We're Out of Time - Pressure Is A Privilege: Dr. Mark Aoyagi On Mental Strength, 'Flow' & Why Elite Performers Struggle

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

On this episode of We’re Out Of Time, Richard Taite sits down with sports and performance psychologist Dr. Mark Aoyagi to explore what truly separates elite performers from everyone else. From Olympic athletes to professional sports teams, Dr. Aoyagi has spent years helping high performers build confidence, resilience, and mental strength under pressure.Together, they break down the psychology behind flow state, choking under pressure, fear of failure, confidence vs arrogance, and the mindset shifts that help people perform at their highest level. They also dive into the surprising overlap between elite athletes and addiction, explaining why perfectionism, anxiety, and obsession can drive both peak performance and self-destruction.This conversation goes beyond sports — it’s about identity, purpose, pressure, and what happens when your self-worth becomes tied to performance.

You know, the same characteristics, the same personality types that are driven to elite performance are the same ones that are driven to elite substance use, if you will. If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 8888-8-8-3-1-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. One-call placement is affiliated with Carrera Treatment, Wellness, and Spa, and One Method Treatment Centers. Today, and we're out of time, we're talking about performance, what separates people who break under pressure from those who rise.

Dr. Mark Awiyagi is a sports and performance psychologist who's worked with Olympic athletes and elite teams, helping them build resilience, confidence, and mental toughness at the highest level. But this isn't just about sports. This is about pressure, identity, failure, and what happens in your head when everything is on the line. Doctor, it's great to have you here. Oh, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Looking forward to the conversation. And you're a professor.

Where are you professor again? At the University of Denver. That's great. That's fantastic. So before we get into it, I was thinking on the way in here. I was thinking about the term heat check and how I hate it. Because every time somebody says it's a heat check, right, the ball never goes in. It's like you're checking to see if you're still on a heater, right?

Don't check. Don't think. Just do. Right? That's kind of your whole thing in a capsule, isn't it? Yeah. I was interested where you were going to go there. I'll share a couple of perspectives on that.

One is, you're right, that for the most part, is just an excuse. used to shoot a bad shot. For the second piece of it, as you said, if you're thinking about being on a heater, that's the easiest way to get yourself off of anything that might resemble a heater. Now, the interesting thing about that is every statistician will tell you that there's no such thing as being hot or, you know, in a space where you're going to shoot a higher percentage. And every player will tell you it's absolutely a real thing. So, you know, it's one of those things where, again,

The stats will tell you that, you know, they've done studies where they've looked at a player's average shooting percentage and then their shooting percentage after they make, say, three shots in a row. And it just goes back to their average shooting percentage. So to use a nerdy statistical term, it's just regression to the mean. But like I said, every player will tell you it's absolutely a thing. Numbers lie. I remember when I was a kid playing sports. If I was on a heater, I was on a heater. If I wasn't, I was wishing I was on a heater.

Exactly. I know it's true. So let me get right into this thing. At the highest level, what actually separates people who perform under pressure from those who collapse? Is it talent or psychological durability or something else? Well, if I had an absolute answer to that question, I would be selling that product for millions and millions of dollars. The reality is, especially when I'm a sports psychologist, and so we work with individuals for the most part, obviously with teams as well. but the study of psychology is really the study of individuals. And there's tons of individual variability. You know, one of the things that I've helped with professional sport teams with their pre-draft player selection. And one of the things that sports psychology has looked at for yours is personality. And, you know, we have these beliefs that maybe there's some personality

that leads to elite performance or, as you're saying, performance under pressure. the reality is if you just think about it logically you know Michael Jordan and Steph Curry for example same sport personalities couldn't be more different and they're both elite players so when I was working with a professional basketball team is it was when Kobe Bryant was the best player in the NBA and everybody is saying oh we want Kobe Bryant we want Kobe Bryant and you know they wanted the mamba mentality and of course they wanted Kobe Bryant's basketball skills but with me when they were speaking about it with me. They wanted his personality. They were saying he's a

killer. And I said, yeah, he is. And if you have Kobe Bryant's skill set, then his personality is great. He can be a killer. If you don't have Kobe Bryant's skill set and you have Kobe Bryant's personality, you're what we call a locker room cancer. So you have to be this fit. But then you've got the work ethic, right? Like the thing that I loved most about him, you know, in preparation to get to, you know, your highest peak performance is the contracts you make with yourselves and don't break, right? I mean, that was his thing. He outworked, he outworked everybody, right? Exactly, which starts to get to the, what I would suggest is the direct answer to your question of, with no guarantees, if you, you know, asked me to identify

or take a, take a bet on who's going to be the best performer under pressure. One is they've earned the right to be there. Right. So we talk about, and this might sound funny coming from a sports psychologist, but most people will talk about confidence as a feeling or a belief, which is true. That's one element of confidence. But what I emphasize is that confidence is an action. And that action is being true to oneself. And so, you know, this idea of fake it till you make it and things like that, to me, that's the opposite of confidence. The action of confidence is showing up exactly as you are. And again, that has to be based on you've earned the right to be in that situation. You've earned the right to be in that pressure situation.

So sometimes we'll say pressure is a privilege. And then I would say the other element to that is along with having earned the right to be there, engaged in that practice, put in the work, put in the time, to know that you can truly believe in yourself because you've earned the right. The other piece to that is then to have a strong sense of self, to know what your values are and who you are as a person so that the performance isn't too big, right? If the performance is life or death for you, it's going to be really hard to perform. The example I always give golf makes it easy because it's just, you know, you and a ball. If you're standing over a golf putt,

and, you know, the put's worth a million dollars, but your belief, your sense of self is, if this putt goes in, I'm something, right? I'm worthy. Pretty tough putt to make. But if the put, if you're standing over the put up, and you're realizing that, hey, I put in a lot of time and effort and energy, I'd really love for this putt to go in. But if it doesn't, my kids will still love me or my dogs will still love me or my spouse will still love me and, you know, life isn't going to change a whole lot. You're going to have a lot better headspace to be able to sink the put. Okay. Good. Speaking of confidence, what does real confidence look like versus fake confidence? And how can you spot it immediately? How do you know it's authentic? I don't know it's authentic

and they're not just posing. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the differentiations between confidence and arrogance, right? Is that arrogance is a show for other people. That's puffing out the chest, you know, this and that and the other. Big, loud, ostentatious.

You're trying to, you're trying to bring attention to yourself and have others believe in you, probably because you don't believe in yourself. True confidence, it's actually, it can be deceptively hard to recognize because it can look a lot like shyness. It can look a lot like that, outgoing thing that I just described. But the difference is that it's all for themselves. And again,

this comes back to expressing who you are as a person. Some people are loud and boisterous, and that's fine. That's just who they are. And that might be how they express their confidence. Some people are more quiet and reserved. And of course, lots of people are in between. But what I really look for is what are they focused on? So again, a arrogant person, a non-confident person, they're looking around for signals in the environment that I'm okay. And that's why they're trying to bring attention to their self. That's why they're trying to, you know, give big expressions that draw attention to themselves. The confident person is focused on what matters. So they're just locked in to, I work in professional baseball now. They're locked into the pitcher or they're locked into the hitter or

they're locked into the catcher's glove. And again, sometimes it's energetic and loud. Sometimes it's quiet and reserved. But it's a true expression of their, of their, themselves, their identity. And it's with an intense focus on what the task is that actually matters. How do you get the best out of somebody? I want to take a separate case test, all right? And it's not just based on performance, it's attitude as well, right? So let's just use this one specific example because I ran my mouth with Jeannie Bus one day. And we'll do that.

Russell Westbrook, okay, when he was with the Lakers, then I love him. I love him. Nobody plays harder than he does. his motor is he plays the right way love everything about him okay but he was he was throwing the ball up from all over the court he was i mean that's not his thing right and he's just take and he's shooting like in the in the mid 20s uh in for three right and he's just it's driving me nuts and i was thinking to myself, wow, if I had an hour with this guy, it would be the greatest thing in the world. What would you tell him, hey, babe, just let's fold into this thing.

You're Russell Westbrook. You know who you are, right? I mean, this is, I mean, what would you say to him to get him on board playing team ball and not, you know, being a role killer? Yeah. Well, first, I always want to say, I don't know Russell Westbrook personally. I know people that have played with Russell Westbrook, but so I know a little bit about him, but I always want to be clear that this is not a person that I've worked with and, you know, no confidentiality or anything like that here. And I also like to broaden it out. You know, I understand that the examples give it flavor and color, but at the same time, I don't want to pretend that I'm trying to, you know, analyze somebody from a distance here. Excellent. So what would you say to somebody? like that. Exactly. And you hit on it. You know, you said, hey, Russell, you know who you are, right? I don't know that. One of the interesting things that I discovered when, again, was working with an MBA team and helping them out with pre-draft player selection is that I would use just to spare the details. We call it triangulation, right? So three different points of data. And the only thing that matters about this is one piece of data is me observing them.

one piece of them is a pretty objective test that you basically can't fake good on. You can fake bad on it. You can just invalidate it, but you can't fake good on it. And then one is their self-report. And what was interesting is I kept seeing this pattern of people that their self-report was very different from my observations, which are a little bit more objective, but obviously still subjective. But then different from this objective test as well. And I was trying to figure out what was going on. I mean, my first instinct was that this is pre-draft player selection.

So, of course, they're just faking good because they want to look as positive as they can for the teams. But then as I interviewed these players, what I came to realize is that for many of them, what they reported on the self-assessment inventory, they actually believed. And the issue was that everyone around them was feeding them a bunch of shit, telling them what those people wanted that person to be, but not who that person actually is. And so to your question, I remember one distinctly, this was a player that on his inventory reported that confidence is through the roof at the end of the game wants the ball. And yet when I observed this person, they would back away from pressure. They didn't want the ball in big situations. But they thought that they did because everybody else told them that that's the type of player that they are or that they should be. And so all of that is a long way of saying that particularly for these athletes that have been under a microscope since before puberty,

I don't, a lot of times they don't have a great sense of self. And so that would be, that would be my first task is to help them gain an understanding of, hey, why did you start playing this sport in the first place? What do you enjoy about it? What's meaningful to you about it? And then how does that map onto what's meaningful for you as a person right now? What are your values? As I mentioned earlier, right now.

And a lot of times, they're pretty disconnected from that. Yeah, I would think a 20-year-old kid would be disconnected from that. I wouldn't even know what the hell you said at 20. That happens as well. Right. Okay. So how do we get the best out of someone? How do we get someone's peak performance?

What are the things for the viewers? What are the things we could be doing to kind of grab the best of ourselves and show up to life with it? Yeah. Well, I mean, as you're hearing the theme here, it's, it's first really doing a deep dive on self-understanding, self-discovery, know who you are as a person. I mean, let's take it out of even the elite performer context, as you're saying, broadening out to regular people. When you talk about, if you can't name your top three values right now off the top of your head, you don't know what they are. Right. Now, for the few people that can do that, if you can quickly name your top three values, then I'd ask you this question, how much do those values represent who you,

are right now and not what your parents wanted you to be or what teachers wanted you to be or what coaches wanted to do to be or what pastors wanted you to be right what's what's really who you are so that self-discovery process it's an ongoing process as you point out that I mean that's really what call it 18 to 28 year olds that's their task in life is to figure out who they are and I say that's their task in life nobody gives them that task and especially very few people have the opportunity to have somebody explain to them how to accomplish that task. And so that ends up being a lot of what my job is, working with people in that age range, is just that self-discovery process. You know what? I'm going to draw a parallel here that I've never thought of

before. When I have people come in to treatment, right, they don't know how to live. They just don't know how to live. They could be 18. They could be 58. Okay. They just don't know how to live. When you're first coming up in the draft and you're, it's now about, it's less so now because of the NIL, right? But beforehand, it's like you're getting all this money and now it's really scary. And that's a disaster because you don't know how to live yet. Right. And I know when I sold my business, I was 52. And I was scared to death of the money. I can't imagine these kids how they, how scared they must feel. Do you ever help them out with that or is that not your lane? No, 100%. Yeah, do that all the time. I'll add in a few, a few pieces here again to

give it some color and some story. As you're pointing out, I mean, people in general, this is this is a task that's becoming increasingly difficult. You know, we're seeing in psychology, we call it separation and individuation, becoming an adult in lay terms. We're seeing that delayed more and more. And so athletes aren't unique in that. But what is a little bit unique for athletes is that, as I said, when they're identified as a potential athlete, and we can talk about that word potential as well, because that's

the loaded term. But when they're identified as somebody that, you know, To be realistic about it, when they're identified as somebody that can make the adults around them money, they are at best managed and realistically more often controlled from, you know, 13, 14, 15 years old through really the rest of their playing career. And so, you know, they have people around them that are making their life decisions for them, that are scheduling all of their time for them. And, you know, sometimes these people are very well intended. unfortunately, sometimes less so.

But what they don't have is the opportunity to make the choices and put themselves in the situations and make the mistakes and fall down and get back up that are necessary in order to develop that firm, durable sense of self. And so again, a lot of times they are untethered in that sense, that they're sort of drifting through life outside of their sport. Their sport is very firmly managed and controlled. Their hours outside of that, for the most part, are firmly controlled. And so they don't get these life experiences to run these experiments, for lack of a better way of saying it, that people with more time on their hands do to figure out who they are in different situations and with different people.

So I'm sorry. Yeah, please. So last week, maybe it was two weeks ago. I don't know when this is going to run. But Bam, out of bio, I think that's how you pronounce his name, right? scored 80 what three points 83 points in a game something like that yeah right so can you explain the science of what someone's going on about what's going on when someone's in a zone like that yeah i mean we have very clear characteristics of what's called flow or being in the zone um this

comes from miha cheek sent me hi is the original researcher on this but the short version is is there are a few key environmental characteristics that help us pop into to flow. And there are a few more like personality and attitudinal characteristics that do that. The most important one from an environmental standpoint is what we call a challenge skill balance. So the challenge is just a little bit, you know, on the edge of your skill set. So it's not too hard, which pops you out of flow because you're frustrated or whatever. Not too easy because that pops you out of flow because you're bored or whatever. But right on that challenge, skill balance is where we're most likely to experience flow.

It doesn't guarantee it, but it's where it's most likely to come out. So that's kind of on the environmental side. There's some other pieces about having a rich environment where there's lots of ways for us to get absorbed in that environment. So you can imagine in an NBA game, right? You have competition. You might have people talking. You have fans. You have scores.

You have all these things that are telling us this moment right here is important. On more of the attitudinal side, you have an intent. focus on the task at hand. And so that's where, you know, if you have this sense of, oh, I'm in flow, that'll pop you out of it because that takes you out of the moment. So it's this very task focused, intense focus on the what's happening right now. You have clear goals. So you know where you're going or where you're trying to get to.

There's no confusion. There's no need to stop and ask questions. And you're just absorbed in the moment. So, you know, those are some of the characteristics that help us, help us drop into flow. When you said right on the edge of their talent, is that what you said? Of their skill, yeah, challenge, skill balance. You said right at the edge of their talent. Was that the term that you used?

So I prefer skill. Right. Okay. Great. The edge, right at the edge of your skill. The first thing that popped into my head was Kobe leaning, back and getting the ball over the outstretched hand by this much. And that was just right outside.

That was the challenge right outside that skill set, right? That would get him going almost every time. It would be like if you think about it now that you said it, it would be like, that was badass. That was cool. I can do anything. right? And that's, and it just perpetuates on itself. Is that kind of a layperson's way of looking at it? Yeah, exactly. And I mean, again, you'll see the combination of things that we've been talking about here, right? That isn't it amazing how often Kobe got the shot off just out of the reach of the defender? That's not an accident, right? That's earning the right to be there. That's through hours and hours and hours and reps and reps, right? But to your point, when the level of difficulty is greater, you know, when he's going up against,

what he considers to be a challenging defender, it's more likely that he's going to be locked in and therefore more likely to drop into that flow state. That's right. That's exactly right. All right. What actually is happening in the brain when someone chokes? Yeah. So you asked about the brain, which can get complicated.

I'll try and keep it simple. The short version is we have what's called the reinvestment hypothesis, which is a bunch of scientific jargon, which is to say that what's happening is you're taking a movement that becomes automatic, right, unconscious. It's a movement you don't have to think about anymore because you've practiced it so many times. You're shooting stroke, for example.

And again, we can use the free throw line because that takes out the variables of defenders and time and things like that. You just get to step up there, prepare yourself in the way that you want to and shoot the shot the way that you want to. All of that for anybody at an elite level is going to be an automatic, unconscious motion.

And that's what all of the pre-shot routine that they're going through. That's what it's trying to do is turn this off and get them into their body to let their body just do what it knows how to do. So muscle memory. You're looking for muscle memory. That drives kinesiologist crazy, but yes,

there is no memory in the muscles. That's okay. But it's a motor program, right? We're not running for office, doctor. Jesus. All right, go on. I understand. I'm laughing at us as much as you are.

So, but yes, it's exactly exactly that. Letting the muscle memory do its thing and the body do its thing. So what this reinvestment hypothesis is that when this thing, your brain gets in the way and says, oh, this one's really important. So I, the brain, need to make sure that this body gets it right. That's the reinvestment. Is the brain saying, I need to take back conscious control of this movement that is overlearned, automatic and unconscious. And so when the brain takes over, that's when you see that hirky jerky movement because the brain is saying, this is important. I need to get this one right.

Unfortunately, its strategy is exactly wrong. Who would be in your mind out of all the coaches in sports, college, pros, whatever, who would be the coach that would get the most out of his players peak performance? performance wise and why? Well, coaches are obviously critical to the performance process. I'm trying to think of a good exemplar of this. I mean, Greg Popovich is one that always comes to mind. Phil Jackson, Steve Kerr. I mean, all similar in that their personalities are different. You know, Pop can appear a little bit gruffer, you know, Steve and Phil are a little bit more, you know, kind of on that touchy-feely end of the spectrum. But the reality is that each of them does, again, what I've kind of been harping on throughout. this conversation. They get to know their players. And then they give their players the space to understand themselves and then to be themselves on the court and express themselves in the highest way that they can. Now, they also need to play a role and understand what their place is on the team. So you would also see a rotating cast of characters around the elite players on those teams because it was people that had to figure out how to be who they are in a way that fit with the team.

And that's really the coach's job is to help the person understand who they are, express that person within the roles and the confines, if you will, of how that team plays. But there's a boot in your ass element to it too sometimes, right? Like coach Sabin. 100%. I mean, this is where I would criticize my field because, you know, what you're talking about is what we call extrinsic motivation, right? Something from outside of yourself being a motivator.

my field's all about intrinsic motivation, right? And like I've been talking about expressing yourself, the reality is we need both, you know, ideally you're a little bit more leaning towards that intrinsic side, or we can just say internal side. But if it's 51-49, hey, I'm happy with that. Because again, yeah, sometimes we need to kick in the butt. Sometimes we need, you know, an extra motivator.

Sometimes we need our competitor to, you know, have a slightly lower time than we have, whatever it takes, you know. That's what it comes down to. All right. Last guilty pleasure. Out of all the athletes in sports right now, who's the one guy or a group of guys that can turn it on and get in that zone space? Okay, more often than others. So I think from, particularly from a mindset perspective that you're talking about, I think the most interesting performer that we have right now is a guy called Alex Honnold. I don't know if you're familiar with him.

Alex who? Honnold? I do not. He is the rock climber. Famously was in the movie Free Solo. Just did the, I forget the name of the Netflix special, but climbed to the exterior of a building. But he does these, first of all, he's an extremely skilled climber. And what he has become famous for is doing what's called Free Soloing, where he's climbing incredibly challenging climbs with no ropes.

Right. And, you know, zero margin for error, essentially. Don't do that shit at home, people. Go on. Yeah, exactly. This is for only people that are, again, highly skilled and willing to take that risk. But the reality is that, so first of all, let's understand risk, right? We see Alex Honnold climbing L-Cap with no ropes, and we think, oh, my gosh, this is insane.

But let's not forget, maybe it's easy to use a surfing analogy here. You know, you see a surfer on a hundred foot wave and it's like, oh, that's impossible. How could I ever get there? Well, for that surfer, that was just the next step. in their progression. They didn't go from surfing five foot wave to serving 100 foot wave. They went from 5 to 10 to 15 to 90 to 95 to right. And that's what Alex Honnold does as well. It's a test of his skill. Now it's a high consequence environment for him because any mistake is going to be death. But it's not necessarily high risk because he's practiced. He's built the skills to manage that risk. And so it becomes an acceptable amount of risk for him, even though the consequence is high. And what you, I didn't mention this earlier in the list of external variables, but high consequence risk is one of the variables that helps us drop into flow. And so that's why he'll say.

How so? Give me an example. Give me an example. Because you have to stay completely connected to the moment. If he's not completely engaged with what he's doing on that. Oh, yeah. He loses his focus. He's dead.

So what you're saying is the consequences is so steep. Don't lose your focus or you're dead. Exactly. And even on that, what he'll say is he'll break down the climbs in a different sections. This particular section, he knows he needs to be dialed. But over the course of a five-hour climb, he can't be dialed the whole time. He knows that. And so this section, he can space out a little bit. This section, he needs to be dialed in. So, but that's exactly what the consequence does is it brings out our best focus. Can mental toughness be trained or are some people just wired differently?

So 100% as we've been talking about, people are wired differently. What's interesting for me working with elite performers is that they've already been selected for, I'm going to substitute a little bit different word, and you'll understand why in a moment. They've already been selected for mental strength, right? They wouldn't get to that elite level if they did not have mental strength. Now, rarely is it taught, right? Rarely are these psychological characteristics viewed as what they truly are, which is skills that can be developed. And so, you know, can you imagine, again, I work in professional baseball. So can you imagine if we just left it to chance, that the only players that made it to professional baseball were those that just had a naturally gifted

swing. Crazy, right? We'd spend hours and hours and hours teaching them the proper mechanics to change their swing. We spend hours and hours hours in the weight room building up their body to give them the physical characteristics to be able to hit the baseball that we want them to hit it. We'd have no clue how to train the mental characteristics that we want. So they get selected for, again, by people that demonstrate mental strength and, you know, have come about it through their family systems or just like you say, we're just sort of wired

that way from birth. But we don't help people develop it, the way that we help them develop their swing or develop their strength. Well, I'm here to tell you that mental strength can be developed exactly this, not exactly the same, but in the same way that physical strength can be built through reps, through proper technique, through reps in resiliency. Yeah. So what does a rep look like for mental strength. It looks like bringing your focus back to where you want it to be time and time again. This has become popularized as mindfulness meditation, right? That's teaching mental strength. But that being said, so yeah, mindfulness is a great way to do this. Now, what's interesting is, like I said, because most elite performers, which is where I work, have already been self-selected

for mental strength, for them to be able to express mental toughness. They actually need the compliment to that. Again, I'll go back to a physical analogy that if you're, way over-indexed on physical strength, but you don't have flexibility or what we now call mobility, you set yourself up for an injury, right? Same on the psychological side. Elite performers tend to be way over-indexed on mental strength. What they need to complement that is mental flexibility. What the heck is mental flexibility?

The short way that I say is mental toughness, the analogy we always use in sports is, I want somebody that will run through a wall for me, right? That's mental strength or mental toughness. Run through the wall. mental flexibility is okay coach i'll run through the wall but how about if i use this door over here that seems easier so that's mental flexibility right is the ability to look at what needs to be done and be flexible about how to accomplish that that's that's oftentimes lacking in both the people that make it to elite sport because they've been selected for mental toughness but also and i think

this will be an interesting segue into some of the addiction and substance abuse work that you do it's also the personality of people that tend to get there is they tend to be very perfectionistic which leads to on the positive side right it leads to the sticking with it and trying to get things right but on the harmful side it leads to rigidity and seeing only one way to get the thing done and having to get that perfect rather than recognizing that there are other ways to get there what came up for me when you said reps reps reps was coach sabin always used to say we don't do things over and over until we get them right. We do them over and over and over again until we can't get them wrong. Right? It's both mental focus and that's the automaticity we're talking about

before. In your experience, what's more dangerous fear of failure or fear of success? Well, that's a great question. You know, people don't look at success as an obstacle. It absolutely is. And so they're both problematic in their own ways. So I wouldn't say one is more or less than the other. It's just a matter of what they're doing to us. The one that's interesting to talk about is fear of failure versus playing not to lose because what you'll see is that the greatest athletes, they're driven by fear of failure. Jerry Rice, Michael Jordan, they were driven by fear of failure. But they never played not to lose. They were always going after what's going to make them better. So they were motivated by fear of failure, but they approached the game with an approach mentality of moving

toward what was most important for them. And I mean, that's a vital distinction. So what happens with both fear of success and fear of failure is that we're moving away from the things that we want. This is the same thing. This is really important for everybody, because everybody goes through this, right? The fear of success thing, do you know how? I talk about it, that's too good for the likes of me. That's the process of being afraid of success. It's too good for the likes of me. And that's like the other side of the coin.

Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, what I was, I was just going to close the point about recognizing what's a source of motivation, fair failure, versus what's the direction that you want to move, which is to towards something rather than away something. I think the most motivating thing in my life, other than having children and wanting to do well and take care of my children, is fear of failure. I am, I will out, I will work 20 hours a day to 22 hours a day if I'm on a role, right? because I'm afraid to let that roll go.

Right? If I'm on a heater, you know, I've been up two or three days in a row because I was on a heater and I wasn't going to lose it. You know? And it's because I'm so afraid of failure. How do you now that's great for excellence, okay, and peak performance. It ain't great for overall happiness. Do you know what I mean? It's like, absolutely.

You got a work life balance for me. Well, that was exactly what I was going to ask you is, I hear that that's working for you. I was going to ask how sustainable it is for you because you're absolutely right. It's not a sustainable source. Well, I've been doing it 20 years. It's working for me so far, but I'm fading. We've lasted longer than many. And I would suggest that and, you know, given that you're doing this podcast, I would say that you've found other things to tap into than fear of failure.

right? I think fear of failure is probably one of your primary motivators, but clearly you're giving back, right? Clearly, you have a sense of care and compassion and meaning that is driving you forward as well. Of course. And so my guess is that that fuel system that might have started with fear of failure has been strongly supplemented by some of those pure burning fuels, if you will. That's exactly right. You start off one way and then you graduate and you find your purpose and you do it. You can't. Okay. We see a lot of high performers turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms like addiction when they can't handle pressure. Why does that happen? Let me talk a little bit about the characteristics of high performers. And you tell me if this maps onto your experience with people working with addictions or substance abuse. Okay. Right. So characteristics of high performers. Anxiety. Right. Now, recognize, I'm not using these terms clinically, right? I'm using them descriptively. That's fine. So they possess quite a bit of anxiety, as we were just talking about, fear of failure. goes hand in hand. Perfectionism, right? We talked about that earlier. Rigidity, but on the positive

side drives you, right? OCD. Again, I'm not using that diagnostically, but obsessions, thoughts that you can't get out of your head and they're compulsions to act on them. I want to be the best basketball player I can be compulsively in the gym, right? And then to top it all off, narcissism. I'm special. I'm unique. I'm the only person that can accomplish this. Again, you're not using that clinically. Correct. Okay. Come on. But tell me if that doesn't map on to the characteristics that are going to lead to substance abuse and addiction. All of it. All of it. You know, the same characteristics, the same personality types that are driven to elite performance are the same ones that are driven to elite substance use, if you will, to put a cheeky turn on it. Manufacturing disrespect where

none is intended. Definitely overlaps to both drug addicts, people with substance use disorder, and high performers. Exactly. What are you seeing with younger athletes or teens today when it comes to pressure, anxiety, and fear of failure? You know, it's interesting. On the one hand, there's a lot of positive signals that I think that teens and young people are recognizing. And I'll just talk about the world of sport, which is where

most of my experiences. They're recognizing that sport is what they do. It's not who they are. And so that leads to a lot of positive things in terms of handling pressure, dealing with anxiety and things of that nature. Now, the foot side of that. Can I stop you for a second? That's a beautiful distinction. I never thought of that because, you know, these kids grow up and it becomes their identity. What they're doing is really their identity. And then by the time they get to the show, it's more like, okay, this is who I am, but this is what I do. How do they make that shift? Well, I was just going to get into, that's the flip side of it, is that they know they're better at keeping sport and perspective. But as we talked about earlier, they don't necessarily have as great of opportunities to learn about who they want to be outside of sport.

So they're better at perspective, but they're also encouraged and sometimes forced. into specialization earlier on, which narrows that personality and that sense of self. So like I said, there's these positive signals of they understand that this isn't everything, but the downside of it is they're not getting the same opportunities and the same experiences to recognize who do they want to be. What is important to them as a person. And that's where we see the anxiety, the fear of failure, it's not going away. It's just kind of put in a different place. So rather than it being directly about the performance and everything about the performance defining who they are, who they are as a person, if their performance isn't going the way they want it to go, they're feeling down on themselves, but it's more that they're feeling lost than it is that they're feeling like they don't have, that they have failed as a person. You know, when sport is your identity, it feels like you've failed as a person and you're worthless as a person if it doesn't go your way.

For these younger athletes, what I'm seeing is, again, it's not that they have this whole diminishment of self, but it's that they feel lost because they recognize that sport isn't going the way that they want it to go, but they haven't rounded out the picture of their self to recognize what else is meaningful for them. That's magnificent. How can parents help their kids who completely shut down after setbacks or criticism? So first thing, and I'm a parent myself, I've got 13 and 10 year old daughters that are, you know, love sports and that's an important part of their life, but not their whole life. I think the first thing is that as parents, you know, we, we want to. Our instinct is to take away pain from our kids to not let them experience pain. Nobody gets in the way of their children's development more than I do. Believe me, I know.

Yeah. Well, and the ninja move that in our better moments, we sometimes remember, is that. they need to experience that pain. And so the first thing I would say is that when they're experiencing pain, disappointment, frustration, loss, heartbreak, whatever the case may be, give them space to experience it. Not alone, right? Let them know that you're there for them, but you don't need to immediately start to try and define that experience for them or manage that experience for them or take away the pain of that experience for them.

There's an interesting study to take it into something that I can talk a little bit more scientifically about, which is that sports psychology colleagues that work in the Olympic Games, after the Olympics, they surveyed the athletes about what was most helpful for them. So first of all, when the athletes won, they didn't want the sports psychologists around, right? They wanted to celebrate that on their own. Not on their own necessarily, but you know what I mean? They didn't feel like they needed sports psychology support at that moment. What they identified is the most critical time for the sports psychologist to be there was after a

disappointment after they didn't perform that they wanted to do or get the outcome that they wanted to or whatever. But the key distinction here is they wanted the sports psychologist to do them, to be there. But you know what they wanted them to do? What? Nothing. That's right. Be there. Put an arm around them, not say anything, not feel the need to take the pain away, just be there. Now, of course, being there is doing something. But they wanted them to be there to listen if they wanted to talk. or just to be there in a supportive silence if that's what the athlete wanted to do. So to show up and not feel like you need to change the experience, just to show up, be in it with them, support with them, and let the athlete, you know, define the experience for themselves,

experience the experience for themselves, but know that they're not alone. And I'd say that's the same for parents and children. I stopped watching baseball when Barry Bonds retired. When he was a pitch clock now. It's much better. Right. But when he was pushed out, I was like he was so much better than everybody else that I was like, unless Clayton was pitching, I wasn't interested. But my boy started loving baseball, right? And so I love what my boy loves, right? So now I'm loving baseball. And so I'm watching it. And the first thing I noticed was it's a totally different game than when I was a kid. But in a lot of ways, they're so much better than they used to be. Right?

And so, but in a lot of ways, they're not. Like, they strike out 200 times a season, and it drives me nuts. I don't even know. For someone who watched Tony Gwynn play and Barry Bond's play, right? And so what I was wondering was they're so, they're superior in their athleticism and in taking care of their bodies with nutrition and sleep and all this other stuff. But then there's so much failure, especially in baseball. It's inherent in baseball. You hit 300.

You're going to the Hall of Fame. Nobody hits 300 anymore. Nobody even knows how to hit 300. Right? But with all that failure and all that. specialization, right? Starting pitchers don't get to pitch past five innings. Relievers don't get to pitch more than an inning.

I mean, all this and striking out 200, 250 times a year, whatever the hell that is, it's like, how is the mental health of these kids now in baseball as a whole? Well, I can say now in an absolutely. sense rather than a relative sense because I've only been in baseball for five years, so I can't give you a longitudinal perspective on it. But I would say, again, unfortunately, what often happens is that the selection is made on those that can persevere in those circumstances, right? Those that can compartmentalize and learn how to work through failure, those are the ones that have made it historically. And so that's what's overpopulated at the big league level now. What I would say is,

what we're trying to help our minor league players to do is to recognize that going 0 for 3 is not a failure. It's not getting the result that you want. It's not getting the outcome that matters, but that's not a failure. What I'm trying to help them to do is redefine failure as, rather than defining failure as not getting the outcome that you want. Failure is not adhering to the process that you know. So if you step into the batters box, you go through your process, you have a plan, you execute that plan, and you strike out or you line out to the shortstop, it's not a failure, right? You didn't get the result that you wanted, but you put yourself in the best position to experience the result that you wanted. No failure there, right? Now, if I go into the

batters box and I think I have a plan, but I'm not committed to it, pitcher throws me a first pitch curveball, now it's 01, and my plan was to be on fastball timing, and now I think, oh, oh crap, this guy's going to spin me, so I'm going to get onto curveball training and I just abandon my plan and just go into complete reactive mode, I might smack a home run, but it's a failure of process. So I'm much more interested in having the athletes recognize that failure isn't about outcomes. Failure is about what did you do? Did you have a plan? Did you commit to that plan? And did you execute that plan? If you did, success? If you didn't, failure. Taking the next right action after the next right action after the next right action with hyper focus and executing.

Exactly. There it is. All right. What are healthier, effective ways to deal with that internal pressure instead of escaping it? Yeah. I mean, first is to recognize it's going to be there, right? So so many people from the outside looking in say, oh, you're getting paid to play a game, blah, blah, blah. And the expectation is that these high performers, the elite performers, are living the dream.

Right. But the secret that I know, and I would guess that you know from the people that you work with as well, is that if you, if you, the everyday person knew what we know about high performers, you don't want that. It's not a satisfied, you know, resting on your laurels personality that gets you there. and it's not that type of a lifestyle after you get there. The reality is that, and I educate when we draft players into our system, this is one of the first conversations that we have, is that to be an elite performer, you experience more negative emotions than the average person, not less, more.

And then I'll go on to say that, you know, negative emotions is not actually the correct phrasing. It's actually unpleasant emotions because they're, They can be very helpful, but oftentimes it feels unpleasant. And that's the reality is that if we want to use a more prerocative term, elite performers suffer more than average performers. Always. Always. Because they've put their whole self out there. We're doing it like our life depends on it.

That's how I work. Like my life depends on it. Right? And so that's, you get to help a lot. of people. I get to pull, you know, veterans off the street, put them into treatment. I get to do really cool things. I was going to say, so to answer your question, then, how do you help them with that? The first is the understanding that if they're hurting, if they're suffering, if they're feeling a lot of unpleasant emotions, they're probably doing it right because they're 100% invested in what they're

doing. And again, I don't mean 100% from an identity perspective. I mean that they're, when they're on the field, they're on the field and they're bringing their whole self to the field. And so, you know, first is to let go of the idea that in order for me to be successful, I need to be happy and pleasant and on all the time, right? It's going to feel ugly a lot of the time. If you can accept that, then you've taken the first step to reducing that suffering, right? Because I take the perspective that suffering is not the primary emotion, right? The primary emotion, we can deal with that. Suffering is what we layer on top of that. Why me? Why does this always happen to me? The weather always sucks when I'm up to bat. The wind always starts blowing, blah, blah, blah, right? So if they can understand that,

hey, the sport, the career that you've chosen is meant to be hard and it's meant to be unpleasant, then you can start to reduce and hopefully get to the place of eliminating that suffering and not layering that on top of the experience. What's the one mindset shift that can immediately help someone stop spiraling after failure or criticism? Well, I think one of the most immediate things that you can do is what we call a grounding practice. So, I mean, you've probably heard this in different forms in different ways, but it can be, you know, take five breaths, feel five different surfaces, notice five different colors. That's the immediate sort of short-circuiting. And why are we doing that to change your state, right?

Exactly. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So, um, I got to, I got to break it down. a little bit for the viewers. You're so smart. It's like, you know, you got to get in the shallow end here with me. It's warmer. Go on. Well, I'm trying to be practical. I hope I'm given some practical advice here. So, but yeah, so that's in the short term. Now, in the long term,

you need to figure out a way to process that and to move through it, right? And I would say that comes back to who are you? What's your sense of self? And then what do you value in the world? And once you connect what you're doing to your values, then you probably recognize that whatever happened in the moment, whatever criticism you might have received or whatever outcome you got or didn't get, it's probably still an expression of your values. And there's still meaning in that. And that's what can keep people moving forward and keep them being willing. And willingness is an important word in the work that I do.

Being willing to keep putting themselves in that arena, even though they're getting their ass kicked and even though it might feel like shit sometimes, it's still an opportunity to express their values and find the meaning and the purpose of how they want to express their life. I want to thank you so much for coming here today. It was magnificent. And the part that I took out of this most is that addiction and high performers are essentially the same person, right? Or go through the same things. There's going to be a lot of overlap, that's for sure. Dr.

Where can people reach you? So I don't have a big social media presence, and by big I don't mean any. I have a LinkedIn profile. I don't even know how you, I think if you just search my name and figure out how to spell it, you're good there. I know I'm, I'm coming on you. Doctor, doctor, spell your name so that people can come connect with you on LinkedIn. First name is Mark, M-A-R-K. last name is Aoyagi, A-O-Y-Y-A-G-I.

And yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm also the University of Denver in the Sport and Performance Psychology Program there. Easy to find. That's fantastic, doctor. That's fantastic. See you next Tuesday. There it is. We're out of time.

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