In the highest theatres of performance, I believe we have turned a bit of a corner. Twenty, thirty, maybe even forty years ago, high performance tended to be described in this harsh, intense way, where winning at all costs was the mark of a true champion.
A few athletes in particular come to mind when I think about this type of mindset. Think of the most famous boxer of all time, Muhammad Ali, describing his approach to training: “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'”
Or even Michael Jordan’s approach to competing and winning, “my innate personality is to win at all costs. If I have to do it myself, I’m going to do it.”
This was seemingly always the most common approach to be the best and perform at the highest level. There is a level of pain involved that you have to fight through in order to win. It shouldn’t be enjoyable, it can’t be fun - that comes after.
Listening to high performers speak about their craft now sounds a little different.
Here is Luke Doncic, for example:
This is one of the best basketball players describing one of the more intense playoff basketball series of the season as fun. “We were all locked in. It was fun,” is what he says when describing that series. He doesn’t speak of the pain of the competition, but the enjoyment that comes from having the opportunity to be there.
Even outside of sports, high performance doesn’t have to be steeped in pain. Here is Andrew Wiles, a famous British mathematician who proved Fermat's Last Theorem:
Wiles describes the “personal battle” that he was engaged in for 7 years as being enjoyable, no matter how hard it had been. He recognises that there were hard times, setbacks, but the true enjoyment of the work proved enough to make him persist through any struggles that may have appeared.
In golf, enjoying competition at the highest level might look something like this:
Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
It comes from this year’s Masters, where the Swedish wunderkind Ludvig Aberg is competing for the first time - arguably the one major championship in golf that every single professional golfer wants to win more than anything. He is 24 years old, turned professional a few months ago, and within a few shots of winning in his first go around at Augusta. After a steady front 9, he decides to have a snack going to hole 10, but a fan inadvertently smacks his granola bar out of his hand. Instead of reacting to it negatively, he simply takes it in stride and makes a joke of it. He has the presence to see that moment and enjoy it, rather than let it be an excuse that he was steered off course by a slightly too enthusiastic young patron.
You can only imagine what the rest of his round looked like. He was light on his feet, joking with his caddie, smiling, high fiving, acknowledging the fans - performing at the highest level (good enough for solo 2nd), but not letting the pressure create a painful experience.
This is the corner that I believe we have turned. We have recognized that pain and suffering leads only to more pressure and pressure cannot always lead to the highest level of performance. Pressure will always be there - both external and internal - but it shouldn’t be the medium of high performance. I am not downplaying the idea of working hard and suffering a little bit in training, but in competition the intrinsic value of competing, of completing the task at hand, can be enough to win.