Are you a former athlete? Current athlete? Or do you identify as a high-achiever? 

If so, performing can turn from something you do, to determining who you are. Performing “well” can make you feel confident. Conversely, underperforming can lead to feelings of failure, bringing up thoughts such as:

• What is wrong with me?
• I’m not good enough
• I should just quit
• Everyone is judging me

This is one of the hardest parts of being a high-performance athlete: when your performance becomes closely tied to your self-worth, success doesn’t just feel good, it starts to feel necessary. And failure doesn’t just feel disappointing, it feels personal.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with caring about your performance – it’s a key element to success. You are allowed to care. But perhaps we can get shift from allowing your performance to determine how you feel about yourself, to performing being one element of what you do without allowing it to define who you are. 

Your Performance Part

You may recognize a part of you that is highly driven. This part may constantly push you to practice more, improve your skills, and set the bar higher. This part may be afraid of making mistakes, disappointing others, or falling behind. Maybe somewhere along the way, this part may have learned that performing well brought you approval, belonging, a sense of safety, or confidence. 

This part of you may think: 

“Don’t let your guard down.”

“You can’t make that mistake again.”

“If you stop pushing, you’ll fall behind.”

“You should have done better.”

When hard work translates into success, this part’s modus operandi is reinforced and it continues to do its “job”.  However, this can come at a cost. You may find yourself replaying missteps for hours, comparing yourself to teammates, obsessing over statistics, or feeling anxious before competitions. Instead of being present in the moment, you’re monitoring your performance. Unfortunately, the part that is trying to help you succeed sometimes create so much pressure that it becomes difficult to perform freely. 

Beyond the Performance Part

Visualizing parts of ourselves allows us to get curious about their intentions and their purpose, rather than immediately trying to get rid of them.

For example, how might it feel to ask your critical part:

“What do you want for me?”

“What are you afraid might happen if I don’t perform well?”

“When did you first learn that performance mattered this much?”

You may discover that underneath the drive to succeed is something much more vulnerable – perhaps a fear of disappointing people, being rejected, losing your place, or not being good enough.

Questioning our parts’ intentions (and suspending judgement!) doesn’t mean you have to stop being ambitious. Rather, it allows for a development of a different relationship with the part of you that pushes so hard. It also allows for an appreciation of all the hard work your parts have done – they all have a part to play in your success. 

It can be helpful to explore parts from a place of curiosity and compassion. The goal is not to get rid of any of your parts, but to create more room for you to see your parts more clearly, and create more peace or ease in the relationship between you and your parts.

From Proving Yourself to Trusting Yourself

Silencing your competitive side or altering your standards and goals is not the objective. But what if you allowed space for the belief that your performance doesn’t have to determine your worth? 

Could you listen to the part that says, “We need to do better,” without letting it define you? Could you learn from mistakes without turning them into evidence that you’re not enough?

Beyond the Proverbial Arena 

For many athletes, these parts don’t disappear when the season ends. The driven part may simply find a new venue. The scoreboard may become the performance review. The coach may become your boss. The statistics may become your accomplishments, productivity, or career success.

The same part may continue whispering:

“Do more.”

“Be better.”

“Don’t fall behind.”

However, understanding this part can help us recognize that what looks like perfectionism, overworking, or relentless self-criticism may be an old strategy designed to help us feel safe, successful, or worthy. Once we recognize the old strategy, we can begin to develop a new, more sustainable one. 

If you’re curious about getting to know the parts of yourself, how they developed, what their beliefs and fears are, I encourage you to reach out for support.

And, as a final reminder, no matter if you’re performing on the field or in the boardroom, your performance is something you do, it is not the measure of who you are. 

Athletes work incredibly hard: logging countless hours of work both on and off the proverbial field, setting goals, visualizing success, pushing through discomfort. 

The difficulty begins when the mental talk shifts from: “I want to perform well,” to “I need to perform well in order to feel okay about myself.” A bad performance can suddenly feel like evidence that you’re falling behind, letting people down, or not measuring up. You might replay missteps for hours, compare yourself to teammates, obsess over statistics, or feel anxious before competitions because there is so much riding on the outcome. 

Ironically, the more pressure you put on yourself to perform, the harder it can become to be present and perform freely. Instead of being immersed in the game, part of your attention is evaluating: 

• How am I doing?
• Was that the right move?
• What are they thinking about me?
• I can’t make another mistake.

Your performance is something you do, not who you are

You can be a talented athlete and have a bad game. You can work incredibly hard and still not win. You can be prepared, disciplined, and committed and still make mistakes. 

• You are not your statistics
• You are not your ranking
• You are not your playing time
• You are not your coach’s feedback
• And you are certainly not the mistake you made in the last five minutes of the game

Your performance can give you information. It can show you where you might want to grow but doesn’t have to be a verdict on who you are.

… And this doesn’t just happen in sports

The interesting thing is that this pattern can follow us beyond athletics. The athlete who learns early that achievement brings approval may eventually become an adult who feels most valuable when they’re productive. The scoreboard becomes the annual review. The coach becomes the boss. The statistics become the accomplishments, salary, title, or praise. However, the underlying belief can remain the same:

“If I perform well, I am enough. If I don’t, I am worthless / I need to work even harder / I’m not good enough.”

But what if you could pursue excellence without needing it to prove your worth? That doesn’t mean lowering your standards or becoming less ambitious. It means learning to hold two truths at the same time: “I care deeply about how I perform” and “My performance does not determine my value.”

You can pursue excellence from a place of self-respect rather than self-doubt.

Food for thought

The next time you have a less-than-ideal performance, ask yourself:

• What am I making this performance mean about me?
• Who am I when I’m not performing?
• What do I value about myself that has nothing to do with achievement?
• Can I learn from this without using it as evidence that I’m not good enough?
• What would change if I could pursue excellence without needing it to prove my worth?

Your ambition doesn’t need to disappear. You don’t have to care less. The goal is to build a relationship with yourself where your worth isn’t constantly up for negotiation.

Your performance is part of your story. It was never meant to be the measure of your worth.

Jordan is a Registered Psychotherapist offering virtual therapy across Ontario. She works with experiences of anxiety, depression, disordered eating and sport performance from a Psychodynamic and part-informed approach. She’s probably curled up with a tea and her Kindle right now. More questions? Reach out here.