Run these nine tactics through your mind-shrinking ray gun machine to turn big, self-perpetuating worry issues into nothing more than little things that don’t deserve a sweat:

  1. Refrain from bending over to let things wash over you. Withdrawal. Regroup. Increase. Move on. Never give up.

  2. Recognize that frustrations are the negative side of your most positive passions. Anything in between is a small thing.

  3. Acknowledge familiarity with big disappointments and remember what you did before to get out of them.

  4. Refocus on the grand prize you want. Recognize that there are milestones, mostly small things, to accomplish before the grand prize can be achieved.

  5. Stay true to behaviors that align with your guiding principles – little things that come naturally to you. Thinking outside of social norms to gain an advantage creates anxiety. Important things: If something feels wrong, it is probably wrong.

  6. Reconnect with your training and career plans to perform with purpose.

  7. Commit to a new zeal to overcome big setbacks.

  8. Initiate the forward movement leaving disappointments behind.

  9. Recognize that it is acceptable to sweat over the big races. Smile. Follow your path to success.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” FDR in his first keynote address.

A friend convinced me to go big and long in triathlon. In my first Ironman triathlon in Provo, Utah, I pulled out two sets of white labels with words in black ink to guide us through the race. On every label except one, there was a single word: “Eat,” “Drink,” “Breathe,” “Relax,” “Laugh,” and the other label referred to our race day goal.

We stick the labels on each of the aero bars on our bike to serve as a reminder for tomorrow’s race. Simple words were all tactics to follow to get great results. Our motivating goal was for each of them to rate Kona. I was hoping that the race would be the most challenging sporting event of my life.

I didn’t sleep well the night before the race. Lying in bed thinking about tomorrow’s race with the main show in my imagination, I was with a steady swim, an efficient bike, followed by a quick race to finish and earn Ironman status. But during commercial breaks I experienced atychiphobia, more commonly known as fear of failure.

Many athletes never think that something bad will happen to them in a race. Bad things will only happen to others. Sometimes we tend to think that we are indestructible. For other athletes, they imagine and experience some competition phobias. They are not things that will kill or maim us, but that will definitely prevent us from a well-earned performance that we train hard, smartly and diligently in a race. Some people become so obsessed with potential poor results that they don’t accept the positives of being career ready. They envision catastrophes rather than successes. They go to extremes to think of disastrous outcomes, to the point of exaggerating the worst potential outcomes in all-or-nothing terms rather than meeting the milestones.

These negative thoughts include punctures and not being able to fix them quickly, crashing into others and getting us out of the race, or other equipment failures like broken chains, bent derailleurs, or a broken pedal. In Provo, I feared for the most part that I would not be able to finish an Ironman distance triathlon, as my natural comfort zone was an 800-meter race at a track competition.

Wandering a bit, as a freshman in college I gave a speech on phobias using Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip as inspiration. Here’s what you might want to know: fear of water – aquaphobia, bicycles – cyclophobia, running – there is no word for “fear of running”, however potamophobia is fear of running water. There are no words for fear of competition, but there are many symptoms:

  • inability to sleep

  • stomach loaves

  • overactive intestines

  • nausea

  • shaking / shaking

  • sweating excessively

  • dizziness

  • hyperventilation

  • dry mouth

  • freezing

  • losing control over emotions

  • affraid to die

  • anxiety attacks

  • incoherence when speaking

  • incoherence in thinking

He was not afraid of sleeping (somniphobia) nor was he afraid of not sleeping. No, I suffered from (and this is just an understatement) anxiety, self-inflection, and over-inflation.

At 4:30 am I thought, “Today I am choosing to be a competitor rather than a spectator. I am committed to this race. The day is for running, all day. This is what I am doing today.” It is much better to be in the race than to read the results at my home 625 miles away.

I boarded a bus on the Brigham Young University campus at 5 am for the ride to the race start and the T1 transition area at Utah Lake. On the bus I was wondering if I would come back as Ironman at the end of the day. With colleagues here and here in fear, my stomach was queasy. Although this was not a war, I made it my own battle and related that this must be how the soldiers felt before going to battle: the uncertainty of achieving the objective of the day, the uncertainty of returning intact or mutilated, or I even live To cope, I recalled a passage in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff where he wrote about the original Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom when he was flying combat missions in North Korea. When stationed in South Korea, the pilots who had not been shot by the North Koreans had to stand on the bus between the barracks and their fighter jets. Gus made sure he earned the right to sit on the bus for the next trip. The “main thing was not to be left behind”.

I chose to earn the right to be called an Ironman by staying focused on being a competitor rather than a spectator. While I didn’t have to stand up, I didn’t want to fall behind the peer group I chose to belong to pending a good faith rating. The race turned out to be a small thing compared to the combat.

Write a list of everything that caused you concern in the last 12 months. Write next to each one how much worrying time you spent at each event. Now, with the luxury of seeing how the events turned out, classify each one as a small item or a large item. Your pile of small things will be much larger than your pile of big things. Learn to categorize before future events. Be predisposed to lean more for the small ranking and think big for success.

When did you experience your “ah ha ha” moment of knowing the difference between the little things and the big things? What did you change to focus on the big things and not worry about the little things?