excellence, actually Stop Self-Sabotaging: How to Get Out of Your Own Way
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Mar 19, 2026 They dig into why we sabotage performance, from not trying to choking under pressure to night-before mistakes. Neuroscience and child psychology explain protective brain biases. Practical themes include building self-trust through exposure, acting like a 'good enough' parent to yourself, and coaching techniques to quiet the inner critic and free automatic skills.
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Kind Audience Enables Risk Taking
- Toddlers persist because their self-monitoring is outsourced to compassionate caregivers, not a harsh internal critic.
- Research shows toddlers look to a kind parent for cues to persist, enabling risk-taking and learning like walking.
Be A Good Enough Parent To Yourself
- Adopt Winnicott's Good Enough Parent approach for yourself: accept imperfection, hold big emotions, and allow exploration.
- Clay recommends creating a supportive inner stance so Self 1 quiets enough for Self 2 to perform.
Coach By Disrupting The Critical Voice
- Coaches should identify the origin of the athlete's critical voice and design practice to free them from that audience's judgment.
- Steve suggests reframing goals or creating constraints that make failing in practice a safe experiment (e.g., race to blow up).
