Mental Performance Isn’t What You Think

“Just switch your brain off.” “Don’t think about it.” “Think positive.” “Don’t put pressure on yourself.” “You just need to reassure yourself.”

We hear this kind of advice all the time, particularly when performance matters. Before a race, an important meeting or a difficult moment, we are often encouraged to get our thoughts under control, stay positive and avoid letting nerves or pressure interfere.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these suggestions. Sometimes changing the way we think can help. Sometimes reassurance is exactly what we need. And sometimes deliberately shifting our attention away from something unhelpful is useful.

The problem is that these suggestions can give us a very narrow idea of what it means to train the mental side of performance.

They can make mental performance sound like a matter of having the right thoughts, feeling the right emotions and somehow keeping everything else out of the way.

But our minds do not work quite so neatly.

The idea of a “mental game”

We tend to speak about the mental side of performance as though it were a separate component that can be switched on when we need it. Physical preparation happens in training. Technical skills are developed through repetition. Tactics can be studied and practised. And then, somewhere alongside all of this, there is the “mental game”.

This way of thinking can be useful up to a point, but it also creates a misleading picture.

Our thoughts, emotions, attention, expectations, interpretations and physical sensations are already part of every performance. They influence what we notice, how we respond to what happens, what decisions we make and how we continue when circumstances change.

The mental side of performance is therefore not something that appears only when things go wrong.

It is present when we feel confident and when we doubt ourselves. When we are calm and when we are under pressure. When a performance unfolds exactly as expected and when something unexpected forces us to adapt.

The question is not whether we can eliminate these experiences.

It is what we do with them.

We cannot simply stop thinking

One of the most intuitive pieces of advice is also one of the least straightforward: don’t think about it.

If we are worried about an upcoming race, we might try not to think about the race. If we are afraid of making a mistake, we might tell ourselves not to think about making a mistake. If a particular thought keeps returning, we may decide that the solution is to push it away.

Yet deliberately trying not to think about something can make it surprisingly difficult to stop thinking about it.

Research on thought suppression has demonstrated this paradoxical effect. When we try to prevent a thought from entering consciousness, part of our attention can become occupied with monitoring whether that thought is appearing. The attempt to control the thought can therefore keep it psychologically present.

This does not mean that we have no influence over our thoughts. We clearly do. Nor does it mean that every unwanted thought is important or needs to be explored. It simply means that direct control is not always the most effective way of relating to what happens in our minds.

And this distinction matters when we think about mental training.

Positive thinking is not the whole answer

The same issue appears in the advice to “think positive”.

Positive thinking can certainly be useful. The way we interpret a situation can influence our emotions, our behaviour and our willingness to continue. But effective mental preparation is not necessarily about replacing every negative thought with a positive one.

A difficult situation does not become easier simply because we tell ourselves that everything will be fine.

Sometimes we need to recognise that something is difficult. Sometimes we need to acknowledge uncertainty. Sometimes we need to question an unhelpful interpretation rather than simply replacing it with its opposite.

Consider the difference between telling ourselves, I cannot fail, and being able to respond to the possibility of failure without becoming overwhelmed by it.

The second capacity is considerably more demanding.

It does not require us to manufacture confidence or eliminate uncertainty. It requires us to remain able to think and act effectively while uncertainty is present.

That is a very different understanding of mental preparation.

Being nervous does not mean being mentally unprepared

Performance can also create a difficult relationship with emotions.

Nerves before competition are often treated as evidence that something has gone wrong. Pressure is something we are supposed to eliminate. Fear is interpreted as a lack of confidence. Frustration is seen as something that needs to be controlled before it affects performance.

But difficult emotions are not necessarily signs of poor mental preparation.

A person can be nervous and still perform exceptionally well. Someone can feel pressure because something genuinely matters to them. A difficult emotion can provide information about a situation without determining what happens next.

Trying to eliminate every uncomfortable feeling would therefore set an impossible standard.

There is an important difference between experiencing an emotion and being unable to respond effectively while experiencing it.

Mental preparation becomes much more interesting when we make that distinction.

Stress is not always the problem

The same applies to stress.

We often talk about stress as though they were an external force that get in the way of performance. Yet stress is also part of what makes many performances meaningful. If nothing mattered, there would be little reason to care about the outcome.

The goal cannot therefore be to create a state in which we never feel stress.

The more useful question is what happens to us when stress increases.

Do we become more rigid? Do we rush? Do we lose access to skills we normally have? Do we become overly focused on the outcome? Do we start interpreting every mistake as evidence that we are failing?

Or can we notice what is happening and remain capable of responding to the situation in a way that serves the performance?

This is a more nuanced idea of mental strength than simply “staying calm”.

We cannot reassure ourselves out of uncertainty

There are also situations in which there is simply no reassuring answer.

We may not know whether we will be selected. We may not know how our body will respond on race day. We may be entering a competition against people who are stronger than we are. We may be taking on a professional challenge without knowing whether it will work.

In these situations, telling ourselves that everything will be fine can provide temporary comfort, but it does not remove the uncertainty. And perhaps that is not what mental preparation should try to do.

A capacity that allows us to function only when we feel certain, confident and in control will always be vulnerable to circumstances that take certainty, confidence or control away.

A more robust capacity is the ability to continue thinking, deciding and acting when some of those things are missing.

The problem with “mental toughness”

This is one reason why the idea of mental toughness can be both attractive and limiting.

Mental toughness is often associated with qualities such as determination, resilience, emotional control and the ability to keep going despite difficulty. These qualities can undoubtedly matter in performance.

But when “mental toughness” becomes synonymous with never doubting ourselves, never showing emotion, never being affected by pressure or simply pushing through discomfort, it creates another unrealistic standard.

It can even turn an ordinary human response into a perceived personal failure: if I feel nervous, perhaps I am not mentally strong enough. If I lose concentration, perhaps I lack discipline. If I become frustrated, perhaps I need to toughen up. If a difficult performance affects me emotionally, perhaps I am too fragile.

This way of thinking leaves very little room for understanding what is actually happening.

And without understanding, it becomes difficult to know what there is to train.

From eliminating to responding

Perhaps the most important shift is therefore a relatively simple one.

Mental performance is not about becoming someone who never thinks, doubts, fears or feels pressure. It is not about creating a perfectly calm mind. It is not about replacing every negative thought with a positive one. And it is not about becoming unaffected by difficult experiences. It is about developing our ability to respond effectively to what happens, internally and externally, while we perform.

That might sometimes involve changing a thought. It might involve shifting attention, regulating activation, interpreting a situation differently or using a particular strategy. But these are not universal solutions. Their usefulness depends on the person, the situation and what is actually happening.

This is why mental preparation cannot be reduced to a collection of reassuring phrases or techniques.

Before we can decide what to change, we need to understand what is happening.

We are not trying to become someone else

There is another important implication.

Mental training is sometimes presented as a way of becoming a more confident, calmer or tougher version of ourselves. The underlying assumption is that successful performers possess a particular psychological state that the rest of us need to reproduce.

But performance does not require us to become a different person.

A thoughtful person does not need to become fearless. A sensitive person does not need to become emotionally detached. Someone who cares deeply about an outcome does not need to stop caring.

The aim is not to erase the characteristics or experiences that make us who we are. It is to develop greater awareness of how we function, greater understanding of what influences us, and a broader range of ways to respond.

That is a very different proposition from simply trying to “get our head in the right place”.

Where does that leave us?

If mental performance is not about eliminating thoughts, avoiding difficult emotions or forcing ourselves into a permanently positive state, then we are left with a more interesting question.

What are we actually training when we train the mental side of performance?

There is more to that question than simply learning to “be mentally strong”. The mental side of performance involves a range of processes and capacities, and understanding how they interact gives us a much more useful starting point for training.

That is where we will go next.

The takeaway

Mental performance is not about having no doubts, feeling no stress or thinking only positive thoughts.

We cannot always choose what appears in our minds or how we feel in a given moment. But we can develop our ability to notice what is happening, understand its influence and respond more effectively.

Mental training therefore begins somewhere different from trying to “fix” the mind.

It begins with becoming curious about the mind we already have — and the next question is what, exactly, we can learn to train.

Sources & further reading

Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101(1), 34–52.

Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299.

Jones, G., Hanton, S., & Connaughton, D. (2007). A framework of mental toughness in the world’s best performers. The Sport Psychologist, 21(2), 243–264.