It’s the start of competition season. You’re having a blast.

Practice is fun. Workouts are fun. Everything is easy. You’re enjoying yourself.

Then, the big events roll around. The events you’ve been training for. The events that really count.

Suddenly, you’re no longer enjoying yourself. You’re stressed out during training and nervous during competition. All of the fun you were having is gone. Vanished into the ether.

Now, you want the season to be over. You don’t care about the results, you just want to be done.

Why does this happen?

The fun disappears when you start to care too much. This takes your focus away from your job (i.e. training) and puts it into the future.

Making finals to impress your coach. Getting a personal best to impress your parents. Beating a rival to prove something to yourself.

These will all take place in the future, which means the “current you” has no control over them. This means all you can do is stress and worry.

In an ideal world, we would stay in the moment and the results would be irrelevant. But unfortunately, this isn’t an ideal world.

Thankfully, there is hope. This is a mindset issue, which means it’s something you can change. The only difference between the previous you and the current you are your “expectations”.

So, what do we do? How do you shift your focus away from the future results and back to training?

The answer is to remember “the reason you compete”, also known as your Big Enough Why.

Take a big step back

When you stop having fun and you find yourself worrying about the results, it’s time to take a step back.

Not to reevaluate your life or change your master plan, but to remember your Big Enough Why.

Your Big Enough Why is the reason you participate in your sport.

Here are some examples:

• playing to have fun.
• playing to enjoy the sport.
• playing to feel accomplished.
• playing to feel like you’re flying.
• playing to become a champion.
• playing to stand on top of the world.
• playing to get a world first.

These are just examples.

Everyone has their own reason. The important thing is that you find yours. Remember, whatever your reason is, it’s valid.

Here are some examples of “the results”:

• if I mess up, my teammates will laugh at me.
• if I don’t make the top ten, my coach will drop me.
• if I don’t land this skill, my parents will make me quit.

Note, there’s a difference between “the results” and your Big Enough Why. When you are focused on “the results” you are trying to avoid something, whereas when you are focused on your Big Enough Why you are trying to achieve something. And, striving to achieve something will help you stay motivated when the going gets tough.

Dealing with shifting focus

Now, you understand the difference between focusing on the present vs worrying about the future. When you focus on the present, training is easy and fun. When you worry about the future, training is hard.

So, when you notice you’ve started to worry, it’s important to shift your focus back to your job.

To help with this, you can use your Big Enough Why, which I teach you how to do in this article