Day 11 – The Agony of Almost: Learning to Let Go and Move On | The Game Inside the Games

Nastia Liukin (0:00)

Day 11 from Paris. A tenth, a hundredth, a thousandth of a point or second. Less than a blink of an eye. Can make or break an athlete's dream? How do athletes respond to these moments? Let's take a look.

Michael Gervais (0:16)

Welcome back, or welcome to The Game Inside the Games on Finding Mastery. I'm Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist.

Nastia Liukin (0:25)

And I'm Nastia Liukin, Olympic gold medalist, and we are here in Paris. And in this special series, we unlock the psychology of pivotal, often unseen moments that can make or break an athlete's dream. What's it like to focus a lifetime of experience into one performance, a single moment?

Michael Gervais (0:41)

What goes on inside the minds of the brightest stars while the whole world is watching? Welcome back to Paris, and let's dive into The Game Inside the Games.

Nastia Liukin (0:51)

Welcome back to Paris in The Game Inside the Games, presented by Microsoft Co-Pilot.

Michael Gervais (0:55)

So listen to this. In a nail-biting race, lasting over six and a half minutes, the Netherlands women four-person skulls boat nearly missed the gold, finishing just 0.15 seconds behind Great Britain. According to Co-Pilot, that's roughly the time it takes for an eye to blink. A truly heartbreaking finish.

Nastia Liukin (1:17)

So how do you bounce back from that kind of defeat? It actually brings up our recent conversation with Katie Hoff. How do you not replay that over and over and over in your mind? So let's talk about that.

Michael Gervais (1:29)

When that happens, we are flooded with lots of emotions. So quick little science here. Go back a couple hundred thousand years ago. Our brain was designed to figure out how to scan the world to find safety. And when there was something dangerous that happened, it was meant the mechanism in our body is to flood ourselves with emotion. So we pay attention, but we're paying attention to the danger and the risk, to the threat, to the thing that is not leading to safety. All right. There's no kind of separate little section in the brain for an Olympic moment. So it's the same mechanism. So what happens in these moments is that when we're flooded with emotions, what we need to be able to do is understand how to work with those emotions. And if you're waiting for the games to be able to figure that out, you're very, very late. So the best of the best of the best have done this work, you know, maybe 16 years ago, for 16 years.

And say that it's just a couple of years old, because they got to the psychology piece a bit late in their, you know, illustrious career. That's fine, too. So what ends up happening is you get the flood of emotion. What you need to do is know how to work with that emotion, and then be able to point your attention to where you want to go, not be, let's call it stuck in the emotional swirl. And that's really tough to do. Like you have to train how to process emotions. This whole experience at the Olympics right now, it's an emotional experience.

Nastia Liukin (3:04)

Regardless of the outcome. You know, from start to finish. I mean, every single part of that process, the time you step foot onto the competition floor or mat or arena, whatever it is, until the end. And it doesn't matter if you get a gold or no medal at all.

It's filled with so much emotion.

Michael Gervais (3:22)

And we've talked about this a handful of times now, but silver medals and fourth have a lot in common.

Nastia Liukin (3:29)

I would say they're the worst.

Michael Gervais (3:30)

They're the worst, yeah. And then I would say with time, you'd probably want the silver over the fourth.

Nastia Liukin (3:35)

Probably, yes.

Michael Gervais (3:36)

And the reason they are so difficult is...

Nastia Liukin (3:39)

Well, when you win a silver medal at the Olympics, let's start off by saying it's incredible, right? It's absolutely incredible to win any Olympic medal, but...

Michael Gervais (3:47)

And it's really, really, really hard to do.

Nastia Liukin (3:50)

Absolutely.

Michael Gervais (3:51)

These are the best in the world competing for the same prizes, and it's very hard to do.

Nastia Liukin (3:56)

It really is. But when you're that close to winning a gold medal, regardless of how close, regardless of how much you miss that gold medal podium by, it's like you just want to go back in time and redo it all over again because you know not only are you capable, but you are so close. And in that fourth place position, you were just so close to being on the podium, to getting an Olympic medal and to so many. And again, I don't discredit as a bronze medal at the Olympics, but for so many, that is the most that they can do. That is their gold medal.