Day 11 – The Agony of Almost: Learning to Let Go and Move On | The Game Inside the Games
Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais
Dr. Michael Gervais
4.6 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You work your whole life towards one goal… and you come up short by a fraction of a second. How do you bounce back from that? How do you move forward?
On Day 11 of The Game Inside The Games, gold medalist Nastia Liukin and high-performance psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais explore the psychological and emotional complexities that athletes face when they fall just short of a gold medal or podium.
They discuss the flood of emotions that can overwhelm an athlete in pivotal moments, the importance of processing those emotions, and how to use past experiences to fuel future success.
With personal stories and expert insights, this conversation pulls back the curtain on what an athlete experiences when they come up just short – and how they can turn the agony of "almost" into a driving force for excellence.
This episode is brought to you by KPMG and Microsoft.
KPMG is unlocking the value of Copilot for Microsoft 365. Learn more at https://kpmg.com/microsoftcopilot
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Day 11 from Paris, a 10th, a 100th, a thousandth of a point or second. |
| 0:06.5 | Less than a blink of an eye can make or break an athlete's dream. |
| 0:11.0 | How do athletes respond to these moments? Let's take a look. |
| 0:16.3 | Welcome back or welcome to The Game Inside the Games on Finding Mastery. |
| 0:20.8 | I'm Dr. Michael Jervay by Trade and Training a high-performance psychologist. |
| 0:25.0 | And I'm Nastay Lucan, Olympic Gold Medalist, and we are here in Paris. |
| 0:28.0 | And in this special series, we unlock the psychology of pivotal, often unseen moments that can make or break an athlete's dream. |
| 0:36.6 | What's it like to focus a lifetime of experience into one performance, a single moment? |
| 0:41.5 | What goes on inside the minds of the brightest stars while the whole world is watching? |
| 0:45.9 | Welcome back to Paris and let's dive into the game inside the games. |
| 0:51.2 | Welcome back to Paris and the game inside the Games presented by Microsoft Co-Pilot. |
| 0:55.3 | So listen to this. |
| 0:56.4 | In a nail-biding race lasting over six and a half minutes, the Netherlands women four-person skulls boat nearly missed the gold, finishing |
| 1:06.1 | just 0.15 seconds behind Great Britain. |
| 1:09.9 | According to Co-Pilot, that's roughly the time it takes for an eye to blink. |
| 1:14.6 | A truly heartbreaking finish. |
| 1:17.1 | So how do you bounce back from that kind of defeat? |
| 1:20.3 | It actually brings up our recent conversation with Katie Hoff. |
| 1:23.0 | How do you not replay that over and over and over in your mind? |
| 1:28.0 | So let's talk about that. |
| 1:29.0 | When that happens, we are flooded with lots of emotions. Okay, so quick little science here. Go back a couple |
| 1:38.8 | hundred thousand years ago. Our brain was designed to figure out how to scan the world to find safety. |
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