All of us suffer through mistakes, losses and failures. Often, we establish seemingly automatic thoughts to protect ourselves. These ideas learn to predict that a distressing situation will happen, again, the next time similar circumstances exist. A point in time, that contains a misstep, often takes on a life of its own. That point in time begins to define future moments in time, our brains begin to predict more distress, even before the next situation happens. Eventually, our anticipation of failure sets in, without many of us realizing our optimism, our hope, has changed to pessimism and fear. Has your optimism and hope been undermined by the past?
A Lesson from a 5-time Wimbledon Champion
In a YouTube video, Roger Federer, the highly regarded professional tennis player, explained to Dartmouth graduates that he became as successful as he did through mastering his thinking. He said a point is just a point. Mr. Federer revealed that his legendary successes were the result of winning just slightly more than 50% of his points. He explained that he considered each point, won or lost, as over when it ended. To him, each next point, every point in time (see below) creates a completely new moment. The point before does not define what will happen in the next one.
Explaining the Thinking Error of One Point is All Points
As a psychologist, I’ve worked with lots of patients who live through one or two negative experiences, each one similar (but not the same) as the last. These one or two negative experiences color thinking about the “next time.” Then, unfortunately, the successive opportunities (like the next point in a tennis match) become defined as the next loss or failure even before it happens. Before the moment in the future has arrived, with it’s new opportunity, the opportunity is no longer thought of as an opportunity to succeed. Instead, the past, like a ghost from A Christmas Carol, visits our minds, saying this is a chance only to fail. Why do so many of us think that way?
The answer lives in how we learn to think, and the effect of emotions on that learning. When an experience triggers strong, negative emotions, our brains take that information, and create a memory trace colored with the risk to lose. We are built to try and avoid feeling negative emotions repeatedly. Both the pain of a mistake, and the distress that comes when we don’t like the pain. We often focus on only the risk of future loses, tending to avoid feeling that negative emotion, again, actually dreading it.
Our brains, in the more archaic, ancient survival parts of it, try to protect us from hurting again. Not by not just remembering, but anticipating the loss or mistake again…and we feel the dread as if it has already happened again. If we listen carefully, we can often hear these predictions of catastrophic failures and losses.
Changing the Negative, Catastrophic Thinking Errors and Predictions: Personal Agency
Another part of our brain (not the automatic and old part of the brain), exits to reason out the reality of a given situation. Psychologists call that “thinking” part of our minds the executive functions. Dr. Marsha Linehan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLnUvxg_9po) coined the term “the wise mind” to describe the executive functions that can over-ride the negative anticipations through changing the thinking pattern.
- First, we must recognize the catastrophic idea, and then willfully create an alternative prediction. We use our wise mind to see the unhealthy prediction of always failing as based in the past “point” in time, and not necessarily realistic.
- Second, we think all of it through, by gauging the reality of such predictions, and begin to shift our mental framework toward taking another risk, giving success an even chance of occurrence. We reshape our predictions, based on the evidence of our capabilities to succeed and manage life. We rename the next point in time as an opportunity to succeed.
- Third, we act. We expose ourselves to the next opportunity and take the risk. We behave based on the belief that next point in time as a new, fresh opportunity. The next point has an equal chance of success or loss. We reason to try anew.
- And when we succeed, our brains learn a new framework about points in time being stand alone from each other. We learn that we have “agency” to master our future opportunities each time they present themselves.
The Rest of the Story
Federer told the graduates about his loss of the sixth Wimbledon championship. He entered the grass courts already pessimistic about the match. His opponent had beaten him badly in the French Open just recently. That loss began to define what would happen to him on center court at Wimbledon.
He only began to change his beliefs, and behaviors, in the third set, when he almost overcame the loss of the first two sets. But even though he lost at the very end, he became informed about the role of these negative predictions. He changed his beliefs to see every point as a new point. The same “new opportunity” thinking can be seen in golf (each stroke is a new game), and in just regular life. Wins, losses, ties….they are all points in time, only defining that point, that moment. They don’t define how the next opportunity will turn out. We define the next point, as we play it, or work it, to succeed. We take our personal agency, our abilities to adapt, improvise, and overcome, into every new point in time.
If you are a teen or young adult, struggling with a world view that predicts loss and failure, there’s help. The anxiety you feel as you anticipate the next loss in that future “point in time” can be turned around, with help if you need it. Lumate Health has mental health providers who know these issues well, and can work with you to become the masters of your anxiety. Our goal: to change from anxiety controlling you, to you controlling your anxiety.
Additional Resources:
https://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36704685
https://www.abct.org/fact-sheets/anxiety-disorders