Olympic athletes have to produce in the moment. All the years of physical training and mental discipline it takes to get to that highest level can evaporate when most needed. Sian Beilock, psychologist and author of Choke, studies why individuals fail to perform at their best when the stakes are the highest.
She reveals everyone has experienced what it means to "choke" whether in the middle of a speech or while parallel parking. During her research, she discovered that thinking too much may get in the way of performance. Skilled athletes use streamlined brain circuitry that bypasses the prefrontal cortex, the seat of awareness.
"When outside stresses shift attention, the prefrontal cortex stops working the way it should," she says. "We focus on aspects of what we are doing that should be out of consciousness."
In the midst of performance, to think too much about it causes a loss of instinct. It becomes paralysis by analysis.
Beilock recommends using distraction with meaningless details. For golfers, it means counting the dimples in the ball. It includes speeding up movements so the brain doesn't have time to over think.
Creative Write: Write about a choke moment in an area of performance. Do you recall what brought you back to focus? Have you ever faced this in writing?
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