have been able to do in her sleep. Yet, halfway through, she was on the side of the road spilling her guts. Not exactly the confidence-boosting session you want heading into your big race.

It would have been easy to spiral, to start questioning whether she was actually fit enough, to wonder how her stomach was going to handle the actual race when it couldn’t even manage a simple dress rehearsal. After all, this episode wasn’t a first: during her key pre-marathon races, she’d also experienced stomach issues. Stress tends to fool us; it makes us look to disaster, replaying the negatives all the while seemingly forgetting everything positive we’ve done to get to this point. Researchers have named it a negativity bias, and it affects all of us.

So when that doubt flares, we’ve got to give ourselves a better path. In the conversation that followed the rough workout, we refocused on reality. It started with acceptance. You can’t escape the stress of taking on a big challenge, but you can put it in perspective. This wasn’t life or death; it was a marathon. She may not have had the final workout she wanted, but she could point to multiple prior ones in the months leading up to the race that showed she was fit.

Next, it turned to actions to take going forward. Control the controllables. It’s easy to brush that off as a cliche sports saying, but some clichés are clichés for a reason. When your brain is screaming “Stress! What if this goes wrong, or that...” the best antidote is to simplify and hone in on areas you can take action. What’s the pacing plan and fueling strategy? What are you going to do to fill the space between now and when the gun goes off? Concrete actions are a great antidote to performance anxiety.

The last conversation we had before race day was simple: “Be you. Trust yourself.”
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Natosha Rogers finished 6th at Chicago. She was the top American and came away with a new PR. As she put it, “I let go, surrendered to what I could not control, and had faith because of the beautiful, hard work that I put into every step of the way. My ultimate goal was simply to enjoy the incredible opportunity.”

So much can be said about performing when the lights go on. Too often, in the pseudo-excellence world, people make it seem like you have to have no fear, fill yourself with bravado, and bulldoze through any negative thoughts that might arise. But that’s not real. In the actual arena, doubts are a normal part of genuine excellence. When we’re undertaking a big, scary endeavor, our brain will do everything it can to protect us. It will make us think, “What in the world are you doing!?” More often than not, what helps to work through it isn’t some glorified hype speech or yelling at yourself in the mirror. It’s reminding yourself of who you are and what’s at stake—that you’ve done the work, that you’ve been in hard spots before, and that while this seems like a make-or-break situation, it’s not life or death. The goal isn’t to guarantee an outcome; it’s to put yourself in a position to have a shot, to go explore what you are capable of on the day.

The more repetitions you get at this process, the easier it becomes. The doubts may never fully go away, but you get better at taking them along for the ride.

-Steve

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