The dangers of elite performance.

As I reflect on the wonderful spectacle that the 2024 Olympic games gave us, I like many of you have become aware of what a fantastic arena of human potential and spirit they are. It is clear the benefits that come from discipline and resilience and setting oneself targets and goals to achieve. I can well understand why many of us look to sport to gain inspiration and learn vital life lessons as so often there are great similarities between the sporting and life’s journey. It is also easy to understand why so many businesses ask elite sports people to give keynote speeches in the hope of creating similar mindsets in their employees. But we must also be aware of the ever growing stories of the potential negatives of a life of elite performance. Many of these great sporting heroes are now openly talking about great battles with depression, drug/alcohol/gambling addiction and of going to very dark places that they thought they may never come back from. Just as much as we can learn from their major achievements we can equally learn from their struggles and mistakes. One of the things I think we can all learn from is the difference between elite performance and potential. Let me leave you with no doubt I fully acknowledge the benefits of setting goals and performing to meet those goals both in sport and life, but I very often see people as a psychologist who are performing well yet are full of anxiety, depression and who report feeling tired all the time and burnt out, everything looks good from the outside but inside they are dying and very often feeling deeply alone just like many of the elite athletes. Most recently Adam Peaty the multi record and gold winning medalist has talked about where elite performance had brought him to, similar stories have come from Tyson Fury, Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps all performing well yet not feeling alive and pressurised to hide this struggle from the public’s gaze.

So How do we avoid a similar fate? Many of us can report of similar feelings in our lives. For me it is important to differentiate between performing at a high level and potentiating, for me potentiating involves performing while also growing more fully into oneself, this growing into oneself is held as an equal or even greater priority than just performing highly, it would seem that the human condition demands more than performance to be happy, it yearns for wholeness, roundedness and authentic connection to others, while performance on it’s own can lead to short and medium term success but inevitably burnout, just like a lot of our successful athletes who then can’t perform.