Day 82: How not to “Choke”

I have received a lot of wonderful comments from my last post: The Power of Now. In this post, I want to combine the 12 rules for life and the power of now, in order to lay out clearly why and how the life we are living, no matter how difficult it seems, is not all that bad. 

In a few words, the real enemy here is what the psychologist Daniel Kahneman (and by now you should know how much I admire him) calls “focusing illusion” an important concept in cognitive psychology to which I have previously alluded.

We tend to “think too much” about something that is usually not as important as it — but only seems important because you happen to be “thinking” about it. In fact, many people “choke” (i.e., a nickname for the act of failing something miserably when you almost win) when they’re focusing too much about winning — when they should be focusing on the very drive, chip and putt that they’re about to perform.

Jean van de Velde in 1999 British Open during which he “choked” so badly after almost winning the trophy with 3 strokes ahead. Headlines all over the golf world is “The Collapse.” Many analysts argue that he “choked” because he wasn’t able to focus in the “now” but on the British Open trophy on which his name had already been pre-engraved. Photo: doglegnews.com

Confucius then uses the example of an archery contest to illustrate the harmful effect of consciously focusing on extraneous concerns: “If you’re betting for broken bits of potsherd you can shoot with perfect skill—there is nothing at stake. If you start betting for belt buckles, you become worried about your aim. By the time you start betting for gold, you’re completely petrified. Your actual skill is the same in all three cases, but because of the relative value you place on these objects, you end up paying more attention to extraneous things. It is always the case that those who focus on the outside become clumsy on the inside.”

We couldn’t ask for a better summary of the problem facing the athletes and performers. Such people have fallen out of their usual, they have become alienated from the goals, the values, and the “flow” of play. It is not that their actual physical skill has changed, it’s that they’ve allowed concern with externalities to make them “clumsy on the inside.”

The above passage comes from a gem of a book Trying Not to Try by Professor Edward Slingerland, using an ancient Chinese way of looking at our ability to focus. When you do not pay your complete attention to the “now,” and focusing on the idea of winning, that idea of winning becomes the focusing illusion that makes you think that which is so important — more important than the action you’re about to engage in. When that happens, you happens to “choke.” the renowned researcher on this topic (and also the current President of Barnard College) Sian L. Beilock argues:

And the idea is that if you normally devote lots of cognitive resources to what you’re doing and being in a pressure-filled situation robs you of those resources, you can’t perform as well.

The writer Mark Mason writes vividly in his The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life:

Chances are you know somebody in your life who, at one time or another, did not give a fuck and then went on to accomplish amazing feats. Perhaps there was a time in your own life when you simply did not give a fuck and excelled to some extraordinary height.