BY RONGERACI46 menshealth.com.au
A
TACTICSChoking under stress can derail a
game, a date, a workout – even a
career. But preventing it involves
the same thing that got you into this
pressure-filled situation: prepYou Got This!
BLOWING THE JOB-INTERVIEW
answer you had down pat. Missing
that gimme putt to lose the charity
tournament. Letting her leave with
those words still in your throat. A
choke can alter your life and change
how you see yourself in small or
pivotal ways.
Psychologist Sian Beilock
remembers her biggest mental
collapse. She was a gifted soccer
player with Olympic aspirations until
one game when she was goalkeeping
for California State. “I was playing
well until I realised the national coach
was standing behind me, and then
I had one of the worst games of my
life,” she recalls. “I was so frustrated,
I never recovered. It took me out of
soccer at the highest level.”The experience also nudged
her to become one of the leading
researchers of the phenomenon
at the University of Chicago and
inspired her to write Choke: What the
Secrets of the Brain Reveal About
Getting It Right When You Have
To. Since researchers first began
looking at choking in the 1980s, the
most commonly accepted culprit
has been “thinking too much”—
coping with anxiety by obsessing
over body movement in an attempt
to be flawless. It’s termed “explicit
monitoring,” and cognitive and
neuroscience have since proved that
this tendency does indeed interfere
with the brain processes that fluidly
glide you through well-learned tasks.
“If you’re shuffling down the stairs