56 | Train Your Brain to Handle Anxiety Like an Athlete

•  Do you avoid things because anxiety makes them feel bigger than they are?
• Do you feel like pressure gets in your head before you even begin?
• What if you started training your mind the same way athletes train for game day? 

Anxiety often makes life feel high-stakes. A hard conversation, walking into a room, sending a text back, trying something new, it can all feel like too much before it even starts. But athletes do not wait until the big moment to get ready. They build mental strength in the small, repeated moments long before the pressure hits. 

What You’ll Learn

• Why anxiety grows when you avoid practice
 • How small daily wins build trust in yourself
 • Why a growth mindset helps lower pressure
 • How visualization prepares your brain for hard moments
 • What it means to coach yourself through anxiety
 • How to create a simple game plan for real progress 

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⚠️ Disclaimer:  Block Out the Noise provides personal insights and practical stra...

Transcript

March Madness And Mental Pressure

Jessica N. Davis 0:07

It's March madness. Brackets are getting filled out. Upsets are happening, and everyone's got an opinion on who's going all the way. But when I watch these athletes compete, I'm not just watching the game. I'm thinking about everything that happened before the cameras ever turned on. The two-a-day practices, the strength training, the rituals, the sacrifice, the way they've been talking to themselves for months, even years to get ready for moments like this. Athletes don't just train their bodies for pressure, they train their brains for it. All of that prep is how athletes handle pressure on the court. You have your own version of that pressure too. Walking in a room full of people, asking someone out, having a hard conversation, trying something new when anxiety is loud. Today I'm going to show you how to use some of the same mental skills athletes use to get your brain ready before anxiety tries to take over. Hi and welcome to Black Out the Noise, a space for teens and young adults to quiet the noise of anxiety, self-doubt, and overthinking. I'm Jessica Davis, licensed therapist, mindset coach, and the creator of the Courage Method, a framework designed to help teens and young adults show up as the most confident version of themselves. Before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about the free anxiety survival toolkit. It has coping skills, the courage method framework, audio messages to help support you before your anxiety hits. The link is in the show notes, so go get it. Also, quick reminder: this podcast is here to support and guide you, but it is not a replacement for talking to someone in real life. If you're struggling with your mental health, please reach out to a therapist. And if you're in crisis, contact emergency services or a local helpline. You don't have to go through it alone. Okay, let's jump in. Here's the thing about athletes. Most of them have been doing this since they were really young, like three and four years old. And when you're that young, you don't even realize you're practicing. You think you're just playing and having a fun time. But that's actually the genius of it. You learn to dribble a ball. Then as you get older, you learn to dribble faster. Left hand, right hand, under pressure and traffic. For swimming, you get in the pool and just enjoy being in the water. And then they teach you how to actually swim, and then you're working on laps and different types of strokes. For baseball, you start off hitting off a T, then you're hitting a ball that's thrown, and eventually you're working on strength, speed, and timing. Every sport has the same process, the same idea. The goal is to get you so good at it that you stop thinking about it. And that's actually the reverse of what happens with anxiety. Because anxiety doesn't want you to practice. Anxiety wants you to avoid, to skip, to find a reason not to show up. And the longer you avoid, the louder the anxiety gets. So what does it look like to actually practice with anxiety instead of running from it? It means staying in the discomfort just a little bit longer than you normally would. Practicing with anxiety might look like staying in the conversation two minutes longer instead of ghosting. It could look like going to class even though you want to skip or answering the one text you've been avoiding. Small things, but real things. In all honesty, it's going to look different for everyone. And that's the cool part because you get to decide what your win is. If morning anxiety hits you really hard and you dread getting out of bed every single day, your practice might be just winning the morning. Maybe that means getting up when your alarm goes off. Maybe it means not staying in bed until noon. It could be building a morning routine that gives you something solid to hold on to. It doesn't matter what you choose. What matters is that you commit to it. You identify the problem, you set your intention, and then you execute over and over and over again. And here's why that works. When you follow through on what you say you're going to do, your brain starts to trust you. The flood of negativity, the intrusive thoughts, the doubt, it starts to lose its grip because you're proving day after day that you can do this. You're training yourself. Athletes know something that a lot of people forget. Championships are not won during that championship game. They're won way before that. In the everyday, in the mundane, and the work that nobody sees, that's where you win too. So let's talk about mindset because I really feel like practice is super important, but mindset is literally the glue that holds everything together. One of the things that separates great athletes from everyone else is how they've learned to see failure. If you play any sport long enough, you're going to miss the shot, you're going to get the ball stolen, you're going to fall off the beam, strike out, miss the catch, lose the race. Every athlete knows this. But the ones who last, the ones who keep showing up, they've learned something critical. When you're in the middle of a game and something goes wrong, you don't have the option to fall apart. If you're on a team, falling apart holds everyone else back. And even if you're on your own, say you're playing tennis and you lose a set, there's another set. You have to keep moving. That forward momentum, that's the mindset. And I think that's exactly where anxiety gets it wrong. Anxiety tries to convince you that this is your only shot, that this is the only person who's going to show interest in you, the only opportunity that's coming, the only friend you're going to make, the only job worth applying for. And when you believe that everything feels like high stakes, but in all actuality, it will never be the only. There is always something next, another set, another game, another chance, another person to meet, another opportunity to find, another door that does open. That belief that there's always a next is called a growth mindset. And it takes so much pressure off of every single moment. Anxiety doesn't want you to believe that, but athletes live it. And that's one of the most powerful things you can borrow from a sports mindset and bring into your everyday life. Here's something athletes do that most people don't talk about enough. Before they ever step onto the court, the field, the trap, whatever it is, they've already been there in their mind. It's called visualization, and elite athletes use it all the time. Before a big game, they close their eyes and they walk through the whole thing. Not the fear of what could go wrong, not the worry about the crowd or the pressure. They picture everything going right, every element, every movement, every detail that they can feel and see and hear. And here's why that's so powerful. Studies show that vivid mental imagery lights up many of the same areas in your brain as the real experience. Your brain doesn't fully separate what you vividly imagine from what you actually live through. So by the time the athlete steps onto the court, their brains have already been there. It's already familiar. The anxiety of the unknown starts to shrink. Now think about what anxiety does instead. Anxiety rehearses everything going wrong. You lie awake running through every worst case scenario, every way it could fall apart, every embarrassing moment that might happen. And your brain treats all of that like it already happened too. So you walk into a situation already exhausted, already defeated, before you even started. Visualization flips that. Before a job interview, a test, a first day, picture yourself walking in calm, showing up, getting through it. Go through every detail you can. What are you wearing? What does the room feel like? What do you say? How does it feel when it goes the way you want it to? The more specific you are, and the more your brain believes it, the less anxiety has to work with. If you want, try it right now. Take 10 seconds. Picture one hard thing coming up this week. See yourself walking in, feeling nervous, but steady, doing what you need to do and getting through it. That's visualization. And it does work. Now let's talk about coaching. This is probably one of my favorite portions of this episode because every athlete has someone in their corner, someone pushing them, someone who believes in them even when they don't believe in themselves. And I'll be honest, I hated practice growing up. I really did. But I also remember times when I actually looked forward to it. And every single one of those times, it was because of the coach. A good coach makes you want to show up. A bad coach makes you dread it. In therapy, I really do see part of my role as being a coach. I push my clients because I want them to win. I want them to have success. I want them to see what they're capable of. But not every therapist is going to push the way you need to be pushed. So who in your life can be that person for you? Is it a friend, a family member, a mentor, someone who knows you who will hold you accountable without letting you off the hook? Because our excuses can get really loud. And when our excuses get loud, we start pushing back on the people who are trying to help us the most. Which is why I honestly believe the best coach you will ever have is yourself. Because even the greatest coaches in the world might not know how to reach you, but you know how to reach you. And that's the key. That inner coach needs to be firm and kind, not brutal. We're going to try one small thing today. We've done hard things before or one step. That's it. That's what a good coach sounds like. But if you're struggling to find the wording, you can also pull up a YouTube video that motivates you every single morning. Maybe it's an affirmation, something you come back to that reminds you to ease up on the pressure. Maybe winning the day just means deciding to be kind to yourself. That counts. This is all a win. And over time, just like an athlete, you will start to see progress. And the more progress you see, the more you'll want to keep going. So here's what I want you to do after this episode. Be the coach. Sit down, get diligent, and write out your game plan. Think about how you want to approach your anxiety. What does winning look like for you? What is practice going to be? What's the one thing you're committing to? And I mean one thing. Start with one only. So you can actually take action, see the progress, and feel it. That's how athletes build momentum. And that's how you're going to build yours. If you found value in today's episode, I would truly love it if you took two minutes to leave an honest review of the podcast. It helps more people find the show. And if this has helped you, it can help someone else too. Thank you so much for being here. Until next time, keep moving forward. Trust yourself, and never forget you have what it takes to block out the noise.