Sports psychology for everyday life

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0:40And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, the psychology of winning. Have you ever wondered what is going on in the mind of a professional athlete? Part of my personality, from the time that I can remember, is that when the lights were shining, when the moment of the game came down to the last second, to the last play, when the attention and the focus turned toward me, there was something greater in my spirit that came alive. This is Olympic gold medalist and World Cup champion Abby Wambach.

1:31She played for the U.S. women's national soccer team from 2001 to 2015 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest soccer players of all time. And now in my retirement, I am an author, a podcaster, and an avid U.S. women's national team fan. But on July 11, 2011, she had a lot to prove. It was the quarterfinals of the Women's World Cup in Dresden, Germany. Team USA versus Brazil. And Brazil's legendary striker, Marta Vieira da Silva. There is a healthy rivalry between USA and Brazil in 2011. Marta is at the top of her game. I am at the top of my game. and if Marta just had the game of her life, which was always possible when Marta stepped on the field, then you just had to figure out how to deal with that as best as you can.

2:31We scored an early goal, and what people don't know about what was going on inside the stadium is when we scored that early goal, we were like, listen, let's keep possession, because it was early. I mean, we still had a lot of soccer left, so we were keeping possession, And I remember the crowd, they want to see excitement. They want to see soccer and football really happening. Team USA was sitting on the ball, taking their time, trying to keep the score at 1-0, which really annoyed the fans. So the crowd kind of started to turn against us in a way and start to back the Brazilian side. They wanted a game.

3:15A game they ended up getting. I think about the 60th minute, one of our defenders, Rachel Buehler, ends up getting into a collision with Marta, ends up drawing a straight red card inside the penalty box. So not only is Brazil awarded a penalty, but we now lose a player. We are now playing with 10 women. And, oh, God, that was such, I'm experiencing, like, stress as if I'm right back there. So we get ready for the penalty shot. Brazil takes the shot against USA's goalie Hope Solo. Hope saves it. And we're freaking out. We're all like, oh, my gosh, this is great, you know? Well, the referee says, no, no, no.

4:06Hope moved early. And so they got to retake the penalty and then Brazil scores the penalty. 1-1, 60th minute, Team USA is down a player. And I'm just thinking, oh, this is not good. This is not good. We play for the next 30 minutes and it's an intense game. You know, there's not many chances from either team, really. Regulation ends and it goes into extra time. and Marta, God, I'll never forget it where I was standing. They get a corner kick and somehow she scores this goal. And I, God, I just remember screaming from that point on, we just need one good chance. We just need one good chance. We are fighting for our lives.

5:02We are fighting to stay in this tournament. This would be, I think, at the time, the earliest exit the U.S. would ever exit a world championship, being the quarterfinals. What is going through your mind at this point? Are you, like, angry? Is there a point where you're like, I just have to stay in the zone or otherwise this is all going to fall apart? What is happening? I am everything all at once. Okay. I am angry. I am terrified I am excited I am at the edge of myself I am praying I am talking to myself I am pleading I am willing I am all things I'm everything all at once Because the clock is ticking at this point, right?

5:52Yeah, the clock is ticking The ball is basically, I think, on our own goal line where Hope Solo is standing the end of the field. And I'm screaming, like, just kick it north, like, direct. We need to get to the goal. We've got... I felt like we only had a few seconds, which we did. We only had a few seconds left until the referee was going to call the game. Teammate Megan Rapinoe gets the ball. Megan takes a couple of touches, and you have to understand the relationships that we all have. Like, these are plays that we have done a thousand times with each other. But the problem is, is Megan is now basically on the half mark.

6:35So she's probably like 40 yards away from the end line. And I'm at the top of the box. And so this delivery and this angle and the trajectory has probably never been attempted. But because it was such late game heroics, Pino was like, I know Abby's in there. I'm just going to take a couple touches. is I'm going to look up and then I'm going to look down. And as soon as Megan looked up and as soon as she put her head down, I knew the ball was coming toward me. And as soon as the ball came off of her foot, for whatever reason, I knew that that ball was coming to my head. I knew it. The only thing in my mind was don't screw this up.

7:23I knew I was going to head the ball. Would the keeper save it or not? Well, as the ball is approaching my head, I see a pair of gloves come into my vision and come out of my vision. As the ball is striking my head, I realize the goalkeeper has come out and missed the ball. Nobody is in the goal. I have a wide open net. Now I'm thinking if I miss this, this would be the biggest embarrassment in the whole wide world. My head connects with the ball. You know, your eyes have to shut when the ball hits your head. And then when the ball comes off your head, your eyes open back up. But I heard the roar of the crowd before I could see the ball.

8:20And the roar of the crowd was so loud that I black out. Like, I don't have a recollection of the ball hitting the back of the net.

8:36Moments like this are what athletes and their fans live for. And whether it's on the field, during a crucial exam, or while giving the biggest presentation of your life, going for the win can be exhilarating, and terrifying. So what are the best ways to set ourselves up for success? On the show today, the psychology of winning, why we love watching people compete at the top of their game, and how we can manage our own anxieties in high-pressure situations. Which brings us back to Abby Wambach. Her header in the 2011 World Cup quarterfinals is legendary. And over the years, Abby has replayed that moment over and over again in her mind.

9:26Because I've wondered how the heck did that happen? What about me? What about my brain, my body, my spirit is different than somebody else to be able to do that? Is it just like right place, right time? Or is it like the sincere openness to utter annihilation had that gone the opposite way? I try to tell my kid, the more open you can be to be completely devastated by something, the more possibility opens up to you. And I think that that's true in life. I think that's true in love. I know that that's true in sport. The more you open yourself up to devastation, the more possibility will be open to you.

10:16And that's what this moment was. And I believe deeply in all of my being that some of the best athletes we watch and some of the biggest moments we've been able to watch, we gather the energy of everybody watching. And we are somehow able to tap into that will, to tap into that desperation and to give it what it wants. And so I think that that's what happened. And P.S. folks, this only tied the game. We go into the penalty kick shootout. Allie Krieger finishes it off for us to win. I hope Solo also saved one. That was the reason why we were able to win in five. Yeah, my God. I feel exhausted just explaining all of it.

11:05Yeah, I can feel you reliving it. I mean, it must be addictive, this feeling. Yep. You know, there's really not much that you can compare that kind of thing with. Winning the game in that fashion, in that way, it was just so unbelievable. It made me famous. It brought the popularity and fandom back to women's soccer the way that it kind of was when Mia Hamm was present and starting the women's soccer sports revolution in this country. That moment was everything. When you have a moment like that, is there a sense that you can like, take a deep breath, maybe rest on your laurels a little bit? I remember the next day, Pia, our coach, she sat us in a circle.

12:07She wanted everybody to go one by one and tell their story, how they experienced it. She knew that this moment was bigger than this one specific team. What she was trying to give us was a space to be able to be like, that just happened. Be proud and be amazed and be awed. And at the end of that meeting, she said, OK, we have to move on to France. We still haven't won anything here. That we will be able to celebrate for the rest of our lives. But today is a new day and we need to move forward. That's Abby Wambach. Her podcast is called We Can Do Hard Things. And by the way, the U.S. team ended up losing in the final of that World Cup, but came back four years later in 2015 and, with Abby, won the championship.

13:06On the show today, the psychology of winning. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

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15:06Connect with your underwriter at The Hartford or visit thehartford.com. Hey listener, before we get back to the show, I want to tell you about the new NPR Plus bundle. NPR Plus includes more than 20 podcasts that you can listen to sponsor free. Shows like the TED Radio Hour offer bonus episodes too. Others give you early access or archive access and some NPR podcasts you will only find on Plus. The bundle also includes extra perks like discounts to the NPR shop and wine club. You get all of this for one recurring donation of$8 a month or$96 a year, and your donation goes directly to supporting public media.

15:50So if you want to make a big impact and get more in return, visit plus.npr.org and choose the bundle option today. That's plus.npr.org, and thanks. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, the psychology of winning. We just heard how soccer great Abby Wambach was able to turn a crucial moment into a clutch goal. But what if she'd whiffed, totally missed the ball? For every win, there's an example of someone at the worst possible time choking. Yeah. Did you perform worse than you expected, given what you could do? To me, that's a choke. This is the president of Dartmouth College.

16:41My name is Sian Bylock. Sian is also a cognitive scientist who spent most of her career studying what happens in our brains when we crack under pressure. For Sian, there was one particular day in high school when this happened to her. And she will never forget it. I was playing soccer. I was the goalkeeper, which is a pressure-filled position. All eyes are on you. And I was playing as part of the California state team, which is part of the Olympic development program. Wow. So it was a big deal. And I remember turning around and realizing that the national coach, the coach that would select somebody to come up and play on the national team, was standing behind me.

17:25And I first just shook it off. But I remember really all of a sudden becoming really self-aware of everything I was doing. from breathing to moving. And soon after that, the ball came towards me. Someone was dribbling down the field. And I essentially was in slow motion, almost thinking about how he was playing like the coach was watching me. And I missed such an easy shot. And shortly after that, it happened again. And really blew my chances to play at the next level and shook me to my core about whether I could perform well when it mattered. Okay, so is that why you became a cognitive scientist?

18:16I definitely do me-search, so trying to understand how I can perform better under pressure. And when I got to university, I found this amazing major called cognitive science where you could actually ask questions about how you were performing, what happened in the brain and body as people learn and perform at their best. And one of the things I realized was that there was a lot of research focused on how people learn, whether it's how you learn as a young child, how you learn to become an expert in everything from chess to athletics to music. But there was less research focused on what happened when someone was pretty highly skilled and all of a sudden they didn't perform well.

18:55And I wanted to ask that question. How do you even go about studying what happens in the brain? Can you take me through the process that you went through to try and pinpoint where things, I guess, go wrong? Yeah. I mean, so I'm interested in performance at all kinds of different levels and in different tasks. And one of the first things that we actually did when I was in graduate school and first studying this is we set up a lab with a putting green. And we invited professional golfers in. And we put them under pressure and looked to see what happened, if they got worse in terms of how they putted.

19:32Oh, it's called the yips, right? When you, like, just completely whiff the ball, but you're actually a very good golfer? Yeah. I mean, the yips is one way that it's been described or just choking under pressure. and golf is a great sport to study this because people certainly can play differently depending on what's on the line and who's around them. What did those golfers tell you? It was really interesting. So we had pretty high-level golfers, whether it was Division I golf team or some professional golfers. And one thing that they told us is that when they putted well, they actually couldn't really remember what they were doing.

20:08They were sort of in a zone. and when we asked them for their memory they couldn't tell us much. It's, you know, why I always think professional athletes after a really good game either thank their moms or they thank God. Like when people ask them questions they can't tell you what they did because they were playing in a sense out of their mind. They weren't focusing on what they were doing. But when they performed poorly they actually were paying a lot of attention to every step of what they were doing. And this gave us insight that maybe counterintuitively one of the reasons people flub under pressure, especially in athletics, is they start paying too much attention to their performance, things that should just run on autopilot.

20:53Do we know how, I guess, good someone has to be as an athlete or I guess any skill that they have, public speaking or anything where they're under pressure. Is there a level of achievement that they reach when they can do this autopilot thing and don't have to talk themselves through every step while they're actually doing it? It's a really good question, and I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer. And we're all really expert at certain things. Like, you shuffle down the stairs all the time, and if I asked you what you were doing with your knee, you'd probably fall on your face. So we're all experts in certain things.

21:27So this actually happened to me. Not under pressure, just I was carrying a laundry basket down the stairs. And I was like, be careful, be careful. And I looked and I felt very nervous about falling. So I guess that is high pressure. And I was thinking so much that I flubbed it and fell and actually broke my foot. Wow. Yeah. So I have actually experienced that. It turns out it would have been better if you just hummed a song or thought of a key word and just kept on going down the stairs. Yeah. I mean, there's something actually very reassuring about this idea of our brain being able to take over without us having to pay attention.

22:08Yeah. I mean, it's how we do all sorts of things in our lives. I mean, we're getting bombarded with all sorts of information that we don't pay attention to at particular moments. And sometimes, like, you're probably not thinking about your foot right now, but now you are because I told you about it. We do a lot of things outside of conscious control, and a lot of what my research has shown is actually you have to trust yourself and be able to perform that way because that's how you're going to have the best outcome. Sian Bylock picks up from the TED stage. My research team and I have studied this phenomenon of over-attention, and we call it paralysis by analysis.

22:46In one study, we asked college soccer players to dribble a soccer ball and to pay attention to an aspect of their performance that they would not otherwise attend to. We asked them to pay attention to what side of the foot was contacting the ball. We showed that performance was slower and more error-prone when we drew their attention to the step-by-step details of what they were doing. When the pressure is on, we're often concerned with performing at our best, and as a result, we try and control what we're doing to force the best performance. A lot of it comes down to the prefrontal cortex, that front part of our brain that sits over our eyes and usually helps us focus in positive ways.

23:31It often gets hooked on the wrong things. The end result is that we actually screw up. It feels important to mention gymnastics. Simone Biles is, of course, the most famous example of being at the absolute top of her field and then dropping out after experiencing what people in gymnastics call the twisties, this sense of not knowing where your body is in space. Is that different than what you're talking about, paralysis by analysis? No, I mean, I actually think it's really similar in terms of this idea that all of a sudden what had gone on autopilot, what she knew how to do, didn't feel right.

24:16And then when she needs to focus on where she's going to land, for example, she isn't able to. And so it's a form of your performance changing because of what's happening mentally. She didn't say, I've injured my foot, right? She injured her ability to attend to what she wanted and to not attend to what she didn't. And do you think stress, anxiety, the pressure of the moment makes that out-of-syncness happen between the brain and the body? Or could that have happened at any point? Well, I think the yips, which sometimes just creep up out of nowhere in golf and other sports and, you know, in baseball it's happened.

25:02And sometimes it happens out of nowhere. But there is a body of research that suggests that when you are really stressed, when all eyes are on you, that actually can be an avenue that changes how you think about how you're going to perform and can induce some of whether it's the twisties or the yips or performing poorly under pressure. So talk us through what you think are some easy hacks, I guess, to not let our prefrontal cortex get hooked on the wrong things. Well, first, I think practice is key. Not just practicing a toast you have to give at a wedding or a speech without anyone watching you.

25:42You've got to practice under the conditions you're going to perform under. So if you're giving that toast and you want to practice to perfection, you've got to practice in front of your friends. You've got to make yourself a little nervous. Even practicing in front of a mirror, it increases self-consciousness so that you're ready to go when you're on the big stage or it's that big day. I read that the golfer Jack Nicklaus used to think about his pinky toes. Yeah. That's another idea. It's sort of a crutch to not overthink the step-by-step details. So either thinking about your pinky toe or having a keyword or a mantra or a swing thought, anything that sort of takes you from spending too much time dwelling on the details of what you're doing.

26:28So when I was playing soccer and then lacrosse, I started the game with a song. Like I always had a Take It Easy by the Eagles in my head. And now when I go into an important talk or presentation, it pops up in my head. I start singing it. That's your soundtrack for doing, like, well without stressing out. That is my soundtrack. So I do have to ask, you have a very stressful job. But when you were first learning about all of these things, about what was going on in our brains, did it change the way that you approached your work? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think for me, the most exciting part of my work is showing that you can get better at things with practice and you can learn how to perform and lead in different situations.

27:20And so for me, the idea that you're not born a choker or a thriver, that everyone has to practice and that's how you are able to show what you know when it matters most, I think gives me hope. And hello, class of 2024. This is so exciting. At Dartmouth, we had commencement this weekend. We had Roger Federer gave this commencement speech, which was absolutely amazing. Today, I want to share a few lessons I've relied on. And he talked about this whole idea that even though oftentimes people would say he was effortless in what he did, it was the farthest thing from the truth. Effortless is a myth.

27:58I mean it. I say that as someone who has heard that word a lot. Effortless. People would say my play was effortless. Most of the time, they meant it as a compliment. But it used to frustrate me when they would say he barely broke a sweat. Or he's even trying. I mean, I want to make clear to people who maybe aren't tennis fans that, you know, he is one of the greatest players of all time. And one of the key things he's known for is being cool as a cucumber under pressure. Yeah, he had to train himself. to be consistent. The truth is, I had to work very hard to make it look easy. I spent years whining, swearing, throwing my racket before I learned to keep my cool.

28:44And then he spent a lot of time practicing how not to pay attention to what he was doing in those moments, how to trust himself and what he knew. I didn't get where I got on pure talent alone. I got there by trying to outwork my opponents. I believe in myself, but belief in yourself has to be earned. Trusting yourself is a talent. Embracing the process, loving the process is a talent. I mean, what a life lesson for those students to hear right at a pivotal moment when they are about to embark on a very uncertain journey. It was a life lesson for me, right? It's never too late to go back to those basics and to be in a situation where you really, you feel you can trust yourself in that most important situation.

29:29And whenever, still to this day, whenever I give talks where I'm a little nervous, I remind myself that I know my material, my research better than anyone else in the room, which is true. And so even if I mess up or don't get everything exactly right, like, I'm probably the harshest critic of myself relative to anyone else. And that's pressure relieving in a way. That's cognitive scientist and Dartmouth College president Sian Bylock. Her book is called Choke, What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To. You can see her full talk at TED.com.