Does an “All-or-Nothing” Mindset Really Make Us Perform Better?

In our new book, Extreme Balance: Paradoxical Principles That Make You a Champion, Ben Askren (Co-Founder of AWA), clinical psychologist David Sacks, and I share interviews with champions, scientific insights, and expert analysis that will challenge readers to rethink their approach to finding success. In the following excerpt, we discuss the pros and cons of having an “all-in” mindset versus a “there are more important things in life” attitude when competing in sports and business.

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Legendary New York Yankee Derek Jeter—as described by Tom Verducci in his 2009 Sports Illustrated article about that year’s SI Sportsman of the Year—”jumped all over” a teammate who had performed poorly in a 2001 World Series loss after his teammate said, “Well, at least I had fun.”

According to Verducci’s article, when recounting that moment years later, Jeter said, getting upset all over again, “Fun? I can’t relate to it . . . What makes me angry is when people don’t care— not when they fail; everybody fails—or when people act like they don’t care.”

University of North Carolina head wrestling coach Rob Koll, a former NCAA champion for UNC and consistent winner as the head coach at Cornell and then Stanford, describes his “unfaltering, almost pathological” hatred of defeat. “This drives and motivates me like nothing else,” Koll says. “This doesn’t mean you have to act like a child if you lose, but it does need to drive you. After we lose a dual meet or recruit, I work twice as hard.”

Caring this deeply means that success feels exhilarating, and failure is life-or-death dreadful. If you allow yourself to experience the awful horror that comes with dedicating yourself to the singular pursuit of a goal and then failing to reach it, the pain of that disappointment might help you find even more energy and resilience so that you won’t be disappointed next time.

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Ask anyone who has achieved their ultimate goal, and they will tell you that part of their journey included painful setbacks that inspired them to find another level of commitment. Legendary wrestler and coach Dan Gable was undefeated through high school and college before being upset in his last match by Larry Owings in the 1970 NCAA finals. Gable has said that as successful as he was up to that point, he needed that loss to revitalize his commitment and eliminate any sense of invincibility. It was after this loss, he says, when “I got good.” He then set his sights on an Olympic gold medal, which he earned in 1972 without giving up a single point.

Stories such as these show that great accomplishments can be heavily fueled by the pain of losing. Rather than trying to maintain perspective and soften the blow of their latest failures, champions channel that pain into greater effort and resolve. In this regard, attempting to convince yourself that “it’s just a game” is missing the point. Instead of mentally reducing the stakes, find a way to rise up and perform your best when the stakes are high so you can avoid that awful disappointment in the future.

Consider a situation where your performance is literally a matter of life and death. Such scenarios occur regularly for surgeons, pilots, and military leaders, and for them, there is no escaping the pressure. If you’re guiding a group of soldiers on a mission through hostile territory, then maintaining perspective means being aware that others’ lives are in your hands. You must be at your best when it matters most.

Obviously, not everyone is cut out for this type of job. If you falter under high pressure, you should choose another career path. In military combat, emergency medicine, and law enforcement, you don’t have the luxury of modifying the stakes to your preferred stress level. Rather, you must adapt your performance to the high-stakes reality. For those who can do this successfully, the stress of a sport competition pales in comparison. It should be no surprise, then, that athletes who have experienced challenging circumstances in their lives—such as a combat tour or growing up in a crime-ridden neighborhood or a war zone—often are the most resilient and mentally tough competitors.

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Until you’ve experienced the kind of life-or-death pressure we’re talking about, it’s impossible to know how you’ll respond. Psychologists refer to this natural reaction as your dominant response, and the way to determine your dominant response to stress is to put yourself in a stressful situation and see how you perform. Just as physical strain will reveal flaws in the integrity of a structure, highly stressful situations will expose our deepest psychological vulnerabilities—or highlight our greatest strengths.

Is your dominant response to stress to buckle down and focus on the task at hand? Or do you respond by freezing up and hoping you’ll survive? If it’s the former, then bring on your toughest opponents and fight like your life is on the line. But if it’s the latter, keep your perspective and treat your sport like a sport, not a war. In the meantime, work on your dominant response so you can rise up to bigger challenges in the future.