Mind Games: Fear of failure and success is the great battle within

Imagine walking on a beam on the ground 30 centimetres in width and two metres in length.Not too hard you just put one foot in front of the other and walk forward.

Now imagine walking on that same beam 10 metres above the ground. The apparatus hasn't changed, yet all of a sudden it seems like an incredible feat. Perhaps you are unsure you can succeed, or perhaps you know you can do it but are afraid of the consequences if you miss a step.

Welcome to the fear of failure.

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Fear of failure is anchored in the dreaded feeling all athletes have experienced at one point or another the agony of defeat. Rather than embracing competition as a challenge, an athlete can perceive it as a threat.

Fear of failure is actually the fear of the consequences that come from failure. For example, at the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, Canadian speed skater Jeremy Wotherspoon was favoured to win in the 500 metres. But right at the start of his signature event, Wotherspoon caught an edge and fell to the ice. In that instant, any hopes of winning the gold medal werelost.

Four years later, he looked for redemption in Turin. He believed he had to win the gold medal to silence his critics. Anything short of this would be a failure for him.As he later explained: "I think a large percentage of me was worried about [looking] like I choked."

In the end, he finished ninth, and later said that loss was even more painful than 2002.

So, what happened?

Distracted from 'the process'

When athletes focus on the fear of failing, they can become distracted away from the "process" the actions they must execute to perform well.

Consider the balance beam analogy. In principle, if we just focused on placing one foot in front of the other, we should have no problems walking across it. However, the fear of what can happen if we miss a step may in fact lead us to do the very thing we aim to avoid.

The most successful athletes learn to detect the early warning signs of when their focus shifts to fears. In doing so, they can reframe their thoughts and turn their attention back to a winning mindset. Trying to compete with the fear of failure is like trying to compete with a bag of bricks on your back. Those negativethoughts will weigh you down.

On the other side of the spectrum is the fear of success. Less common but offering an equally potent negative impact on performance, individuals fearing success perceive it as a threat. It may seem incredible that an athlete could be afraid of being their best, after all isn't that why they are working so hard?

And while the fear of success might seem similar to a fear of failure, their perceived consequences separate them.

With success comes the pressure to continue to match or surpass a great performance. The fear of failing to live up to a new set of expected results can breed the fear of success and cause athletes to remove themselves from competition. Additionally, loneliness, guiltand the realization of one's true potential have been found to be associated with the fear of success.

No stranger to this phenomenon is skier Dara Howell.

After capturing gold in slopestyle at the Sochi Olympic Games, 5,000 people stood in the cold in her hometown of Huntsville, Ont.,to award Howell a key to the city and name a street after her. She later explained she felt ashamed and undeserving of her medal.

Reflecting on her success at the time, she concluded it was more luck than the culmination of her efforts. After Sochi, Howell took a season off and then competed sparingly in the following two years. She said she lacked the zest, confidence and success she once had.

It would take her almost three years to rediscover her love of skiing and at the same time embrace walking the tight rope between failure and success.

It appears this approach paid off, as she will be competing in Pyeongchang.

The struggle between fear and confidence can feel like a ping-pong battle in an athlete's head.

Devils vs. angels

Two-time Olympic silver medallist and three-time world champion Patrick Chan perhaps said it best: "There is a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other side. It's a constant battle between positive and negative thoughts."

Confidence is tricky thing. Positive past performances can inflate an athlete's confidence and a string of inferior performances can deflate it.

When working with athletes, I spend a great deal of time of reminding them "what they think about, they bring about." If they are consumed with fear and negative thoughts, what they so desperately want to avoid will indeed happen.

In most cases, the best way to overcome fear is to confront it head on, which more often than not leads to the conclusion that it was unfounded. To quote Mark Twain, "Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."

The fears of failure or success are natural experiences for any athlete competing at the Olympic Games. The ability to accept and embrace them may ultimately be the razor-thin difference between glory and unfulfilled potential.