Ona, 15

Her story

I could feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on me. I didn’t want to look, to see the confusion and disappointment.

I was winning the tennis match in the final set super tie break 7-0. I was three measly points away from victory. But the internal voices had intruded. Every sentence that had run through my head started with, “What if she comes back? What if I lose? What would they say?” The worst was my thoughts had become a reality. I amazingly lost 7-10. My legs shaking, eyes tearing up,  I knew what was next. Disappointment and failure! 
 
I grew a dependence on people's approval, and a need to perform. Pleasing everyone around me became a priority.

My coach had once told me, “The day you learn to not care about what people think about you, you will be the happiest person alive.” That was impossible I thought. Because there was always a voice in my head that would nag at me, “What if something goes wrong? What will people think? ” The outcome of any of these questions always felt like a negative one. I seemed to have a fixation and grasping whatever control I could and something I knew was uncontrollable. It was inconceivable to me how I could feel a sense of pride in myself if being the best tennis player or the student receiving the best grades, wasn’t a part of my present reality. 
 
If there are key elements that have changed my perspective on life, it’s dealing with my anxiety and fear of failure, and most of all gaining confidence in who I am. I admit I owe a lot of my progress to working with a type of life coach, a sports psychologist. I remember the first meeting landing in a simple office, a temporary plastic-built-looking structure. It had four sturdy, stark, and empty white walls surrounding us and two hard plastic chairs next to a wooden square table…nothing else…. I looked around shocked at the simplicity of the room. This place and this person were going to change my life? I was expecting someone complex, intimidating, and even fearful, and a luxurious place.

But I learned that much like the room, performance psychology was simple, like four sturdy white walls, I had just been imagining something totally different.

Apparently, the room was like my boxed-in thoughts. That was the first lesson I had learned in the room. “Distorted” was how he had described my thoughts. I had communicated my fear of mishitting a ball and what that would make my coach,  my parents, my friends, and people watching think. “Well, what if you do?” He had asked. I was ready to throw at him all the horrible possibilities I had in mind, but my mind, like the walls, remained blank. I remember the slight twinkle in his eye, as he watched me pull up the drapes on my thoughts.

This illogical fear he had told me, came from no one but myself. He said he knew that nothing would happen if I missed the ball, much similar to if I made a mistake.

That it was one point, one moment. And that as long as my biggest focus was applying what I had learned to the next point, the next moment in my life, I would be okay. The fear of judgment, he later explained, all really came from me. The looks I thought coaches would give me, the whispers I thought I would hear, and the times I felt I could read my dad’s thoughts of disappointment, all were masks and behind them all stood my drive for perfection and fear of rejection. Once I learned how to channel my focus to my actual actions and not possible consequences of possible mistakes, I learned to live more at peace, with an openness to enjoy sports and my life. It was also an important lesson to gain confidence and know I could trust myself that if these imaginary scenarios came to life, I could face them. I learned both the unreasonable thoughts I had about myself and the voices that gossiped behind my back, were both voices unworthy of being in my life.